The New Orleans Chapter of the Black Panthers, their attorney recently honored by BSLA of Southern University
7th March 2024 · 0 Comments
By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Writer
To celebrate Black History Month 2024 and launch their Inaugural Awards Gala, Qwantaria Russell, president of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA), and fellow students decided to honor people whose work made an indelible mark on the communities they serve.
Southern University Law Center Professor Angela A. Allen-Bell gave her students several iconic lawyers from which to choose. The students chose New Orleans-based civil rights attorney Ernest Jones to receive the SULC’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the New Orleans Chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP), whom Jones represented to receive the Agents of Change Award.
“The Lifetime Achievement Award is a prestigious recognition presented to individuals who have demonstrated exceptional dedication, leadership, and impact in the legal profession. Your outstanding contributions and achievements have not gone unnoticed.
“We believe that your legacy aligns seamlessly with the values and mission of our organization,” Russell said in the invitation to Jones and the BPP to receive honors at the organization’s inaugural Award Gala on February 23 at the Smith-Brown Memorial Union in Baton Rouge, La.
Angela A. Allen-Bell is the B. K. Agnihotri Endowed Professor at Southern University Law Center.
Allen-Bell is a civil rights attorney who teaches Criminal Procedure, Constitutional Law, Law and Racism, and Human Rights and Civil Rights. Allen-Bell was involved in the Angola Three case and was among the lawyers responsible for overturning Louisiana’s discriminatory non-unanimous jury law.
Most recently, Allen-Bell has worked with the iconic Attorney Louis A. Martinet family. She and her students located Martinet’s unmarked grave and will place a marker at the gravesite. Martinet was one of the lawyers involved in the Plessy v. Ferguson case.
In her introduction of Jones, Allen-Bell said he has served as a judge, law professor, and in-house counsel for the Black Organization of Police, and his private practice included representing CORE, Republic of New Africa, The Black Panthers, NAACP, New Orleans Parish School Board and the AALP (African American Leadership Project), among others.
After graduating from Howard University’s Law School and living in D.C. for nearly a decade, Jones accepted a community lawyer fellowship in New Orleans.
Jones was working at NOLAC (New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation) doing “anti-poverty” work when he got Steve Green’s call for help.
Green, the founder of the National Committee to Combat Fascism, which became the BBP’s New Orleans Chapter, reached out to Jones for help.
“They were about to be evicted because the owner of the office, a local criminal court judge, Bernard Bagert, objected to their political education activities in and around the St. Thomas project,” Jones told a local newspaper.
“I’ll defend your eviction,” Jones told him. “We won that case, but as a compromise, the BPP relocated to the Desire area.
BPP members launched the Feed the Children program, helped older people, held political education seminars, conducted armed patrols, and taught the area’s residents self-defense at the Desire Community Center, whose director was the late state rep. and City Councilman Johnny Jackson.
On September 15, 1970, more than 100 police descended on the BBP’s headquarters “on Piety Street (owned by a store owner). The cops fired hundreds of rounds of bullets,” Jones related. The Black Panthers fired back but were outgunned. Police lobbed 30 rounds of tear gas and brought 240 weapons to the shootout, including AR-15s. Sixteen were arrested, and 12 were charged with attempted murder.
“God was with us and saved us from all those bullets,” said Malik Rahim, a Black Panther member.
The BPP “liberated” an unoccupied public housing apartment in the Desire projects. “It was there that the government authorities decided to evict them,” Jones explained. They (law enforcement) were enthralled with the propaganda that the BBP was a violent, radical, revolutionary group who wanted to kill white cops.”
On November 19, the cops came with a military tank and tried to evict the BPP from the apartment. The effort proved fruitless. Hundreds of community members stood between the police and the apartment. “No shots were fired that day,” Jones continued.
“Jane Fonda had come to New Orleans for a speaking engagement. She asked how she could help. The unarrested members told her they wanted to go to a convention in D.C. and needed transportation. She offered to rent them a few cars. But they were arrested on the interstate,” Jones continued.
On November 25, 1970, however, police masquerading as priests knocked on the door, and when a young woman opened the door, they rushed in and started shooting. “Betty Ainsworth (then Betty Powell) was shot multiple times,” Allen-Bell related. “Betty was unarmed with hands up when she was shot.”
“The buckshot went through her breast and came out of her arm. She still has five pellets in her body today,” WWL-TV reported. Betty Ainsworth’s husband, Ronald, co-founded the Black Panther Party with Green. The 1970s followed the turbulent 60s, but unlike the non-violent tactics employed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Black power and revolution were on the minds of young Black adults.
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in Oakland, Calif., by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in 1966. The “Honorary Prime Minister” of the Black Panther Party (BPP) was Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), who led the Black Power Movement.
Under Director J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program) was initially launched in 1956 to undermine the Communist Party in the United States. But in the 1960s and 1970s, Hoover investigated and disrupted dissident political groups in the United States.
The program targeted Black leaders, including Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Elijah Muhammad, and their organizations.
Hoover designated Carmichael as the man most likely to succeed Malcolm X as America’s “Black messiah.” The FBI targeted him, so Carmichael moved to Africa in 1968.
The Black Panther Party was among Hoover’s targets. Black men and women carrying weapons and patrolling Black neighborhoods to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department proved too much for Hoover.
On June 15, 1969, J. Edgar Hoover declared, “The Black Panther Party, without question, represents the greatest threat to the internal security of the country;” he pledged that 1969 would be the last year of the Party’s existence, PBS reported.
Indeed, Chicago police murdered Illinois Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark on December 4, 1969, but Bobby Hutton was murdered by Oakland police in 1968.
“Discredit, disrupt, and destroy”: FBI records acquired by the UC Berkeley Library reveal violent surveillance of Black leaders, civil rights organizations.
Undeterred, from 1969 onward, the Black Panther Party created the Free Breakfast for Children programs and education programs and operated community health clinics.
Jones defended 12 BPP members at the trial with Judge Israel Augustine presiding, with a predominantly Black jury of their peers. Jones won the case. All 12 walked out of the courtroom in freedom. And Jones paid a heavy price for representing the BPP. NOLAC fired him. Jones says the most impactful moment of all his trials was “when the white jury foreman in the BPP case stood up and said, in the name of Martin Luther King Jr., not guilty.”
In accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award, Jones said, “I’ve gotten awards. I got one from the Federal Lawyers, but this award is special because these are my folks.”
He counseled the law students: “Anything we do is harder than it’s supposed to be. You are Black and you can’t get away from it. You are training in law, and you can’t get away from it. When you practice law, you are a student for life, and you can’t get away from it.”
“Demographers find this generation feels that there aren’t any challenges left in civil rights and they wish they had been around for the Civil Rights Movement. But there are a lot of challenges left for you. My generation got access to voting rights and access to government positions and private positions of employment. Your generation will have to gain access to America’s wealth.”
“BLSA recognized Attorney Ernest Jones with the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Black Panther Party with the Agents of Change Award because of their commitment to advancing civil rights and advocating for the advancement of our people and their commitment to social justice aligns with our organization,” said Russell.
“They have had an impactful contribution to the legal community, and as Black law students, it is crucial that we recognize those who paved the way for us. In my opinion, not too many attorneys could have done what Attorney Jones succeeded at, when he ensured that these innocent men of the Panther Party were all found NOT Guilty during a time when the world was fighting so hard to depict them as the ‘most significant threat to national security.’
“Therefore, it was important that SULC BLSA give them their flowers and continue to rewrite the narrative of the Panther Party.”
This article originally published in the March 7, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
