The split in the party

Abstract

BPP Field Marshall Donald Cox excerpts the Epilogue to his forthcoming book, Maiden Voyage, beginning with the 1971 split between Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver. Newton threatened to “crush” Cox, who said he was siding with Cleaver. Cox and Cleaver, both in Algiers, were sending videotaped material to the US via Bill and Miriam Seidler, white sympathizers with the BBP. In March of 1971 Seidler was assassinated in his store. Cox blames Newton, and theorizes that an evolutionary tendency toward the violent “cut‐throat” exercise of power drove Newton to commit this crime. The excerpt closes with accounts of reciprocal violence against rival BPP facilities on the East and West Coasts.