Donald Lee Cox was one of the core leaders of the Black Panther Party.

He was given the title “Field Marshal” due to his experience with weapons.

Here are some final words from his autobiography – and one of the most revealing works on the Party to date – “Just Another Nigger.”

“The major weakness – one that inevitably leads to failure – is Lenin’s idea that a party should be structured according to the tenets of democratic centralism.“

“Under utopian conditions, with everyone being more or less an angel, it would probably work; but given our present stage of evolutionary development, with all our human strengths and weaknesses, it is just not possible to pull it off.“

“Lenin either gave no consideration to, or ignored the fact, that whenever a member of the human species gets into a position to exercise power, something goes haywire.“

“Since all intellectual activity is subjective, those exercising power – defined as the ability to use resources, whether human or otherwise, to act upon the environment to bring about change – do so in their own subjective ways.”

“The degree of benefit to the masses is dependent upon the coincidence of the subjective ideas of those exercising power and the real needs of the people.”

“Given the present state of our social development, in which power is often centered on small groups, we must be extremely vigilant.

Progressive organizations that presume to move in the interest of the masses must constantly confront the psychology of power.“

“In some form or fashion, they must devise checks and balances to control the madness that seems to arise whenever power is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals.

Democratic centralism is not the answer.

It is the mechanism that gave us Stalin and Hilliard.“

“Inevitably, when this form of organizational structure is adopted, centralism is emphasized, often to the detriment of democracy, and that leads to authoritarianism, to bureaucracy, and to dictatorship.”

“The paradox in what I believe and say lies in the fact that I see no other way to consciously change economic and social conditions without some form of organization. And organization means structure, and structure means hierarchy.

Or maybe I’m wrong.“

“Perhaps it can be done another way.

But, as a hypothesis, I would say that an organization is a prerequisite for bringing about economic and social change on a national level, and that means individuals will inevitably rise to positions of power.“

“The challenge is to find a way for an organization to effectively deal with the problems of change and yet not deteriorate into a tool for individuals to amass personal power.“

“We have to prevent those exercising power from becoming new versions of Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet, Franco, Somoza, Papa and Baby Doc, Idi Amin, Bokassa, Joe McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, Nixon, and, to bring it on home, Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver.

How did it happen?”

“As far as I was concerned, it was their ability to inspire admiration and the desire to emulate them, coupled with their wish to take the strongest stand against the problems of injustice.“

“In relating to the most powerful Panthers as ‘leaders,’ I wanted to do whatever they wanted me to do. I gave no consideration to seeing them, let alone understanding them, as flawed human beings, as just people.“

“I never searched for, or even considered the possibility of, hidden motivations behind their moves or decisions. I and so many others made no analysis, just followed with blind faith. Some might be amazed at such a confession of naïveté, especially in this day and age.“

“I put that on my rural religious upbringing, the weight of which I will carry to my grave.

But there can be no leader without a group of followers, and so we must take some blame.

I submit my personal history as a case study.“

“And yet the problem is far deeper than anything I have exposed. It seems that at our present level of evolutionary development as a species, we are constantly in search of a messiah – a messiah to help us deal with the burden of the struggle for our everyday survival.“

“When Huey and Eldridge manifested themselves, they were, for many of us, the messiahs.

The very nature of the campaign to free Huey, as conceived by Cleaver, was in fact the creation of a cult of personality.

Newton became our god.“

“On all subjects on which he felt the need to express himself, he became the sole possessor of truth. His every word became the law and line of the party.”

“After Newton’s imprisonment and Cleaver’s exile, we began to study Marxism-Leninism to arm ourselves with an analytical tool...

At that point, it was David Hilliard who exhibited the most skillful capacity for articulating and manipulating the new language we were learning.”

“He was chief of staff and the highest-ranking member of the central committee, and also free and available to make decisions on a day-to-day basis.“

“... those factors, plus the party structure of so-called democratic centralism, [...] plus Hilliard’s infatuation with Stalin, plus Newton’s support of this order of things upon his release, created the malignant [combo] that led to the destruction of the Black Panther Party.”

“I do not agree with the widespread idea that it was the repression by law enforcement agencies that destroyed the Black Panther Party.

Of course, they did much harm.

But each blatant act of repression was accompanied by growing support among the people.“

“The public repression the party received was clear evidence, for all to see, that the things we were saying about the repressive, exploitative nature of the American system were true.“

“And after the murder of Fred Hampton in his bed as he slept, even our staunchest detractors began giving consideration to what we had been saying.”

“We refuse our own history by blaming every negative thing that occurred on the COINTELPRO. That is a very convenient way of avoiding analysis.

That also gives the pigs much more credit than they merit.”

“When Huey fell, we so desperately wanted to save him from their clutches, and possibly the gas chamber, that we glorified him – far and wide, north and south, east and west.

The actual Huey could not survive the Huey that we had created.”

“How many could have resisted? We killed Huey with our love!

Inevitably, in searching for causes of the failure of the Black Panther Party, I end up focusing on its internal contradictions and the relationship between the leaders and the led.“

“One thing is certain: neither Newton nor Cleaver nor Hilliard could have done anything alone; every historical sociopolitical criminal had to have followers at one time or another.“

“As we go forward, we must remember that we [...] have historically had the tendency to follow, blindly, the first person that comes along who seems to be effectively dealing with what we consider our immediate survival problems.”

“The study of world history, or of the twentieth century alone, shows repeatedly the disasters wrought by this tendency.”

The entire book – which constructively addresses some of the darkest elements of the Black Panther Party and its leadership – can be found through our resource guide below.

It is one of the most important books on the Panthers that you may ever read. https://blacksocialists.us/resource-guide 

BONUS:

Below is a highlight from a 1992 interview that Donald Cox did in France with Safiya Bukhari while in exile (full interview here: ). https://twitter.com/BlackSocialists/status/1316808155104509952?s=20