41st & Central: The Untold Story of the L.A. Black Panthers

New Screening Announced!

admin — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 15:30:20 +0000

Pasadena, CA

Friday, February 25, 2011
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Travis Auditorium at Fuller Theological Seminary
135 N Oakland Ave, Pasadena, CA 91101
More info? Please call (626) 304-3789

In Celebration of Black History Month, Reel Spirituality and the Center for African American Church Studies present a screening of the award-winning documentary film 41st & Central: The Untold Story of the L.A. Black Panthers.

Wayne Phar

admin — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 02:16:20 +0000

Tom Hayden Quote

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Bernard Parks Quote

admin — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 21:57:18 +0000

Official Selection ’10 NBAF

admin — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 21:47:46 +0000

Winner ’10 PAFF Audience Favorite Award

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41st & Central

admin — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 21:27:35 +0000

UCLA Memory Project Unveils Memorial

admin — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 07:55:01 +0000

The students of UCLA Professor Mary Corey’s seminar, the Memory Project unveiled a memorial in front of Campbell Hall Tuesday in recognition of Bunchie Carter and John Huggins who were UCLA students and leaders in the Black Panther Party. On Jan. 17, 1969, they were shot to death in Campbell Hall by an unknown assailant. Erika Huggins, John Huggins widow also attended the event.

The Memory Project memorializes, remembers Black Panthers killed in Campbell Hall 41 years ago

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:30:08 +0000

: Isaac Arjonilla Ericka Huggins, widow of John Huggins and member of the Black Panther Party, spoke outside Campbell Hall Tuesday at the presentation of the Memory Project.

The Memory Project honors two UCLA students who were killed in Campbell Hall 41 years ago

By ANDRA LIM

May 25, 2010 in Daily Bruin

That was when Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and John Jerome Huggins Jr., UCLA students and members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, were killed in room 1201 of Campbell.

At the ceremony, history lecturer Mary Corey, whose capstone seminar on 1960s activism is also known as the Memory Project, unveiled two plaques in remembrance of the Panthers, and their deaths on Jan. 17, 1969.

Elaine Brown, a former leader of the Panthers, stressed the importance of recognizing the bigger picture of the deaths.

“(The Panthers at UCLA) talked about bringing the skills of students back into the community, bringing the resources of the campus back into the community. We talked about uniting the community and the campus,” Brown said. “That was the message of John and Bunchy Carter.”

In 1968, Carter and Huggins were among the first group of students to be admitted to the university under the experimental High Potential Program.

This program was the stepping stone that preceded the Academic Advancement Program, Corey said. And during the jump from one to another, the shootings occurred, she added.

High Potential brought in 100 minority students who had been overlooked by the admissions office and who had demonstrated their capability for academic achievement, said Daniel Johnson, the program’s founder. At the time, Johnson was a 21-year-old political science student.

“The admissions office was largely white,” Johnson said. “So I created a program that outreached and found students who the university was not trying to attract unless they were athletes.”

Some of these students were leaders who were actively engaged in their communities, while others had academic accomplishments that were impressive in light of their setbacks.

“Can you imagine coming up with this idea, and presenting it to the school, and the school saying okay in 1968?” said Gregory Everett, who directed “41st & Central: The Untold Story of the L.A. Black Panthers,” a documentary about the Southern California Black Panthers.

In Los Angeles, it was a year characterized by frequent and violent conflicts between the police and the Black Panthers. The median age of the Black Panthers was around 19.

“It was a war zone here in Southern California,” said Bernie Morris, Carter’s older brother.

On the UCLA campus, Black Panther members attended class, but they also led protests and arranged for dining halls to donate leftover food to the party, which would then distribute the food in the community.

In the fall of 1968, UCLA students were discussing who should be director of the newly formed Afro-American Studies Center, Johnson said.

Ron Karenga, founder of black nationalist group US, lobbied Chancellor Charles E. Young to choose his preferred candidate without a student vote.

Simultaneously, the FBI created hostility between the Panthers and US to undermine the Panthers, 1975 Church Committee Hearings revealed.

The Black Student Union, now the Afrikan Student Union, asked the Panthers to help them maintain student control over the selection process. The Panthers agreed.

A series of meetings held in January 1969 to determine the director of the studies center were peaceful, Johnson said. But at the end of the meeting on Jan. 17, when most students had already left the room, Harold “Tuwala” Jones entered the room, Johnson said.

Huggins approached Jones, and the two entered into a verbal disagreement. Huggins took a swing at Jones, and Carter tried to stop him. As this was happening, Claude “Chuchessa” Hubert shot Huggins in the back, Johnson said.

When Carter tried to take cover behind a chair-desk, Hubert shot him, Johnson said.

“Bunchy was shot by what you call a dum-dum bullet – it expands when it hits the object. The bullet hit the wooden back of the chair, expanded, and entered Bunchy’s chest. It tore a gaping hole and the police said he was killed almost instantly,” Johnson said.

Huggins, who was also carrying a gun, reflexively emptied it as he was dying, Johnson said. At the time, he was 23 and Carter was 26.

After the shooting, Panther Elaine Brown, who was on the upper level of Campbell when the guns went off, returned to the house where she lived with other Panther members. “Within 20 minutes of our arrival, the police took us off to jail, charging the Black Panthers with preparing to retaliate against US,” Brown said.

Meanwhile, Johnson said he and other administrators of High Potential were placed under police preservation in the UCLA Guest House because it was unclear whether they were being targeted as well.

Later, L.A. police arrested three US members on suspicion of conspiracy and murder. Hubert and Jones escaped.

Huggins and Brown said they believe that the United States government played a part in orchestrating the shootings and in helping Hubert and Jones flee.

Johnson said he is still uncertain about what happened that day. He added that Hubert, who may still be alive, is probably the only person who could provide an answer.

Despite the shootings, Robert Singleton was chosen as the first director of what is now the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies in spring 1969.

In the months and years following the deaths, the Southern California Panthers continued their struggle against racism, but it was not the same, Morris said. “The energy in the chapter came from Bunchy, he was kind of the catalyst that made things go,” Morris said.

The university started to reevaluate the High Potential Program’s practice of admitting students, Johnson said. A study was published that showed High Potential students lagged behind their peers.

In 1971, High Potential was combined with the Educational Opportunity Program to create what is now the Academic Advancement Program. And now, Campbell Hall, which once housed the High Potential Program, is practically synonymous with the Academic Advancement Program.

But Carter and Huggins’ deaths go beyond Campbell, and even UCLA, Brown said.

“If this is (seen as) some little incident in some little hall, we’ll never understand the significance about their lives and deaths,” she said. “They wanted to unite blacks, browns, whites, Native Americans, gay (individuals), straight people, women. They wanted to humanize the country and effect progressive, radical change.”

History seminar, the Memory Project, to unveil plaques in memoriam of Black Panther students killed at Campbell Hall

admin — Mon, 24 May 2010 22:44:13 +0000

Jim Summers AAP Operations Manager Chante Henderson (left) and AAP Director Charles Alexander hold plaques in lecturer Mary Corey’s class to honor slain Black Panther students.

May 24, 2010
Daily Bruin

In Campbell Hall 41 years ago, two UCLA students and members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense were murdered.

Ever since that day, Jan. 17, 1969, various attempts to put up a plaque commemorating the deaths of Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and John Jerome Huggins Jr. have emerged. None have succeeded.

“It’s as if it never happened, and that’s just wrong. It did happen, and it’s a tragic, tragic part of this institution’s history,” said Mary Corey, a history lecturer at UCLA.

The 16 students in Corey’s capstone seminar on 1960s activism have worked throughout this quarter to remind the campus of the shooting that occurred in room 1201 – then a small cafeteria, now home to an Academic Advancement Program’s math and science tutorial.

Today the seminar, also known as the Memory Project, will host a ceremony to unveil two plaques in memoriam of Carter and Huggins. One will hang outside room 1201A. The other will be installed on the outside of Campbell Hall after the UCLA administration ensures the plaque adheres to its architectural standards.

The students taking the seminar are unsure when the plaque will go up.

Former Panthers Elaine Brown, Ericka Huggins and Roland Freeman will speak at the ceremony, along with UCLA history professor Scot Brown and filmmaker Gregory Everett.

Carter’s older brother Bernie Morris and Undergraduate Students Association Council President Jasmine Hill will also be present.

“John Huggins and Alprentice ‘Bunchy’ Carter worked toward student empowerment and social justice, and for the uplifting of the global community,” said Ericka Huggins, John Huggins’ widow.

“I see this plaque as a wonderful opportunity to remind us that we can be part of transformation in our own world.”

Carter and Huggins were admitted to UCLA in 1968 under the flagship High Potential Program, a precursor to AAP.

In September 1968, the search for a director to lead the newly formed Afro-American Studies Center was renewed after the primary candidate backed out. The center is now the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, said Daniel Johnson, founder of High Potential.

Ron Karenga, the founder of black nationalist group Organization US, lobbied Chancellor Charles E. Young to choose the candidate he preferred without a student vote.

At this time, the FBI was fueling tensions between the Panthers and Organization US in an attempt to undermine the Panther party, 1975 Church Committee hearings found.

Members of the Black Student Union, now the Afrikan Student Union, asked the Panthers to help them maintain democratic control over the selection process. The Panthers agreed.

A series of meetings to discuss the matter was held in January 1969.

After an otherwise peaceful meeting on the 17th, Johnson said, Carter and Huggins were shot by Claude “Chuchessa” Hubert.

Johnson said he believes that the FBI played a part in the shootings, but added that even today, he is still uncertain about the details of what happened.

What is certain, he said, is that Carter and Huggins died as heroes.

“They died standing with students to oppose the takeover of the (director selection) process we were engaged in,” he said.

Those in Corey’s seminar believe it is their duty as student activists to acknowledge the shootings.

The students realized there was no concrete commemoration of the deaths at the beginning of the quarter.

They watched Everett’s documentary, “41st & Central,” which is about the Southern California Black Panthers chapter and covers the UCLA shooting. Then, several students in the course gave a presentation on the Panthers and, as part of their research, went to the site of the shootings.

“It’s just cubicles and dry-erase boards and people getting tutored,” said Amy Razo, a fourth-year history student.

“We thought, ‘This isn’t right, this is denying the entire university part of its history.’ From then on, we assigned people tasks, like looking up other plaques on campus, doing research on the event and the history of the shootings,” she said.

The Memory Project has worked tirelessly this quarter to ensure these plaques are installed, Corey said, adding that it is not unusual to receive calls from her students at midnight.

The seminar still manages to fit in discussions of weekly readings inside its Bunche Hall classroom, but its focus remains on adjacent Campbell Hall.

For the past several decades, the university has hesitated to make Carter and Huggins’ deaths visible, Corey said.

“If two white students were murdered in Campbell Hall, do you think there would be a plaque? If a plumber died of a heart attack in Haines who had worked for the university for 35 years? Plaque,” Corey said.

“We have to assume there’s something about them being Black Panthers in the mind of the institution that made (their deaths) hard to acknowledge.”

However, there has been an increased effort to raise awareness of the shootings over the past several years, Corey said.

A few years ago, there was a plan to look into creating a committee that would work on installing a plaque, said Charles Alexander, associate vice provost for student diversity and the director of the Academic Advancement Program. The committee never formed, he added.

Finally recognizing what happened could help UCLA reach out to a more diverse group of students, Corey said. Right now, the university does not attract many black students, she added.

“This campus does not have a reputation for being welcoming (to black students),” Corey said. “I think having this history acknowledged does something for the university: It opens the circle of ‘we’ to a larger circle.”