Denzil Dowell
Denzil Dowell’s story takes place in 1967, but it seems as familiar as if it were a headline from tomorrow. Denzil was a young black man shot and killed by police in North Richmond, California responding to reports of burglary. An inquest jury took just thirty minutes to determine it was justifiable homicide. The uproar would become one of the very first rallying cries of the Black Panther Party to organize a protest against systemic racism in law enforcement.
Joan Tarika Lewis
Lewis is a jazz musician, graphic artist, and activist as well as teacher and founder of the Oakland Black String Ensemble. Long before becoming those things, however, Lewis was a sophomore in high school in Oakland. Activism began early as the outraged young woman helped to found her school’s Black Student Union while staging sit-in protests as a way of demanding institution of a black studies program. And then in the spring of 1967, while just sixteen years old, Joan Tarika Lewis became the first female to becoming a member of the Black Panther Party.
Ronald Reagan
After a career as a B-movie actor giving forgettable performances but before he became President of the United States, Ronald Reagan served as the Governor of California during the most tumultuous decade of the 20th century in America. In addition to typically conservative economic policies like cutting taxes of the wealthy and slashing funding for government assistance programs, Reagan’s tenure as Chief Executive included the criminalization and relentless prosecution of drug users. It is widely and wrongly assumed that this has been the status quo throughout American history, but the reality is that until the 1950’s and especially the 1960’s criminality related to illegal drug was overwhelmingly confined to production, distribution and trafficking. Reagan’s hardcore agenda would take on racist overtones as the focus of enforcement of these new laws resulted in inequitable prosecution of minorities.
Bobby Seale
Bobby Seale co-founded Huey P. Newton in 1966 as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland. Seale’s life from that moment on would become something like a soap opera playing out in real time. The sight of Seale and other members child Gov. Reagan to the point of calling short his speech and disappearing into the state Capitol. The Panthers then entered the building with the intention only of Seale publicly reading a mandate, but the wrong directions (whether purposely given or merely accident) wound up having Seale walking directly onto the floor of assembly, fully armed. In 1968 he became one of the original members of the “Chicago 8” arrested on charges of inciting a riot at the Democratic Chicago and appeared in court fully bound to his chair and gagged before successfully severing himself from the case that would go on to become known as the Chicago 7. Under mysterious circumstances never full explained, Seale suddenly left the Black Panther Party entirely. As for his co-founder, Newton would be assassinated on an Oakland street corner in 1989.
