As the backing band, the Freedom Messengers, winds down their final song in the Merritt College auditorium, the packed audience of hundreds of students, young radicals, and community members from the North Oakland area feel the anticipation building in the room. The lights go down, a drum roll starts, and a voice from the shadows bellows out:
“Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters. The Black Panther Party very proudly presents, [drum roll]…
“The Lumpen!”
The sound of the band crashes in with a high energy rhythm and blues groove. The Lumpen members rush the stage and begin to step, kick, and spin—the show is off and running.
This is how the Lumpen began their concert on November 10, 1970, as well as their many other shows during a ten-month span from midsummer 1970 to the spring of 1971. They were billed as “The Black Panther Party’s Revolutionary Band,” and like many of the community programs produced by the Black Panther Party at the time, they delivered the goods. The Lumpen represented the goals and ideals of the Party and performed their radicalized renditions of popular black music through some of the most tumultuous moments in the Black Panther Party’s existence. This is their story.
The story of the Lumpen began in San Jose, California, in 1968, just as the student uprisings that had been taking place at college campuses nationwide landed at the small South Bay campus of San Jose State University, fifty miles south of San Francisco. The cataclysmic events of that year—the murders of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy—and the continuing horrors of the Vietnam War and racial conflict at home had fostered the rise of a radicalized student movement on many campuses. Northern California students and activists in particular had been inspired by the leaders of the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) at San Francisco State University, which had successfully mobilized a student walkout to demand the creation of a Third World College. As a result of the TWLF, students on college campuses throughout Northern California began a series of walkouts in an effort to address inequalities at their schools and to support causes in the larger community. As Dr. Jason Ferreira states: “It was as if the students throughout the region were engaging in one big strike.”
For entirely different reasons, San Jose State was becoming world famous in its own right. San Jose State was the home of the world-renowned United States Olympic track team, and its most celebrated members: Lee Evans, Tommie Smith, and John Carlos. While the student athletes trained at “Speed City,” they also found themselves on the front lines of social change. A year earlier, the protests of disenfranchised blacks at SJSU—including a young, fiery black sociology instructor named Harry Edwards—had led to the unprecedented cancellation of the 1967 college football season opener due to the threat of an athletic boycott by the black players. The success of the black boycott emboldened the athletes, who along with Smith and Edwards spearheaded the Olympic Project for Human Rights, an effort that advocated a total black American boycott of the Olympic Games to be held in October 1968 in Mexico City.
The drama of the proposed Olympic boycott was one of the most consuming international stories of 1968. Some black athletes, such as Lew Alcindor (later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), then an All-American basketball star at UCLA, honored the boycott and refused to participate in the Olympic games. The climate of protest was pervasive and tense, and as a result, the boycott plan and Edwards himself would fade into the background as the games approached. The remaining athletes were left to choose their own method of protest. On October 16, after their medal-winning performances in the Olympic two-hundred-meter final, San Jose State students Smith and Carlos would shock the world by raising their black power fists on the victory stand in Mexico City.
The impact of that moment at the Olympic games would be felt far and wide and would consume the lives of Smith and Carlos for decades. Yet the Olympic protest events were only part of a larger movement for social change taking place in the black community. Black college students who were facing daily insults, disorienting and often racist curricula, segregated and second-class facilities, and little or no administrative support felt a strong compulsion to participate in protests and challenges to the status quo. However, many black students also felt a different type of pressure, as the act of simply attending college was seen by their families as a personal breakthrough, and one not to be sacrificed on the altar of social protest.
In the streets of the Bay Area, young people were witnessing a visible assault on the black community, and on Black Panther Party members in particular. The imprisonment of Huey Newton in the fall of 1967 and the April 6, 1968, killing of young Bobby Hutton and wounding of Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver by Oakland police were clarion calls for many black youth that in 1968 a war with the power structure was imminent—if it had not already begun.
Into this mix, three black militant students arrived at the center of a storm of social upheaval at San Jose State. These young men had the conviction that they would take the struggle further than the student strike at SF State, further than the Mexico City events. They were prepared to seize the time.
That fall semester of 1968, a recent Berkeley High School graduate and former youth NAACP member named Michael Torrence enrolled at San Jose State. He was one of the first participants in the statewide Equal Opportunity Program (EOP), an emerging program spawned from student activism that sought to increase minority college enrollment. Torrence immediately began to organize black students on the campus, using as his guide the image of the Black Panther Party. “At that time I wanted to be a Panther. That was my goal,” he recalls.1 Torrence and his allies developed a coalition with the Black Student Union at nearby San Jose City College, where they met William Calhoun, leader of the BSU there. The larger Black Student Alliance they formed then began a regimen of Black Panther Party functions, including the distribution of the Black Panther newspaper and political education classes. The young would-be Panthers also volunteered their time (along with many others) for some of the basic work of the Black Panther Party. They worked the weekly shipping detail in San Francisco, binding copies of the Black Panther for distribution nationwide.
As the fall 1968 semester progressed, the San Francisco State TWLF student protest had grown in size and intensity, involving almost daily confrontations between police and protesting students. Under Torrence and Calhoun’s leadership, the San Jose State BSU attempted to generate a student walkout in solidarity with the San Francisco State actions. However, with the proposed walkout scheduled to take place only days after the Olympic games, the San Jose student body was not as prepared (nor was the community as effectively involved) as San Francisco, and the BSU leaders found that their brand of politics faced stiff resistance. Torrence recalls:
In November of ‘68, we did vote to go out on strike. That was my first arrest; I got arrested for inciting a riot. When we got out of jail—there was me and three other brothers—we got out of jail, came back, and found out that the students had voted to call the strike off. They—I guess they got intimidated … you know, so there were probably some threats of suppression coming down.2
Torrence and the others attempted to recruit the Olympic athletes but found the track stars had little interest in controversy after the noise they had already made. “We supported them, but then when it came down to the strike, they didn’t support us…. The athletes’ position was basically, ‘I’m not going to blow my scholarship for this here,’ “ Torrence recalls. Lumpen founder William Calhoun had a similar recollection of the young men who had nevertheless become heroes within a global movement of resistance with their symbolic gesture on the podium at the Olympic Games:
[To us] they were not seen as revolutionary types, they were just track runners. Myself, Harry Edwards, people who had made speeches, people who had been on the stage, people who had been at demonstrations, those were the “movement people.” Tommie, Lee, and them, they were supportive, they were part of it…. They were at meetings, and they clapped their hands and all of that stuff, but that’s all there was.3
With the chaos surrounding the Olympic boycott and the backlash forced upon the track runners, their return to San Jose State was fraught with controversy and conflict—hostile administrators, a hostile national media, a virulent backlash from self-described “patriotic Americans” against a gesture deemed offensive by some, and ironically, an impatient black radical community that was often urging them to take further protest action. It was perhaps understandable that under the circumstances the athletes’ support did not extend beyond the track field. Calhoun states:
I knew Tommie Smith, Lee Evans, and John Carlos and all those guys. We were trying to talk them out of going to Mexico at all. Just not even showing up. It was Harry’s thing to go down there and boycott or whatever. We didn’t think they should show up at all. From our position, if you’re going to boycott, boycott. But things kind of got diffused. And because it wasn’t organized—it was kind of like the Million Man March; everybody wanted to do it but nobody kind of quite knew what we were doing or why we were doing it. So it kind of got diffused in terms of its actual application. So people went, and you had the protest with Tommie and John, but that was strictly spontaneous. They were very serious brothers, and I love them both with all my heart, but that wasn’t planned.4
The young would-be Panthers continued on with their plans to organize the black students and the community of San Jose. In early 1969 Michael Torrence was elected chair of the San Jose State Black Students Union and set about recruiting other politically adept black students, one of whom was fellow EOP student Clark “Santa Rita” Bailey. Bailey had gone to Oakland’s Castlemont High School and had enrolled at San Jose State in the spring of 1969. “Michael and them, they basically bombarded me with information, and they wouldn’t leave me alone,” Bailey recalls. “With that being said, some of the material that I read was very interesting to me, and it was material from Huey [Newton].”5 Bailey joined the campus BSU and quickly immersed himself in the campus protest movement.
The paths of student activists Torrence, Calhoun, and Bailey would take another turn. Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver had been in exile since the summer of 1968, and his whereabouts were a complete mystery for a time. He had been recently “discovered” in Cuba, thanks to a cover story in the Black Panther in the spring of 1969, which incensed the law enforcement community. As the San Francisco Panther chapter prepared for a May Day rally, the San Francisco police raided the Panther Party headquarters, which was Eldridge Cleaver’s former home. Tensions grew, and a call was put out for “reinforcements.” Torrence recalls the situation:
The SWAT team in San Francisco had vamped on the Fillmore office. That was two days before the rally, and they made a lot of arrests to try to disrupt the rally and they [the Panthers] had called us and asked if we could send some cadres up there, any sort of support we could—money and bodies. So about two carloads of us rolled up to San Francisco and camped out in the Panther houses for a couple of days, you know, behind the barricades and stuff.6
Torrence remembers the nature of his own particular experience of “firearms training” that first chaotic night at the San Francisco offices:
So the first night they put myself and another brother, we call him Poison, up in the front window, and gave me what was called a Panther special [a rifle] and basically told us, “You got the front window; if the Tac squad pulls up in a Safeway van, they’re gonna have a spotlight in it. If they open up the spotlight, your job will be to shoot out the spotlight and fall back.” That was the first night.
The only training at that point was, “Here’s the safety; here’s the trigger. And don’t let it go off because you got twenty people behind you that are sleeping but they all got guns next to ‘em.” That first night was really intense. The police were at all corners. As time went on you learned more. It wasn’t a real trigger-happy operation by no means.7
Through this trial by fire the young activists were on their way to earning the responsibilities and respect of being a Panther. As difficult and frenzied as the process of becoming Party members was, Torrence, Bailey, and Calhoun had a shared commitment to revolution that was not going to waver in times of crisis. This inner drive would serve all of them well over the next few years.
And from that point on, we pretty much kind of became sort of like a cadre of the Party; we were at that time called Panthers in Training or community workers, and that summer we picked up two properties on the east side of San Jose, which was the community, and we opened up the [Panther Party Chapter and Community] Center.8
Eventual Lumpen founder and songwriter William Calhoun was just as committed as Torrence and Bailey. “I was tired of jiving,” Calhoun recalls. “If we were going to have a revolution, then I wanted to be part of something that was revolutionary. And the only thing I could see was Huey P. Newton’s Black Panther Party. And when Michael and Santa Rita [Bailey] and myself all hooked up at San Jose State, I guess we all had that kind of in mind.”9 Calhoun was the most experienced organizer of the trio. The jump to join the BPP was a part of a process of growth, activism, and soul-searching for him:
The one thing as I made my progression through the movement years, from SNCC—I was one of the West Coast coordinators for the Poor People’s Campaign right after the Prophet [Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.] was shot—I kind of progressed very quickly, but I touched a lot of different groups. I was the national cochairman of the House of Umoja for a very little while. But with each of these groups, there was something missing. There was a disconnect between that which we espoused and that which we did. I sensed in the Black Panther Party that disconnect was not there. And the more the brothers came down with the P.E. classes, the chief of staff [David Hilliard] came down one time, and brought some brothers and sisters with him, we got to meet them, we got to see them and see that these were some serious people. They’re not just talking junk, they are out here doing it. And when the thing happened with Eldridge [the spark for the police raid], I was gone. It was a phone call, and I was in the car.10
After the May Day crisis had abated, the young men returned to San Jose and continued to organize the Panther chapter there, but they were just marking time until they were assigned to the central offices.
Through their daily organizing work, Torrence, Calhoun, and Bailey discovered that they each had a musical background, and the trio would sing as they passed the time. “A lot of evenings after we were through with whatever political work we were doing, we would like to just sit around and sing,” Torrence recalls.11 They sang as they worked the Wednesday night routine of binding the Black Panther at the Howard Quinn Printing Company on Alabama Street in San Francisco. They sang along with what was on the radio—soul music—as well as traditional blues standards and gospel music. Shipping night involved many volunteers, and the three singing Panther paper handlers became known to the Party staff and leadership. Calhoun recalls:
This was a big coming together on Wednesday night. If there was a social event, if you want to consider it social, this was a social event. Food was prepared, and Panthers came from everywhere to do this work to get this paper out. And as it goes with black folks—I’m sure it goes with other cultures, but I know ours better—as it is with black folks, once you get a little beat going, a little rhythm going, pretty soon someone starts humming and off we go.
We were just singing popular songs. Clark Bailey, Michael, and I, as we were racking and stacking, whatever we would do, we would hum songs, sing songs, whatever. We were just singing popular songs, nothing revolutionary. We may throw a little something in like we did with the Isley Brothers’ “It’s your thing, do what you wanna do, whitey can’t tell you what the f—to do,” we changed the lyrics a little bit.
Emory Douglas, he heard us, and he asked me to develop something, to try to make it into something, because he said this was something that would help get the message of the Black Panther Party out.12
In the fall of 1969 the three San Jose State organizers were assigned full-time to the San Francisco chapter of the Black Panther Party. While Calhoun started working on the idea of a Panther musical group, they were all were kept busy with their rank-and-file Panther duties. The work involved a continuation of their efforts at organizing black students on the local college campuses in addition to their regular duties of selling the Black Panther, preparing breakfasts for the children, securing donations for the Survival Programs, pulling security duty guarding Panther offices, preparing and teaching the political education classes, and mobilizing for all types of events and crises that faced the organization.
Each member went through a gradual process of gaining responsibility and rank as a Black Panther based upon the needs of the organization. The work was often tedious but interrupted by dramatic moments of clarity. “There were times in my life in the Party that I didn’t expect to make it,” Clark Bailey recalls. “We’ve been woke up in central headquarters with police as far as your eye can see. On every building with guns pointed down to our office. And you just say to yourself at that time, ‘This is it.’ “13
In the spring of 1970, Torrence, Calhoun, and Bailey were assigned duties at a local festival in the Fillmore District, which was then a predominantly black neighborhood. Since Party member Elaine Brown had recorded an album of Panther-oriented music in 1969, the Party members at the Fillmore event were aware of the powerful impact that blending their politics with the culture, with daily life, could have on people. As a means of contributing to the spirit of the festival, the members decided to perform with a piano on the back of the Panther paper distribution truck and sing two songs that William Calhoun had written: “Free Bobby Now” and “No More.” Minister of Culture Emory Douglas saw the trio perform and committed at that point to make a “cultural cadre” out of the group. The idea was that the group could be used as a recruitment vehicle to spread the message of the Party through a means familiar to the people. “That’s what Emory recognized immediately, especially watching the people’s reaction that afternoon in San Francisco. They wouldn’t let us stop singing them two little songs. We had to sing them over and over and over again,” Calhoun recalls.14
They were given the name the Lumpen by Chief of Staff David Hilliard. Most of the local Party members who took regular political education classes on Sundays were aware of the meaning of the name, which, as Calhoun explains, “is based on Karl Marx’s social analysis which says that the lumpenproletariat are the lowest strata of social society.”15 The lumpenproletariat, according to Marx, were the “social scum” of society, the “refuse of all classes,” including “swindlers, confidence tricksters, brothel-keepers, rag-and-bone merchants, organ-grinders, beggars, and other flotsam of society.”16 This group was of a social status below the proletariat, the masses of the working classes that Marx envisioned would spearhead the uprising that would defeat capitalism. Karl Marx frequently referred to the lumpenproletariat with derision and in The Communist Manifesto proclaimed: “The Lumpenproletariat, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.”17 There appeared to be little use for the lumpenproletariat in a class analysis of revolutionary change. However, Black Panther Party founder and ideological leader Huey Newton found value and political potential in the lumpenproletariat and differed from Marx in that sense. While Marx believed that this subclass was too unstable and vulnerable for co-optation by the bourgeoisie and the ruling classes (and to their own habitual vices), Newton believed that the “social scum” at the bottom could be organized and politicized into a new vanguard of revolutionary change.
Newton’s model was the revolutionary transformation of Malcolm X and the work of the Nation of Islam to reclaim thousands of lost members of the black community. The Nation of Islam, through Malcolm X’s oratory, went a long way toward eradicating the shame associated with downtrodden, drug-addicted, and imprisoned black Americans because the Nation presented a path to redemption. To Newton and many others, Malcolm was a shining example of the possibilities of reclaiming one of the lumpen, the lowest of the low. In the streets, to be lumpen was to be hood, one of the brothers off the block, and so in Panther parlance, lumpen was a term of praise and allegiance for Party members.
The name itself was also a means of indoctrinating potential Panthers into a Marxian analysis of social conditions and to familiarize the audience with some of the vocabulary used to foment one’s political consciousness in the 1960s. To present the idea of lumpenproletariat to first-time potential recruits of the Black Panther Party in a lecture might have come across as too dogmatic and abstract. But by presenting a living, breathing, singing representative of that vanguard, the spearhead of the revolution, the Lumpen had the potential to stimulate, educate, and encourage skeptical members of the community they were targeting.
The group was not simply a weekend hobby; they were an official part of the cultural apparatus of the Black Panther Party. As David Hilliard explains:
We had an entertainment agenda because the whole point of coming to a Black Panther Party event was the totality of it all. You get the cultural and the political as a complete medium for connecting with people, so people were entertained but they were also educated, which was most important. And they left there not just with a piece of paper or leaflet, they left there wanting to be signed up in one of the BPP’s Survival Programs.18
The singing Panther members developed their musical craft through the spring of 1970 as they continued their work as rank-and-file Party members. They worked in and around the central headquarters in Oakland and San Francisco, so their activity was a part of the daily routine of Panther life at the time. Clark Bailey recalls that the leadership knew of them early on:
They would come and check us out, and we would sing at different functions that the organization would have. A lot of times we would have functions just for Panthers, you know, in more like a family atmosphere where we would barbecue and cook, and just be able to pass information of what was going on at the different community levels, where the community centers were. And of course the leadership was there. They were more hands-on in the central area.19
Shortly after the Fillmore park performance, William Calhoun was assigned the task of developing the singing trio into a complete rhythm and blues band. Emory Douglas and David Hilliard had succeeded in getting the Panthers’ governing body, the Central Committee, to agree to the experiment in Panther Party community outreach through soul music. Torrence recalls:
David and Emory, being our advocates, made sure the funds were allocated. David said, “Y’all got to have your own equipment. You got to have some good equipment, ‘cause if we gonna put you out there, we don’t want to put out no secondhand thing.” So they allocated and we went out and shopped for the PA system, the piano, mics and speakers and stuff, and picked it up; we were responsible for it.20
At this point in the Party’s history, both cofounders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale were in jail awaiting trials, Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver was in exile, and Chief of Staff David Hilliard, a childhood friend of Huey Newton, was essentially running the Party. Hilliard had also authorized the recordings of Elaine Brown’s first album, Seize the Time, in 1969, so he saw the potential for a reconnection with the community in the Lumpen.
As the group became established as an official Panther project, a fourth singer, Sacramento chapter cofounder James Mott, was added to the group. Mott had more experience than the others and, William Calhoun believed, was there to keep the situation running smoothly:
James Mott was put in to make sure we stayed in line, I think. That we didn’t turn out to be a bunch of musicians. ‘Cause James came from national headquarters. The three of us came up from San Jose, you know, college students. I think they wanted to make sure we didn’t turn out to be dilettante little musicians. So they put a hardcore brother in with us.21
James Mott was a veteran of the Sacramento chapter and had dealt with serious police actions from the force there that was said to be trained in riot control by the LAPD. Mott and others had withstood the police raids on the Panther office that sparked the Oak Park riots in Sacramento on Father’s Day 1969, and he had earned the respect of the Panther leadership. In addition to his credibility as a trusted Party member, Mott had his own musical skills that he shared with the others, and a natural bond was formed. As Mott recalls: “We’d be sittin’ up on security at night front and back, and we would just start singing. Or they would start singing, I would join in…. We gave our history of singing groups and all that … and we just hit it off.”22
Once the group was solidified, a band was recruited from the local musical community. Many talented local musicians were enthusiastic about volunteering to perform for the Party, and a varied group of supporters (including politically progressive white musicians) played for the band. Torrence explains their status:
Brother Bill Calhoun had experience in terms of forming bands and directing bands, and so he was able to take these brothers who volunteered. They were not paid, [and] they were not Panthers—they were what we designated as community workers. And then we named them the Freedom Messengers. And they did this for free, strictly out of dedication to the people, which I think came through in the playing, because they were not motivated by anything other than what we were all motivated by, and that was to serve the people.23
“I grew up with Santa Rita [Clark Bailey] in the Brookfield Village projects,” recalls guitarist Mack Ray Henderson. “We went to church together. He knew I could play. When he asked me to play for the Panthers I jumped at the chance.”24
The Lumpen began to perform at local Party-sponsored events in the summer of 1970. They started out performing as an unannounced addition to BPP events featuring well-established artists and activists. But their look and sound made people take notice. Onstage, the group had the look of established rhythm and blues groups such as the James Brown Revue and the Temptations. One Panther supporter donated his time and money to make snappy uniforms for the singers, and they hit the stage in style.
The band deliberately chose to perform songs that were familiar to members of their community, and they established a repertoire of popular songs. The Lumpen revised them with lyrics that uncompromisingly asserted the Panther Party ideology. Calhoun developed the premise of working around the remakes of popular songs:
The whole idea of the covers thing came to me from James Cleveland, the gospel artist. James would take a popular song and make it gospel. And he’d do it in a New York minute, ‘cause I remember my mother buying a lot of those records. They were just covers of some popular song, but James Cleveland has now made it into a gospel song.
When it came around to the Black Panther Party and my time in the Black Panther Party, I used his example. Why not take a popular song and make it relevant—because right now it ain’t relevant, and we need to be pushing relevance, twenty-four seven.25
In performance, the Lumpen singers would mix the harmonizing styles of popular Motown groups with the grooving, scatting, ad-libbing funk of the James Brown sound. The Lumpen’s upbeat songs were often variations on a James Brown performance technique. For example, on “The Lumpen Theme” one can hear the group compelling the crowd to move to the music, chanting, “We want freedom / to determine / the destiny / of our community” interspersed with “good God” and “say it louder.”26
The group was adept at the multipart harmonizing that was a large part of black popular music at the time. Soul music required skilled singers who were capable of both individual and collective vocalizing. It was important to the credibility of the act that they be able to perform soul music of high quality, or the entire performance might degenerate to a grotesque comedy and give the appearance of a shallow mockery of soul. This would be an insult to the popular soul singers (recognized as heroes in the black community), an insult to the young black radical audience they sought to entertain, and an insult to the revolutionary cause of the group. The Lumpen did not take their task lightly.
By working with what was familiar to their audience, by using the driving, sensuous rhythms and heartfelt, earnest vocalizing inherent in soul music, all the while bringing the audience along into their revolutionary ideology through the lyrics, the Lumpen fused the politics of pleasure with the politics of revolution. The crowd responses to live Lumpen performances reveal that the experience was clearly an entertaining affair to their followers. They brought out the joy in the struggle. “They would sit in the chairs, they would stand in the aisles and cheer, and sometimes people would come down in the little foyer in the front and groove, and some would come down front and do a little move,” recalls band member Mack Ray Henderson. “It was a very, very free, ‘do what you wanna do’ type thing. But the important thing was the message.”27 A young Elvie McLellan Jr. (now Basheer Muhammad) saw the Lumpen when they played a small bar in Watts in 1970: “They reminded me of the Delfonics, only they made themselves a little bit more political. They did all the steps and moves that every soul group at the time was known to do.”28 The Philadelphia-based Delfonics were among the best of the harmonizing soul-singing groups of the day, and McLellan’s impression was just what the Lumpen wanted to present to their audience. Rhythm and blues legend Lenny Williams was a close friend of Huey Newton and attended many of the Panther functions during their heyday. Williams recalls the range of styles the Lumpen performed:
They did a variation of things. You know, they did songs that were topical songs, you know, inspirational songs that talked about the movement and the people, and then they did love songs because, you know, love is an essential part of a people. We love ourselves and we have to love our women and the women have to love the men so that we can procreate. So they sang a whole potpourri of material. It ran the gamut from songs that talked about the issues of the day and songs that talked about love and happiness.29
“We did some ballads, but they all had a revolutionary message,” Michael Torrence recalls. “We did one for Ericka Huggins, a slow song, ‘Set Sister Ericka Free.’ “
And the Lumpen were more than just revolutionary singers: Torrence, Bailey, and Mott were adept dancers too. As Michael Torrence recalls, the group had a well-choreographed “revolutionary” experience prepared for their audience:
We got a lot of choreography. Again, we wanted to take the model that was popular and recognizable to the people in the community, particularly the black community, and that is along the model of say a group like the Temptations, but also with a strong rhythm such as a James Brown but with moves. So along with the singing and the harmony we wanted to do choreography, but our choreography was not just about spinning, the choreography was part of the story.
So with our steps you would see us throw grenades, you would see us pump shotguns, you would see us … do a whole choreographed dance routine. Actually, it was a pantomime, but it was a whole dance routine, based upon brothers on the block playing craps, a racist cop comes along, brutalizes one brother, the brothers rise up, defend the other brother that’s been brutalized, and death of the fascist pig. And we did all that with dance. So we tried to use all of those aspects, the music, the visual, the steps, the choreography, and all these various modes to try to get across these messages to the people in a way that was entertaining too, but at the same time hopefully inspirational and educational.30
At the time, the militant public posture was still a significant element of the Black Panther Party ideology and iconography, and the Lumpen did not temper the tone of the message. Ironically, the Lumpen were delivering their militant message just as Huey Newton and his faction of the leadership of the Party were moving the organization away from the tactics of direct confrontation with the power structure. As William Calhoun recalls, Huey Newton saw one of their performances and found that one song was too militant for his own tastes:
There was a tune I wrote called “Killing” that Huey made us stop singing. The Party was making this transition. We were making the transition from being the guys on the posters with the guns to breakfast programs and political work and that kind of stuff.
And when the minister got out of prison, he was trying to make the transition too. He came to a show at the Sportsman’s Club in San Francisco and that’s when I introduced this particular song. It was kind of a blues thing, and the hook was, “There’s got to be some killin’ if you want to be free.” And that was a little too strong for the minister and the breakfast for children programs. So “Killing” got cut out of the repertoire.31
Calhoun’s lyrics revealed the troubled narrative of the Panthers at that time.
Nevertheless, by providing an inspirational shout of revolutionary commitment, the Lumpen succeeded in popularizing the organization through the trope of the mythic black revolutionary ready for battle. Further, they were able to use the soul power inherent in the black music of the streets to galvanize a collective spirit within their audience.
While their shows were seen as entertaining by their followers, the seriousness of the Lumpen message is consistent with their overall approach as rank-and-file Panthers. In fact, all of the Lumpen members maintain that their emphasis at all times was their commitment to their duties as Panthers. As Lumpen member Clark Bailey recalls:
We worked as much as possible. There were times when the pressures that were put upon us by the police were so great that we couldn’t really put the time in, ‘cause we were more concerned with the survival of the organization, which was primary, of course. That’s very important to understand. What we were doing in terms of that was a secondary project. Our main project was we were members of the Black Panther Party and considered revolutionary in every sense of the word. So we studied hard, we worked hard. And there really wasn’t a whole lot of time to work on this project.32
In August 1970 the Lumpen went to the Tiki Recording Studio in San Jose and recorded two songs that would be released on a 45 rpm single: the original Calhoun compositions “Free Bobby Now” and “No More.” As far as bandleader Calhoun was concerned, the recording was just a test pressing to see what the group sounded like. However, as soon as the tape was heard by Party leadership, it was out of his hands. The single was pressed, advertised in the Black Panther, and sold at local Panther Party events and at Lumpen performances. Party members also took the single to local Bay Area black radio stations requesting airplay but were told repeatedly that the music was too radical for the airwaves.33
The first side of the single, “Free Bobby Now,” featured a dance rhythm driven by percussive guitar chops and an aggressive, energetic drumbeat that was contemporary with the James Brown sounds of the time. The vocals, each Lumpen member taking different lines, would bring the first verse:
He walked the streets and carried a gun
To save his people … and family
From those who kill us for four hundred years
Bobby must be set free!
We’re sayin’
Bobby must be set free!
We’re sayin’
Good God almighty
Set our chairman free34
The vocal vamping in between the chorus reflected the James Brown influence, as Brown was known for using religious references as part of his repertoire of rhythmic, soulful inflections. This was an essential element of soul music: the fluid fusion of sacred and secular, the gospel and the blues. The aesthetic contradictions were ripe because the Black Panther Party was a revolutionary organization, a self-described Socialist organization that did not emphasize organized religion as a means of organizing people. Yet the conventions of soul music—the spiritual references—were employed with predictable results. The burning track works out in under two and a half minutes.
The flip side of the single, the second Calhoun composition, “(Won’t Be) No More,” comes in at four minutes and twenty seconds and resonates with the blues-heavy soul sound of Ray Charles. With a looping piano and rolling guitar licks coming and going with each swaying verse, “No More” has the sound of a slow religious song, but the lyrics, and eventually the voices, take the message over the top.
From Watts to Brownsville, we find misery
But there won’t be no more, won’t be no more
There won’t be no more, won’t be no more
Rats, dirt, and kids who are hungry
There won’t be no more, won’t be no more
There won’t be no more, won’t be no more
‘Cause we’ve seen how to be free
How to be free
The pigs on our streets and poverty
To this way of life, we’re closing the door
So there won’t be no more
There were times we stood by—we stood by
Like we could not see
But there won’t be no more, won’t be no more
Can’t be no more, can’t be no more
We’ll get guns—we’ll get guns
To defend our community
There won’t be no more, won’t be no more
Can’t be no more, can’t be no more35
“From Watts to Brownsville” in the first line refers to bitter episodes in the black struggle. In the summer of 1970 a series of riots broke out in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville. Initially in protest of lacking sanitation services, the protest expanded to pickets about public schools and police brutality and consumed the neighborhood. “When the New York Panthers came out here, they told us Brownsville was the worst place out there, worse than Harlem,” Billy Jennings recalled.36 The Watts reference is clearly to the untenable conditions in South Central Los Angeles that gave rise to the 1965 revolt there. The Lumpen were providing a movement newscast within a musical experience.
As the verses continue to roll on, the singing takes on more passion as lead vocalist Calhoun utilizes the patented Ray Charles formula for soaring over the verses with repetitions designed to bring home the message. “No More” is, in this sense, a familiar soul song that builds in intensity throughout its four-minute length. One is informed by the compelling lyrics and absorbed by the passionate performances of the singers and musicians in unison. It is interesting that in the final verse the singers announce a solution to the evils around them, a militant solution: “We’ll get guns to defend our community.” These lyrics represent the effective climax of the song both emotionally and ideologically.
It is no accident that Calhoun’s composition appears to become increasingly passionate as it becomes increasingly militant. Borrowing from the gospel music tradition of revelation, of expressing an increasingly emotional intensity as a buildup to the climactic reference to Jesus or to the Lord, great soul music accomplishes a similar feat in the secular realm, and the Lumpen appropriated the same methods for their politicized rendition of soul. The convincing aesthetics, the all-encompassing experience of soul music performance, were not missed by Calhoun or the other singers in the group.
In the fall of 1970, the Lumpen were appearing at Panther Party events around Northern California and the West Coast. The single was available for sale, and a steadily increasing amount of publicity was afforded their performances. Initially the Lumpen were just part of the entertainment within a larger Panther event. Calhoun explains:
Usually it was a Black Panther Party function so there would be somebody there who would be doing the political analysis. And we would either be used as the warm-up for that if it was a highranking Party member such as Kathleen [Cleaver] or Emory or David [Hilliard], because everybody else was in jail at this time. If it was a high-ranking member, we would be the warm-up act. If not, we were the show, and the political stuff would go in front. But it was always about recruiting. It was always about spreading the Party message. And everything I wrote was harmonious with the ideology of the Party or the Ten Point Platform and program.37
As their reputation grew, and as Emory Douglas placed larger and more prominent advertisements in the Black Panther, the Lumpen became headliners. They performed at the Sieze the Time benefit for Bobby Seale along with Elaine Brown on October 11, 1970, at the Oakland Sportsman’s Club near Merritt College. They performed in San Francisco at the People’s Free Benefit at the Sportsman’s Inn on November 1, which a full-page ad in the Panther paper promoted as their “First Major San Francisco Performance.” They performed in Los Angeles at Patrick’s Payton Place on December 8 along with legendary R&B singer Carla Thomas. On December 27 the group headlined a bill with well-known local singing group the Natural Four at the Blue Gardenia in West Oakland. The Lumpen played along with the rock band Gold at the Free Breakfast Program Benefit in East Oakland on January 9, 1971, and at San Jose City College along with R&B singing group the Persuasions on Thursday, January 14. The group performed at UC Berkeley’s Pauley Ballroom on Saturday, January 23, in a program sponsored by the Arab Students Association there. On March 5 they performed at the Revolutionary Intercommunal Day of Solidarity for Bobby Seale, Ericka Huggins, Angela Davis, and Ruchell Magee at the Oakland Auditorium. The Grateful Dead also performed at the all-day event, though the groups did not meet.38
The Lumpen traveled to the northeastern United States in November 1970 for a Revolutionary Tour. They performed at the University of Madison-Wisconsin, Amherst College in Massachusetts, Temple University in Philadelphia, and Howard University in Washington, DC, as well as at local parks, union halls, and nightclubs in Boston, New Haven, Connecticut, and New York City. They were often the opening act for speeches by the Party leadership in a series of Party fund-raisers. The Lumpen made an impression everywhere they went. By many accounts the “tour” was a successful representation of the Panther Party ideology as well as the Lumpen as a musical force. Saxophone player David Levinson recalls the energy of their New York City performance:
I remember we did the Roseland Ballroom in New York. I remember that was amazing. Because of not only the R&B that we played but also the political message that the Panthers were putting out—and what they said was so germane and so key and so relevant to what people were living and the high energy of the politics and the political realities of the time. There was so much going on at that time; people just went wild, they loved hearing this stuff, which wasn’t talking about the usual sappy love stuff. It was a real eye-opener, and a heart-opener for people to hear the Lumpen talking about real daily life struggles. And that’s what sort of set them apart. In the context of some of the concerts we did, the energy was just off the wall.39
When the group performed in New Haven, the site of Party chairman Bobby Seale’s controversial murder trial, there were more police than supporters. Chairman Seale, Party leader Ericka Huggins, and others were awaiting trial on a murder conspiracy charge, and the Panther activists and their supporters throughout the region were on edge. But the Lumpen group was there for a reason, and they persevered. James Mott explains:
We found out that they [the police] had cleared the area and told everybody they had better not come to the park that day. These cops, the FBI, drove up and they were calling us all kind of names: “You m-f so-and-so, we’re gonna kill all of ya.” But finally we got the power on, ‘cause they tried to stop us from doing that. Then a handful of brave souls came out there that day.
And we sang the songs “Bobby Must be Set Free,” “(Won’t Be) No More,” and maybe one other song. We found out that Bobby and Ericka heard us singing. And we could hear people hollering from the jail over there: “Right on, right on brothers.” “Right on, sing the song.” “Right on for Bobby, right on for Ericka,” “Right on, power to the people.” We could hear that.40
The performance itself was only one component of the revolutionary nature of the Lumpen. The act of defying the authorities by playing music is one of the storied methods of cultural resistance in social movements. Because of their high profile as a stage act, the Lumpen assumed some of the same risks associated with political leaders and other visible activists. Because they were only secondarily musicians and primarily Panthers, they accepted their responsibilities as part of their duties. Mott recalls the background to their guerilla performance:
So after we were done, we were breaking down our equipment, and I remember the FBI drove up they started calling us names again and then we would tell them things like, “Gee, you guys are late, you were supposed to be here for the concert.” Then they followed us everywhere we went on the freeway … everywhere we drove, they were there. They were right behind us; sometimes they would tailgate us. You could see them giving us the finger and doing that, like they’re going to shoot you sign, they want to kill you type of thing. It was really interesting.
I never will forget—because it was a stage set I said, “Hey man, you know they may plan on killing us.” I remember Calhoun saying, “Well, if that is, so be it, we’ll die for the people.” And Clark and Michael said, “Right on, we’re just gong to do what we got to do.” ‘Cause we didn’t know, we said we could be up here and a sniper shot could ring out and down us all.
Nobody was there except for a brave handful who ended up coming, saying we don’t care. The rest of them, they [law enforcement] had intimidated the community, telling them they better not show up. “You’ll get arrested, they’ll do this to you”; this is what the people were told.41
The Lumpen performed outside in the cold at the aborted second Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention (RPCC) in Washington, DC, on Friday, November 27, 1970. The convention was intended to be a follow-up to the Philadelphia RPCC and an opportunity for thousands of activists to finalize their ideas for a new antiracist, anticapitalist, progender equality, gay-tolerant society. However, problems with the unpaid rent for the venue at Howard University left hundreds of delegates literally out in the cold. The impromptu Lumpen performance was one of the only high points of the gathering. They were met once again by the FBI. William Calhoun recalls, “The FBI guy walked past us and said, ‘What took you so long to get here? We lost you in New York and we thought you’d never get here.’ ‘Cause they followed us down from Boston.”42
Had the RPCC met in Washington, DC, that Thanksgiving weekend, they might have noticed that the Lumpen represented in many ways the revolutionary community that the RPCC organizers were striving for. The Lumpen, despite their designation as the official Black Panthers’ band, frequently had two white members in the group, one of whom was David Levinson. This fact was representative of the Black Panthers’ larger “intercommunalist” vision, but it also reflected the problems and conflicts the Party had with other black nationalist organizations.
In San Francisco, the presence of integrated rhythm and blues groups was not uncommon. The Bay Area has a rich tradition of racially mixed rhythm and blues acts, from Johnny Otis to Tower of Power and Sly and the Family Stone. However, when the Lumpen performed in the racially charged spaces in which black nationalism was the primary ideology, they encountered a peculiar type of “reverse racism.” Levinson recalls one example of the unity that the band expressed with all of its revolutionary members:
I remember we were up in the Midwest. We were playing some college campus. It was a huge turnout; it was in a gym. We got to this place and it was late and snowing and difficult to get to. By the time we finished the concert, which was sponsored by the BSU, at the end they offered to put us up because it was snowing, but they wouldn’t put the black guys and the white guys up together. And out of principle, the Panther members, the Lumpen itself, refused to accept that offer. We drove back rather than put the white guys up somewhere else. That is something I always remember with great affection and fondness. We were very tight.43
Clark Bailey recalls that the racial conflict on the road was a test of the Lumpen and the Panthers’ principles, and they did not compromise when it came to Levinson or to the idea that their revolution was not for one group only.
David Levinson can tell you. One thing he realized from the trip is the ideology of the Party…. They [concert organizers] didn’t want David to play. They didn’t want to help him, so there was a couple of times the Lumpen said, “Fuck you, he’s a member of our group, and if you can’t recognize that he’s a part of our group …then we’re not gonna participate.” That happened a couple of times on the road. That’s living up to the principles you’re talking about.44
The Lumpen returned to the Bay Area in early December 1970 and began the humbling daily duties of Panthers all over again. They played the role of stars on the stage, but they lived the life of duty in the Black Panther Party. “We went as revolutionaries, not as R&B stars,” Clark Bailey recalls. “People gave us shit like, ‘So you the rock stars for the revolution now,’ but that’s not what it was about.”45
The Lumpen did attract some of their own recruits as a direct result of their success onstage. Fredrika Newton, eventual widow of Party leader Huey Newton, was one of many teenagers fresh out of Berkeley High School when a Lumpen concert came her way: “I remember the Lumpen. I used to go to all of their shows,” she recalled in an impromptu telephone conversation with me in 2006. “I was a groupie for the Lumpen. I used to go with [singer] James Mott. My girlfriend Val [Valerie Trahan] went with Clark [Bailey], my other girlfriend Jan [Thompson] went with Mike [singer Michael Torrence]. I joined the Party because of the Lumpen.”46 While groupies may not have been the primary goal for the Lumpen, it appears that the band members were clearly doing their share of entertaining their audience.
Michael Torrence and the others each had experiences in rhythm and blues groups and understood that the notion of groupies could be a misnomer. “They were our cheerleaders. Every opportunity they’d come, and if they could they’d bring some friends with ‘em. And a lot of what was happening was about that word of mouth, ‘You should’ve seen the show,’ that kind of thing. That was the way we were able to pack out Merritt [the show that was recorded]. We weren’t getting any radio coverage or nothing like that.” Moreover, in no way were the young followers of the group going to be treated the way groupies for rock and roll bands were. Torrence explains:
The difference was that these sisters here were political. They were trying to be part of the movement; they were trying to support the Party and the worst thing that we could do would be to try to exploit them behind that sexually or whatever. Because we’re supposed to be a whole ‘nother model. At the same time, these are our supporters, and hopefully recruits. So we see ourselves as being a recruiting tool for the Party. So if you turn around and try to turn that into some sexual opportunist type of thing and exploit them and pimping them out and all this stuff here, just use them and toss them aside, we would get severely disciplined for that anyway.
There was a policy in the party. We had political education classes on male chauvinism. David [Hilliard] and them would take a very hard line about it. ‘Cause there had been some problems with that, some revolutionary pimping going on. And we had some sisters in that Party that were as hardworking and more courageous than a lot of brothers up in there….
Part of the black culture is that male chauvinistic thing, but inside the Party, we’re all comrades here, and if you try to exploit these sisters here you’re going to get disciplined, you’re going to get severely disciplined. And even more if you’re out there representing the Party publicly, and it gets around and you’re in the Lumpen, oh no.47
Despite their personal charisma and skill as performers, the trappings of fame were minimal for the Lumpen members. This was not a group that was going to be pampered by local promoters or the media. The Lumpen singers were given few if any special privileges and were rarely given days off to rehearse or rest up for shows. And there were many shows. During their heyday, the group performed almost weekly, headlining Panther Party events through the fall of 1970 and into the spring of 1971. Entire pages of the Black Panther were devoted to prominent advertisements for Party events at which the Lumpen played as the main attraction.
Despite their apparent popularity and legitimacy in the Bay Area music scene, the band was not given high priority within the Party’s organizational structure. The popularity of the Lumpen as a Panther Party musical group was a small but noticeable distraction to some Party members who did not consider dancing and singing to be revolutionary activities. As minister of culture, Emory Douglas was the primary advocate for the Lumpen, and Douglas participated in the meetings of the Party Central Committee, the organizing entity for all Party activities.48 As the primary visual artist for the Party, whose artwork was featured in almost every edition of the weekly paper, Douglas had earned a degree of credibility within the organization and put it to use in support of the Lumpen. Douglas wrote articles in support of the band, designed their advertisements in the Black Panther, and advocated for the Lumpen at the Central Committee meetings. Douglas explains the dynamics involved:
Sometimes you have the attitude in the Party of these people who just had this rigid focus; [they] didn’t care about the cultural aspect, just straight politics. So I was kind of like a buffer between those and them and that as it related to the leadership. They [the Lumpen] would get a hard time sometimes and not be allowed to practice. They would ask me if I would talk to so and so and see if that could happen, and do what I could to work it out, and most of the time it worked out.49
The Lumpen members themselves have consistently supported the notion that the Party goals were always primary and that their musical adventures were only a secondary exercise in their overall commitment to the Party and to their revolutionary service to their community. Lumpen member Michael Torrence explains:
The music was just another tool or another weapon to further that cause but we were Panthers first, and so in that regard we were required to do all that was required of any Panther—to get up in the morning and feed the children for the breakfast program, to sell the newspapers, to secure the offices to do whatever community work was needed, to pick up donations. Because we were Panthers first.
By no means were we ever entertainers. By no means were we anything separate or different or above any other rank-and-file member. We didn’t want that designation, we never tried to get that designation.
We were required even more so to participate in political education classes because the things that we wrote had to reflect the line of the Party and be educational, or at least informative to stimulate some thought.
So again we were a cadre, and in terms of the Black Panther Party, a cadre is a unit. We were considered a cultural educational cadre, under the leadership of the minister of culture.50
The consistent justification for the entertainment element of the Lumpen by its members is important when one considers the proclamations of the Black Panther Party and leader Huey P. Newton’s anointment of the Black Panther Party as the vanguard of the coming black revolution. The individuals who joined the Party in the late 1960s were drawn to the organization because of the militant, revolutionary vision of the Black Panthers. The idea that the organization would eventually be putting their ideology into a stage performance was not a consideration of the early recruits. It took a great deal of growth for some Party members to embrace the emerging priorities of the organization in 1970. Calhoun explains:
I came in very much a nationalist, not a socialist. This [was] the last of the Black Nationalism phase of the Party. It was beginning to make its transition to Socialism and it was also making a transition to dealing with more community programs rather than those of us who wanted to go around shooting people. I’m saying that so that the Lumpen makes some sense.
When I first came into the Black Panther Party I don’t think anybody would have paid any attention to the Lumpen, because we were too busy organizing around other things. But as the Party was maturing and getting ready to start doing more community stuff without us all walking in with .38s strapped on our sides, the atmosphere [became] conducive to the Lumpen coming into being.51
The Lumpen were active during a tumultuous, transitional period in Party history. As a result of major events internally during this time (mid-1970 through mid-1971), cofounder and leader Newton moved to dramatically reorganize. In February 1971 Newton expelled Eldridge Cleaver from the Party after a critical public confrontation he had with Cleaver by phone from Algeria. Cleaver had been considered one of the Party leaders and advocated the more militant, confrontational actions Newton was trying to distance the Party from. This action fractured the Party into factions that supported either Cleaver’s militarist stance or Newton’s longer-term vision of revolutionary change. Fueled by COINTELPRO infiltration, agent provocateurs, and disinformation fomenting suspicion, the resulting internal friction devastated the rank-and-file membership and led to the deaths of dedicated Panthers Robert Webb and Sam Napier.52 Calhoun recalls the chaos:
When the split happened between Eldridge and Huey, Eldridge’s people were really based in New York. And in Oakland … people that I had known very well in Oakland sided with Eldridge, and some of the people that I had met in New York when the Lumpen had been back there performing had declared, “Eldridge said the streets aren’t safe for Panthers.”
I was one of the people designated to become one of David Hilliard’s bodyguards when that split happened. So I had the Lumpen thing going, yes. And I was still writing for the Party paper, yes. I did a couple more runs to New York, but after Sam Napier got killed we stopped doing that. And I became one of David’s bodyguards.53
Newton ordered many chapters to be closed across the country and recalled volunteers to Oakland. By the end of 1971, Newton had developed a plan to run political campaigns for Party leaders: Elaine Brown for Oakland City Council and Bobby Seale for mayor. As a result of these significant changes, tasks and duties for rank-and-file members were redirected and the Lumpen stopped performing. On May 23, 1971, the Lumpen carried out their final performance as a Black Panther Party operation at the Sacramento City Auditorium. Bandleader William Calhoun, with a child on the way, left the Party a few days later, the same day Bobby Seale returned from prison in Connecticut—Bobby indeed had been set free. The remaining singers performed at smaller Panther Party functions but were no longer advertised and didn’t carry a band with them.
The remaining three Lumpen singers each remained active Party members, working on the Oakland municipal elections and various other duties. Michael Torrence left in 1973 and continued his singing career; he toured with Marvin Gaye in 1974. When Marvin Gaye performed his classic “Distant Lover” to thousands of screaming fans live in Oakland for that now-legendary recorded performance, Michael Torrence was onstage as a background singer. Torrence worked as a staff writer for Motown as well before settling in Los Angeles. Clark Bailey continued on in the Party through much of the 1970s, working on a variety of duties, including the maintenance of certain “technical equipment” for the Party. James Mott continued with the Party until 1978, working for the Community Learning Center until its leader, Ericka Huggins (Mott’s wife at the time), resigned.54
The 1973 Oakland city elections were close contests, but the Party candidates lost. Having lost their bid for mainstream political power, and after years of law enforcement infiltration and isolation working to eliminate their revolutionary political thrust, by 1974 the Black Panther Party appeared to be little more than a conventional social-work organization with a controversial name. Nevertheless, their effectiveness at organizing the black vote in Oakland led to the eventual election of Lionel Wilson as the city’s first black mayor in 1977 and helped to reconfigure the racial composition of the city’s political, cultural, and economic infrastructure.
The Black Panther Party was part and parcel of a tradition of innovative Oakland political and cultural formations. The Lumpen qualify as well. “We put together a product that was successful for its time. It was a unique theory, a unique idea,” Clark Bailey recalls.
Anyone else, trust me, if any other organization would have tried to do that, they would have fought with greed, they would have had different members of the band and the group wanting to get paid, they [would] see money coming in, they [would] want to know where the money’s going and, “Hey man you just got all that money at the door, all these people, I didn’t get paid?” You would have that happen. The only way that it didn’t happen is because we had principles that we lived by.55
The Lumpen members continued to live by their principles long after they left the Party. William Calhoun, after a stint as a Bay Area DJ, joined the Baptist ministry and cofounded the Wo’se Community Church in Oakland. Michael Torrence continues his work with at-risk youth in Los Angeles, Clark Bailey recently retired from the Sacramento Regional Transit District where he had worked as a bus driver for twenty-five years, and James Mott, now known as Sataru Ned, is assistant pastor of Agnes Memorial Christian Academy, located in the heart of violence-torn East Oakland.
The members of the Lumpen survived their post-black power years relatively intact. While they each moved on to the struggles of life and family as working-class members of black America, they did not denounce the Party, their revolutionary principles, or other former members. Nor did they seek to profit from their years of service to the people. Only as a result of a younger generation’s growing interest in black radical culture and the “Party music” they produced have William Calhoun, Michael Torrence, Clark Bailey, and James Mott recently begun to indulge in the exercise of telling their story.
The members of the Lumpen traversed the crossroads between revolutionary politics and revolutionary culture. As musicians they represented the high standards of soul music production and presentation and honored the musical traditions they had inherited. As rank-and-file Panthers, they were representative of the commitment and selflessness that embodied the thousands of young people who took that rare opportunity to act upon their beliefs and desires for total revolutionary change in America. And they lived to tell about it.