“The Best Place to Help the
Panthers Is at Home”: Dutch Black
Panther Solidarity in Pursuit of a
Revolution
DEBBY ESMEÉ DE VLUGT
In , a group of activists in the Netherlands formed the Solidariteitscomité met de Black
Panthers, or Black Panther Solidarity Committee, intended to support the Black Panther
Party through a platform of public education, fund-raising, and political protest. Their efforts
were part of a broader campaign for European solidarity launched by the African Americans
themselves earlier that year. This article is the first to explore how Dutch activists understood
their transatlantic partnership with the Black Panthers, arguing that their solidarity served
not only to support the party but also to challenge American imperialism and
Dutch colonialism in new ways.
Early in the evening of January , hundreds of people made their ways
through the streets of Amsterdam to attend a special event at the monumental
Moses and Aaron Church. When the final guests arrived at the venue, it was
overcrowded. The wooden benches of the church were packed, forcing numer-
ous visitors to take their places on the stairs to the pulpit. Dozens of others
stood in the entranceway or leaned against the back walls. The baroque
altar of the church, normally displaying an array of biblical statues, marble
pillars, and oil paintings, was hidden behind a large white screen and a
banner with the words “BLACK PANTHER PARTY – ALL POWER TO
THE PEOPLE – DE MACHT AAN HET VOLK,” accompanied by an
illustration of a clenched black fist.
That evening, the church hosted the
Rob Mierenet, “Albert Howard Hield Lezing over ‘Black Panther’ Beweging in USA in
Mozes en Aaronkerk A’dam,” Jan. , photo collection, col. nr. ..., inv. nrs.
- to -, Nationaal Archief, The Hague, Netherlands. “De macht aan het
volk” is a direct translation of “All power to the people.” All translations in this article
are the author’s own.
Journal of American Studies, (), , –
© The Author(s), . Published by Cambridge University Press in association with the British
Association for American Studies. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of
the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/./),
which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided
the original work is properly cited.
doi:./S
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875823000427 Published online by Cambridge University Press
very first event of the Solidariteitscomité met de Black Panthers, or Black
Panther Solidarity Committee (BPSC), which had been established several
weeks earlier to raise support for the Black Panther Party (BPP) in the
Netherlands.
To kick-start their campaign, the committee had invited a speaker who knew
the organization inside out: Elbert “Big Man” Howard. Big Man was a veteran
member of the Black Panther Party, having joined founders Bobby Seale and
Huey P. Newton as one of their first recruits in Oakland, California in .
Since then, he had filled a number of key roles in the organization, serving as
both deputy minister of information in Eldridge Cleaver’s absence and as
editor of its immensely popular newspaper the Black Panther.
Big Man
turned out to be an ideal representative for the party that night. He appeared
onstage in iconic Black Panther fashion, wearing a leather jacket with sunglasses
and a round afro haircut, living up to the crowd’s idea of what a Black radical
was supposed to look like. He also proved to be an excellent orator. In a passion-
ate yet carefully constructed speech, Big Man laid out the revolutionary nation-
alist ideology of his party, explaining how the Black Panthers fought racism,
capitalism, and imperialism all at the same time. Aware that many of these
themes were popular among European activists too, he invited the audience
to join him and his comrades in fighting these systems globally. “We are pre-
pared to collaborate with oppressed people wherever they are in the world,”
he firmly stated. “Because in the end we are all doing the same thing.”
By the time Big Man had reached the Netherlands, he had already traveled
to Japan and Scandinavia to spread a similar message.
His tour was part of a
broader effort by the Panthers to expand their network of revolutionary acti-
vists, liberation movements, and even politicians who could help them chal-
lenge the growing power of the United States in the midst of the Cold
War. As one of the most oppressed groups in American society, the Black radi-
cals believed they had a critical role to play in global resistance against their
Curtis J. Austin, Up against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black
Panther Party (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, ), –; Joshua Bloom
and Waldo E. Martin Jr., Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black
Panther Party (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), ; Donna Jean Murch,
Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in
Oakland, California (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), .
Martin Ruyter, “Ze Kunnen de Revolutie Niet Doden,” De Volkskrant, Jan. , ;
and Jelte Rep, “Big Man: ‘Zwarte Panters Laten Zich Niet Vernietigen’,” Trouw, Jan.
, .
Elbert “Big Man” Howard, Panther on the Prowl (self-published, ), –; Elbert
Howard, interview by David P. Cline in Santa Rosa, California, June , filmed by
John Melville Bishop, US Civil Rights History Project, Library of Congress, at https://
www.loc.gov/item//, ::–::.
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government, arguing that they were in a unique position to fight its imperialist
project from within.
To strengthen their position, fugitive party members
Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver had started building an International Section
for the Black Panther Party in Algiers, the capital city of Algeria, in the
summer of . From there, the Cleavers managed to form coalitions with
some of America’s fiercest ideological opponents, including communist
leaders Fidel Castro, Pham Van Dong, and Kim Il-sung.
At the same time,
they helped the Panthers build an extensive solidarity network in Europe,
which has received much less attention in the historiography than their
other transnational relations. In fact, connections to smaller countries like
the Netherlands have not yet been discussed at all.
Representatives of the BPP had first made an appearance in Europe in the
spring of . Even before the Cleavers had settled on the Mediterranean
coast, chairman Bobby Seale and minister of education Raymond “Masai”
Hewitt had gone on a tour through Norway, Sweden, Finland, and
Denmark to raise support for their campaign to free cofounder Huey
Newton from prison and to see if there was any interest in their work
across the Atlantic.
Their tour had been organized by Jamaican activist
Connie Matthews, who worked for UNESCO in Copenhagen, and
Leonard W. “Skip” Malone, an American journalist living in the same city.
Both had previously been involved in the Scandinavian Solidarity
Committee for Third World Peoples’ Liberation Struggle (SSCTWP) and
had later established the Danish Solidarity Committee Black Liberation
(SCBL).
As they traveled across Northern Europe, Seale and Hewitt left
behind a number of committees which promised to keep raising support for
them after they were gone. Upon returning to the United States, Seale and
Hewitt rewarded Matthews for her help in organizing the tour by appointing
her the official international coordinator of the BPP, authorizing her to
develop this newly formed support network into a strong system of fund-
Bloom and Martin, –; Sean L. Malloy, Out of Oakland: Black Panther Party
Internationalism during the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, ), ;
Michael L. Clemons and Charles E. Jones, “Global Solidarity: The Black Panther Party
in the International Arena,” New Political Science, , (), – , ; Yohuru
R. Williams, “American Exported Black Nationalism: The Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee, the Black Panther Party, and the Worldwide Freedom
Struggle, – ,” Negro History Bulletin, , (),–, ; Stephen Shames
and Bobby Seale, Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers (New York:
Abrams, ), , .
Malloy, , –, .
Bloom and Martin, –; Malloy, –; Clemons and Jones, .
David Hilliard and Bobby Seale, “The Black Panther Party Authorizes Leadership in
Scandinavia,” Black Panther, May , ; Robyn C. Spencer, The Revolution Has
Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, ), .
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raising, education, and political pressure.
Under Matthews, with support of
the Cleavers in Algiers, the Scandinavian committees gained several hundred
followers and the network quickly expanded southwards, taking root in
West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy as well.
While it was quite unique for an organization to establish its own solidarity
network like this, this type of activism was not altogether uncommon in Europe.
Characterized by the countercultural spirit of the s, hundreds of student
movements and action groups had begun to mobilize in support of the so-
called “Third World” through solidarity committees and campaigns of other
kinds. According to historian Kim Christiaens, this type of activism was
popular because it “contrasted the status quo and ennui in Europe with the
whirlwind of changes and challenges in countries emerging out of the ruins of
colonial empires and defying the stalemate of the Cold War.”
While on the
surface this type of activism was characterized by a kind of romanticization of
liberation movements in the non-Western world, it was also fundamentally crit-
ical of political developments at home. After all, for European activists to side
with the “Third World” from the heart of the “First World” was to challenge
not just their own governments’ foreign policies, but also the growing influence
of the United States and international organizations like the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) around the world. In fact, as some have previ-
ously argued, anti-Americanism even became a defining characteristic of
European solidarity activism in this period.
Such sentiments had a significant
impact on regional Black Panther solidarity as well.
Bloom and Martin, ; Hilliard and Seale, ; House Committee on Internal Security, The
Black Panther Party: Its Origin and Development as Reflected in Its Official Weekly
Newspaper, the Black Panther (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Service,
), –.
Clemons and Jones, ; Spencer, . The British Black Panther Movement is not
included in this list because it was established independently of the Black Panther Party.
For research on the British Black Panther Movement see Anne-Marie Angelo, “The
Black Panthers in London, – : A Diasporic Struggle Navigates the Black
Atlantic,” Radical History Review, (), –.
Kim Christiaens, “Europe at the Crossroads of Three Worlds: Alternative Histories and
Connections of European Solidarity with the Third World, s–s,” European
Review of History/Revue européenne d’histoire, , (), –, .
Ibid., ; Kim Christiaens, John Nieuwenhuis, and Charel Roemer, International
Solidarity in the Low Countries during the Twentieth Century: New Perspectives and
Themes (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, ), –; Konrad J. Kuhn, “Liberation
Struggle and Humanitarian Aid: International Solidarity Movements and the ‘Third
World’ in the s,” in Samantha Christiansen and Zachary A. Scarlett, eds., The
Third World in the Global s (New York, Berghahn Books, ), –; Robert
Gildea, James Mark, and Niek Pas, “European Radicals and the ‘Third World’:
Imagined Solidarities and Radical Networks, –,” Cultural and Social History, ,
(), –.
“The Best Place to Help the Panthers Is at Home”
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Though scholars have acknowledged the European efforts of the party
before, relevant research remains limited. Some of the first to pay attention
the topic were Michael L. Clemons and Charles E. Jones, who in pub-
lished an exploratory study of Black Panther internationalism in New
Political Science. In collaboration with Kathleen Cleaver, now an academic
herself, the two offer a brief overview of the party’s transnational contacts,
acknowledging its European connections along the way. By far most of their
attention goes to Scandinavia and West Germany, where the committees
were, in Cleaver’s words, “the most dynamic and the best organized.”
Since then, other scholars have followed suit. In their acclaimed Black
against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (), his-
torians Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr. briefly discuss the Seale and
Hewitt’s tour and subsequent emergence of the solidarity committees.
In
slightly more detail, the Scandinavian and West German committees are
covered in Sean L. Malloy’s Out of Oakland: Black Panther Party
Internationalism during the Cold War (), which provides the most
detailed analysis of the party’s internationalism to date.
Unfortunately,
however, neither have developed extensive accounts of the solidarity commit-
tees’ histories, nor do they seem to be aware that a wider European network
existed. Besides, neither has gone beyond the Panthers’ own writings on
these alliances, creating a rather one-sided vision of what European solidarity
truly meant.
The one place where historians have gone beyond this perspective is West
Germany, which lay at the heart of the European network. In contrast to those
mentioned above, German historians Maria Höhn and Martin A. Klimke have
tried to determine why activists there developed such an interest in aligning
with the African American revolutionaries.
In The Other Alliance: Student
Protest in West Germany and the United States in the Global Sixties (),
Klimke argues that Black Panther solidarity became popular because it
allowed West German activists to tackle two critical issues in their Cold
War society. First was the rise of American imperialism in the country after
the end of World War II. Labeling the West German state an “external
colony” of the United States, German activists believed that they shared
many of the burdens of the African American freedom fighters, who consid-
ered themselves an “internal colony” in the same space.
Perhaps more
Clemons and Jones, .
Bloom and Martin, –.
Malloy, –.
Maria Höhn, “The Black Panther Solidarity Committees and the Voice of the Lumpen,”
German Studies Review, , (Feb. ),–, –; Martin Klimke, The Other
Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany and the United States in the Global Sixties
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ), .
Klimke, , , .
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crucially, however, Klimke argues that solidarity with the Black Panthers
offered West German activists a “vehicle for coming to terms with the
past,” as the party’s criticism of American racism and imperialism also
allowed them to take a more critical perspective on their own history of
racial violence and expansionism, particularly during World War II.
As
such, Klimke argues, Black Panther solidarity was motivated not only by com-
passion but also by a personal interest in the systems the African Americans
were trying to dismantle.
Considering the absence of research on similar projects elsewhere in Europe,
the purpose of this article is to provide a first overview of Black Panther soli-
darity in the Netherlands and to examine how Dutch activists saw their pos-
ition within the party’s transnational network. It predominantly focusses on
the history of the Black Panther Solidarity Committee, founded in
December by a group of young white progressives in the city of
Hilversum, popularly known as the media capital of the Netherlands.
Under the leadership of journalist Peter Schumacher, these Black Panther sym-
pathizers were able to convince hundreds of activists throughout the New Left
and the anticolonial movement to join their efforts in support of the BPP.
Following an internal conflict between the BPSC and its partner organization
Vrijheidsschool, or Freedom School, only several months after its founding,
the committee was instructed by the European network to lay down its activ-
ities and hand over its responsibilities to the latter. Under the leadership of
former BPSC members At van Praag and Lily van den Bergh, the Freedom
School continued to raise support for the party until December , after
which it disappeared from the public eye. Van den Bergh stayed involved
with the BPP until the Cleavers were forced to close the International
Section in .
Although support for the Black Panthers was central to the Dutch solidarity
movement, the history of these organizations shows that their underlying
motives also corresponded to those of their West German counterparts.
Organizing in the midst of the Cold War, both the BPSC and the Freedom
School actively endorsed the BPP for its leading role in the global fight
against American imperialism. They accepted the Panthers’ self-proclaimed
vanguard status in the revolutionary movement and therefore believed it
was their task defend them in any way they could. For the most part, this
meant collecting money for their work and putting pressure on American dip-
lomatic institutions in the Netherlands. Their most common site of protest
became the US consulate at the Museumplein in Amsterdam, where the
Ibid., .
“The Best Place to Help the Panthers Is at Home”
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committee frequently gathered to call for the release of imprisoned Black
Panther leaders, the withdrawal of the United States from Europe, and an
end to American aggression in the Third World, focussing in particular on
the war in Vietnam. On several occasions, the activists also called on domestic
politicians to cut their ties with the US government by leaving NATO, though
none ever took this seriously.
The Dutch movement was also similar to the German in that it encouraged
local activists to face their own imperial legacies more critically. In the context
of the Netherlands, these legacies were not related to World War II but to the
long history of Dutch colonialism in the Caribbean, where the country still
had significant infl uence. Since , the Kingdom of the Netherlands had
consisted of three core territories: the Netherlands, Suriname, and the
Netherlands Antilles. Though the Caribbean territories of the kingdom had
received some domestic autonomy after World War II, the Dutch had
failed to grant them full independence. This situation had led to an upsurge
of anticolonialism in both territories, as demonstrated most clearly by the
Trinta di Mei uprising on the island of Curaçao in the Netherlands
Antilles. Conscious of these developments, Dutch Black Panther sympathizers
realized that they could not support the fight for Black freedom in the US
without supporting that same fight in their own realm, motivating them to
collaborate with various Surinamese and Antillean action groups. As such,
Black Panther solidarity offered Dutch activists a framework through which
they could simultaneously challenge American imperialism in Europe and
their own colonial legacies in the Caribbean and beyond.
Though Dutch s olidarity would remain marginal in the broader history of
the Black Panther Party, its history does provide some important i nsights
into the party’s transn ational efforts. In line with previous studies of
Scandinavian a nd West German solidarity, it shows that the Black
Panthers actively encouraged Europeans to use their privileged position in
the West in support of Black freedom. While never allowing white activists
into the BPP directly, the party did repeatedly emphasize the need for mutual
support and collaboration in the global fight against racism, capitalism, and
imperialism, regardless of ethnic or racial identity. To some, this position
might be surprising, as Europe had historically been responsible for the devel-
opment of every system the Panthers opposed and remained one of
America’s most powerful allies in the postwar order. Yet the Panthers
believed there was real power in the protest movements that had emerged
on the continent and were convinced that a strong transatlantic partnership
could help both parties succeed in their opposition against those in power. As
this article shows, European allies themselves embraced this idea with open
arms, not despite but because of their own countries’ complicity in creating
and upholding these systems.
Debby Esmeé de Vlugt
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THE BLACK PANTHER SOLIDARITY COMMITTEE
The first official Black Panther committee in the Netherlands, the Black
Panther Solidarity Committee, was established on December in
Hilversum. The founder of the committee was Peter Schumacher, a young
journalist who had come into contact with the party when he had traveled
to the United States earlier that year. Based on what he had seen and heard,
Schumacher was highly impressed with the Panthers, believing them to be
“the first revolutionary party in America to fight for a radical social revolu-
tion.”
Eager to support the party upon his return to the Netherlands,
Schumacher began to explore the possibility of gathering support for the
Panthers at home.
He reached out to the European solidarity network,
which sent two fellow Black Panther enthusiasts to the country: Leif
Aingsmose, chairman of the Danish solidarity committee, and Bill Caldwell,
chairman of the Swedish solidarity committee and coordinator of the
European distribution of the Black Panther. Both stayed in the Netherlands
for several weeks to assist Schumacher in setting up a local committee,
sharing their experiences, providing him with the necessary knowledge and
tools, and connecting him to their extensive transnational network of Black
Panther supporters. It was also Aingsmose and Caldwell who arranged for
Big Man to visit Amsterdam that January.
In the meantime, Schumacher selected the first members of the founding
committee. Initially, the BPSC consisted of journalist Jelte Rep, who
worked for daily newspaper Trouw as “America expert”; film director At
van Praag, who specialized in countercultural documentaries; and publisher
Rob van Gennep, whose publishing house was known around the
Netherlands for its leftist literature. Much like Schumacher himself, all were
young white men who had learned about the Panthers through their work
in the media. Even before the BPSC could get its work started, however,
the composition of the committee had already changed. Despite their initial
enthusiasm, both Rep and Van Praag left the committee within weeks of its
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, Black Panther Nieuwsbulletin, Jan. , ,ZK
, International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; “Ik
Dacht: Dit Wordt te Gek,” Leeuwarder Courant, Jan. , .
Peter Schumacher, “Zwarte Panters Vogelvrij,” De Groene Amsterdammer, Dec. , ;
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, Jan. , ; “Ik Dacht: Dit Wordt te Gek,”
Leeuwarder Courant, Jan. , .
“Black Panther in het Universiteitstheater, ” Het Parool, Jan. , ; “Panters,” De
Volkskrant, Jan. , ; Haaster, “Harde Politieke Aanpak Nodig,” Het Vrije Volk,
Jan. , ; Hanneke Meerum Terwogt, “‘Big Man’ Howard Spreekt, Vanavond,”
Het Parool, Jan. , ; “Albert Howard komt Spreken in Amsterdam,” Het Vrije
Volk, Jan. , ; “‘Black Panther’ Bill Caldwell en Provo-Raadslid Roel van Duyn
naar Groningen,” Nieuwsblad van het Noorden, Feb. , .
“The Best Place to Help the Panthers Is at Home”
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founding, listing rather ambiguous reasons for their resignation.
They were
replaced by two young women: Lily van den Bergh and Anja Meulenbelt. Van
den Bergh was a former actress and television host who had recently started
working as a freelance journalist, writing for prominent magazines and news-
papers like De Groene Amsterdammer and Vrij Nederland. As recently as ,
she had traveled to California to interview Masai Hewitt and Elaine Brown on
the ideas and programs of the Panthers.
For Meulenbelt, who would play a
prominent role in the Dutch feminist movement and became a Socialist Party
member later in life, the committee was one of her first activist experiences.
Under the guidance of Caldwell and Aingsmose, the newly established BPSC
began formulating its plans. This was no easy task. On the surface, the members
of the committee understood that, as a solidarity group, their main purpose was
to gather support for the Black Panthers in the Netherlands by raising awareness,
collecting donations, and organizing solidarity protests. “From the very start, the
Panthers have stated that white support is welcome, but that the Panthers them-
selves will decide how the black revolution will be realized,” Schumacher
clarified in a piece for Groene Amsterdammer.
On a deeper level, however,
the committee also believed that solidarity went beyond mere moral support.
True solidarity also meant “fighting against racism and imperialism on all
fronts here.”
While the members of the committee acknowledged that there
was no place for them in the United States, they did believe that the BPSC
could help them by challenging their shared enemies in their own society.
“Why would we let black people in America, who have the courage to
sacrifice themselves … do all the hard work?” the committee asked in its
opening statement, while “we, here in Europe, can help the Black Panthers
… by starting a fight against economic pressure at home and by opposing the
exploitation of our colonies.”
Ultimately, the Dutch activists hoped that
they could help pave the way for an "‘International Panther Party"’ that
could fight imperialism all around the world.
Although the committee thus had signi ficant ambitions, its program ini-
tially focussed only on its first goals: to educate the public about the Black
Schumacher, “Zwarte Panters Vogelvrij”; “Ik Dacht: Dit Wordt te Gek,” .
Lily van den Bergh, “Bloemen, Drugs, Naaktheid en Anarchie zijn Geen Adequaat
Antwoord op Onderdrukking,” Vrij Nederland, Jan. , .
These are the names of committee members listed in the BPSC newsletters. However,
Meulenbelt later also mentions a Marcel, likely referring to Surinamese student Marcel
Kross, and someone named Hannah, who according to Meulenbelt was Bill Caldwell’s girl-
friend and “did most of the work behind the scenes, virtually unnoticed.” See Anja
Meulenbelt, De Schaamte Voorbij: Een Persoonlijke Geschiedenis (Amsterdam: Van
Gennep, ), –.
Peter Schumacher, “Zwarte Panters Vogelvrij.”
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, Feb. , ; “‘Big Man’ Howard Spreekt, Vanavond,”
.
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, Jan. , .
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Panther Party, to collect financial support for its programs, and to advance its
causes through political protest. After all, as the committee argued, “real soli-
darity can only be given once one knows what it’s all about.”
The educa-
tional element of their program was the most extensive and consisted of
two main components: writing and lecturing. The first mostly took place in
the BPSC’s monthly newsletter, which became a medium for committee
updates and Black Panther news. Using the Panthers’ own writings as their
source, the committee wanted to provide an alternative view of recent
events involving the party, such as the FBI’s assassination of Fred Hampton
in Chicago and the murder of suspected FBI informant Alex Rackley in
New Haven. Although Dutch media had covered these events widely, the
BPSC believed that the American sources used by Dutch journalists – which
they referred to as “Hoover’s reports”–were untrustworthy.
In addition
to news items, the publication also contained translations of some of the
party’s core texts, such as the Ten Point Program (“What We Want, What
We Believe”) and its membership rules, as well as updates on the work of
the solidarity committee in the Netherlands. The newsletter was distributed
to subscribers, but could also be bought at a selected number of bookstores
around the country and at lectures and events organized by the committee.
Each of these newsletters also contained a reading list with books on the
Black Panther Party, the Black Power movement, and African American
history in general. Some of these books were written or published by
members of the committee, such as Peter Schumacher’s Eldridge Cleaver:
Een Zwarte Panter in Amerika (), Ton Regtien’s Black Power en de
Derde Wereld: Een Interview met Stokely Carmichael (), and the Dutch
translation of Stokely Carmichael’s Black Power: The Politics of Liberation
(). Other books on the list were written by members of the party itself,
such as Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice () and his Post-prison Writings
and Speeches (), or by other Black radicals, such as Malcolm X and
Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X () and Franz Fanon’s
The Wretched of the Earth (). The lists were constructed by Van
Gennep, who sold all of these books and the BPSC newsletter at his shop
in Amsterdam, though the committee mentioned they were also available at
other “progressive bookstores” in the Netherlands.
Besides their own newsletter, members of the BPSC also wrote about the
Panthers in a number of newspapers and magazines. The most elaborate of
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, Feb. , .
Rob van Gennep, “Rob van Gennep Over,” Het Vrije Volk, Jan. , .
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, Jan. , , ;Feb., ;March, ;April
, .
“The Best Place to Help the Panthers Is at Home”
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these was founding member Jelte Rep’s six-part series on the Black Panthers in
the newspaper Trouw. In this series, he discussed the living conditions in
African American neighborhoods, the police violence they encountered,
how the Black Panthers were trying to combat this, and what the BPSC did
to support this.
In less detail, fellow committee member Van Gennep
wrote about the BPP and BPSC in his personal column for socialist newspaper
Het Vrije Volk.
Other members wrote about their activities on a freelance
basis. Both Schumacher and Van den Bergh, for example, submitted pieces
on the party to De Groene Amsterdammer and Vrij Nederland, both of
which were major left-leaning journals. Through these articles, Schumacher
and Van den Bergh hoped to convince “those whites freed of racial delusions”
to join their committee or make donations.
The second part of their educational program consisted of a series of lec-
tures organized in collaboration with various student organizations, cultural
institutions, and political pressure groups around the Netherlands. These lec-
tures took place in large cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague,
but also in student cities like Leiden, Tilburg, and Nijmegen, and in towns
with large leftist communities like Groningen, Assen, and Deventer. At its
height, the committee organized two or three of these lectures a week. Each
was slightly different, though most of them followed a similar format. First,
one of the committee members would start off with a short introduction to
the ideology and programs of the Black Panther Party. Sometimes this
lecture was not given by a committee member but by a special guest, such as
Caldwell. After this lecture followed a short documentary film on the BPP
or on racial inequality in the US in general. Afterwards, there would be
room for an interactive activity, which could be a discussion, a brainstorming
session, or even the drafting of a policy proposal. Once the audience had gained
a basic understanding of the work and relevance of the Black Panthers for
Europe, the committee invited its audience to sign up for one of their solidarity
protests, to subscribe to their newsletter, or to make a donation to the party.
Jelte Rep, “Toenemende Solidariteit in de Ghetto’s,” Trouw, Feb. , , ; “Gewapende
Negers Verbijsteren Blanke Politiemannen,” Trouw, Feb. , , ; “‘Ik Zal Vermoord
Worden,’ Zegt Huey P. Newton,” Trouw, Feb. , , ; “Eldridge Cleaver Komt
Diep Onder de Indruk van Nieuwe Negerpartij,” Trouw, Feb. , , ; “Politie Zet
op Keiharde Wijze de Aanval in,” Trouw, Feb. , , ; “FBI Werkt met Zwarte
Spionnen,” Trouw, Feb. , , .
Van Gennep, .
Schumacher, “Zwarte Panters Vogelvrij”; Van den Bergh, .
Meulenbelt, De Schaamte Voorbij, ; Vrijheidsschool, Vrijheidspers
Informatiekrant, Amsterdam, , International Institute for Social History,
Amsterdam, the Netherlands, ZK ; Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, April
, ; Terwogt, “‘Big Man’ Howard Spreekt, Vanavond,” .
Debby Esmeé de Vlugt
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875823000427 Published online by Cambridge University Press
After all, the information provided by the BPSC was not only intended to
be educational, but also to stimulate the collection of financial aid for the
Panthers. As the previous paragraphs suggest, the committee’s most steady
sources of income were the profits from their newsletter, payments for articles
in major papers, money raised at events, and gifts by individual donors. On top
of that, the BPSC gathered money by selling the Black Panther, which they
received from Caldwell in Stockholm and distributed to booksellers nation-
wide. When the distribution of the Black Panther faltered because shipments
from the United States were disrupted, it was replaced by a new information
bulletin written by the Cleavers for their European allies.
Although none of
the BPSC’s fi nancial records were archived, one of its newsletters states that it
had raised approximately two thousand Dutch guilders in the fi rst month, of
which eight hundred had been collected at the event with Big Man and ,
had been gifted by individual donors. Half of this money was used to cover the
committee’s own expenses, including the materials for the newsletter and the
costs of communication, while the other half was transferred to the national
headquarters of the Black Panther Party in Oakland. The money was meant
to fund legal assistance for prosecuted members, social projects, and training
programs, such as the Free Breakfast Program and the Liberation Schools.
Big Man later wrote that most European aid was spent on legal support for
prosecuted Panther leaders.
Besides teaching and fund-raising, the BPSC also showed its support for the
Panthers through demonstrations. The purpose of these demonstrations was
to pressure American diplomats, Dutch government officials, and even large
businesses like American Express into denouncing the persecution of the
Black Panthers in the United States. Two protests in the spring of are
especially noteworthy. The first took place on March, after the committee
had gotten word from the European network about plans for a continent-
wide uprising against the prosecution of Bobby Seale in the trial of the
Chicago and in New Haven. Even though they had only learned about
these plans several days before the chosen date, the committee was determined
to join the operation and side with their comrades in Paris, Frankfurt,
Copenhagen, Oslo, and Stockholm. Despite the last-minute organization,
some people joined their march, starting at Beursplein in the city
center of Amsterdam and ending at the highly secured US consulate at
Vrijheidsschool, “Aan de Abonnes van de Black Panther Krant,” private archive of Lily van
den Bergh.
Schumacher, “Zwarte Panters Vogelvrij”; Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, Feb.
, .
Howard, Panther on the Prowl, .
“The Best Place to Help the Panthers Is at Home”
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875823000427 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Museumplein.
Along the way, the Black Panther supporters paused for short
sit-ins, obstructing trams and causing delays throughout the city. Once the
group arrived at the consulate, they presented a letter in which they requested
the Consul General to inform the American government of their discontent
with “the way in which ever more people in the[ir] country are tried and
judged based on made-up facts.”
They furthermore used the letter to accuse
the US of becoming a police state where “fascist tendencies” were steadily
increasing. According to an eyewitness, the entrance to the consulate was pro-
tected by fourteen police officers, some of whom tried to obstruct the delivery of
the letter.
Meanwhile, the young crowd held up countless banners and signs,
holding up images of Bobby Seale and making statements like “Bobby Seale
moet vrij” (“Free Bobby Seale”), “Alle macht aan het volk” (“All power to
the people”), and “Nixon in de Cel” (“Imprison Nixon”).
The BPSC organized an even larger protest on April, which the commit-
tee had declared a national day for Black Panther support. Similar to their pre-
vious protest, this demonstration was set up to call for Seale’s release, as they
believed him to be “yet another victim of the American capitalist govern-
ment’s systematic campaign to extinguish all active members of the Black
Panther Party.”
Because it would be too much work for the five-person com-
mittee to prepare a nationwide event of this size by themselves, they decided to
delegate the arrangements of protests outside Amsterdam to a number of local
task forces.
Located in at least twelve cities, and led by separate groups of
Black Panther supporters, these subcommittees were authorized to set up
their own protests using the promotional and educational materials of the
national Black Panther committee. In the weeks leading up to the national
event, the committee supplied them with posters, pamphlets, ideas for
slogans, buttons, and newsletters from their central office, which was now
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, March , ; “Demonstraties tegen Chicago-
Proces,” Algemeen Handelsblad, March , ; “Politie Belet Afgifte Brief aan Consul
Ver. Staten,” Het Parool, March , .
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, March , .
“Politie Belet Afgifte Brief aan Consul Ver. Staten,” ; Solidariteitscomité Black Panther
Party, March , . The committee later suggested that they had managed to slip it
into his mailbox, but it is unclear whether the Consul General ever received it or forwarded
their message.
“Demonstraties tegen Chicago-Proces,” ; “Politie Belet Afgifte Brief aan Consul Ver.
Staten,” .
“Stop Moord op de Black Panthers,” , International Institute for Social History,
Amsterdam, the Netherlands, poster, × cm, BG D/ ().
These cities included The Hague, Eindhoven, Haarlem, Hengelo, IJmuiden, Groningen,
Baarn, Arnhem, Nijmegen, Rotterdam, Utrecht, and Zeist. The committee also encouraged
readers in other places to sign up for the National Black Panther Day, but it is unclear
whether they did.
Debby Esmeé de Vlugt
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875823000427 Published online by Cambridge University Press
based in Amsterdam.
In the capital, the BPSC itself set up an information
fair at Leidseplein, followed by a night of performances and short films at
the Moses and Aaron Church. At the end of the day, the protesters gathered
for another demonstration at the consulate. An estimated six hundred people
attended the performances at the church, of whom four hundred later made
their way to Museumplein.
They carried signs and banners that depicted
the iconic image of a black panther and, once again, the slogan “All power
to the people! Alle macht aan het volk!”
The immense support for the
Panthers that day showed just how far the BPSC had come in under four
months’ time, making the Dutch movement for Black Panther support one
of the largest and fastest-growing in Western Europe.
FROM A SINGLE COMMITTEE TO A MOVEMENT
From the moment the BPSC first announced its plans, activists around the
Netherlands were drawn to its ideas, and requests for collaborations simply
started pouring in. As the mass attendance of Big Man’s lecture and later
BPSC protests indicates, there was a tremendous interest in the party, especially
among Caribbean students and other revolutionaries in the Dutch New Left.
When the committee informed international coordinator Matthews about
the widespread support for the Panthers during her visit to Amsterdam in
early , she advised Schumacher to establish a Grand Committee of
Black Panther Solidarity that could operate as an umbrella network for all
Dutch organizations and individuals who wished to support the party. As
the country’sofficial Black Panther committee, the BPSC would serve as the
head of this network and coordinate its activities with Matthews to ensure
that they matched the party’s expectations.
Within a matter of weeks, the
group grew from a mere five-person committee to a fully fledged movement
that included over ten organizations and hundreds of followers.
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, April , ; “Vier Arrestaties bij Betoging,” De
Telegraaf, March , .
“Black Panther Demonstratie in Amsterdam,” Algemeen Handelsblad, April , ;
“Bobby Seale Moet Vrij, ” De Tijd, April , ; “Black Panther Films,” Trouw,
April , ; “Film-Actie,” De Volkskrant, April , ; “Ongeveer
Sympathisanten Black Panther demonstreerden,” Het Parool, April , ; “Black
Panther-Dag in Amsterdam,” De Groene Amsterdammer, April , ; “Vrijdag: Dag
van de ‘Zwarte Panters’, ” Trouw, April , ; “Stop Moord op de Black Panthers”;
Vrijheidsschool, “Black Panthers Vrijheidsschool,” April , poster, × cm, BG
D
/ (), International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Koen Wessing, photograph, April ,BGB/ (), International Institute for
Social History, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, invitation to grand committee meeting, March
, private archive of Lily van den Bergh.
“The Best Place to Help the Panthers Is at Home”
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875823000427 Published online by Cambridge University Press
One section of the Grand Committee consisted of Caribbean student orga-
nizations and interest groups: the Surinamese Student Union (Surinaamse
Studentenunie, SSU), the Antillean Action Group (Antilliaanse Aktiegroep,
AAG), and the Surinam Revolutionary People’ s Front (Revolutionair
Volksfront Suriname, RVS).
Most of these had become involved with the
BPSC in January , when the committee had invited them to discuss
the relevance of Black Panther ideology for Black communities in the
Netherlands and to explore how it could extend its solidarity to Antillean
and Surinamese groups with similar goals as the BPP.
In discussing this
process with Het Parool, the committee explained that Dutch people often
read about African American resistance without realizing that Black people
in the Netherlands “for a large part encounter the same problems in their
interactions with whites as negroes in America.”
Whether through the
“internal colonialism” of African Americans in the United States or
through Dutch colonialism in the Caribbean, both of their problems were
caused by the same root problem: imperialism.
According to Swedish committee leader Caldwell, who had taken part in
this session, the BPSC’s initial meeting with the Caribbean groups had
been so successful that the latter decided to partner up with the committee.
Over the following months, members of the SSU, AAG, and RVS attended
many of the committee’s events, participated in their demonstrations, and
helped them organize events in their own communities and neighborhoods.
From Meulenbelt’sreflections on these collaborations in her autobiographical
De Schaamte Voorbij (), it seems that the BPSC did not take their involve-
ment in the solidarity movement lightly. In demonstrations, Antillean and
Surinamese groups were encouraged to march up front, moving ahead of
the white crowds.
Their voices were amplified in other activities too, such
as the lectures given by the BPSC all over the country. “I [gave] lectures, some-
times together with Marcel from Suriname,” Meulenbelt wrote, likely referring
to Marcel Kross, a Surinamese student who was highly involved in the com-
mittee. “After my lecture on America, he would share how we are complicit
in what is happening in Suriname.”
This suggests that, while the issue of
racism in the Netherlands was not central to the BPSC, the committee
believed that the African American and Afro-Caribbean freedom struggles
were deeply interconnected, if not the same.
Collaborations between the BPSC and its Caribbean partners were not
limited to the work of the solidarity movement alone. In its writings, the
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, invitation to grand committee meeting.
Terwogt, “‘Big Man’ Howard Spreekt, Vanavond,” ; “Panters,” Jan. , .
“Panters,” Jan. , .
Meulenbelt, De Schaamte Voorbij, .
Ibid., .
Debby Esmeé de Vlugt
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875823000427 Published online by Cambridge University Press
BPSC also promoted and supported the anticolonial protests of Antillean and
Surinamese groups outside its own platform. One example was a protest in De
Pijp, a neighborhood in Amsterdam which was home to a large community of
Caribbean migrants. On March some thirty Surinamers, Antilleans,
and other “representatives of the Third World” came together near the
famous Albert Cuyp Market to stand up against “the colonialism, the oppres-
sion and the exploitation of non-white Americans by white settlers.”
Waving
around Black Panther flags and signs, the protesters called for an immediate
end to the persecution of the Black Panthers and the withdrawal of police
forces from African American neighborhoods. Though the BPSC had not
played any role in the organization of the event, their public support for it
shows how much they valued these kinds of efforts, even if they took place
outside their own program. “The participating organizations hope to organize
more of these manifestations in the future,” the BPSC wrote, before adding,
“We hope more Surinamers will join the next one.”
On one occasion, the committee even decided to support its Caribbean
partners financially with money that was intended for the BPP. On June
, one day after the anticolonial Trinta di Mei uprising in Curaçao,
some seven hundred protesters from around the Kingdom of the
Netherlands gathered at the Antillenhuis in The Hague (home of
the cabinet of the minister plenipotentiary of the Netherlands Antilles in
the Netherlands) to protest against the way the Dutch government had inter-
vened in the uprising and to denounce Dutch colonialism in general. While
mostly peaceful, the protest escalated when a small number of protesters
smashed some of the windows of the Antillenhuis, which started a wave of
violent altercations between the police and the demonstrators. By the end
of the night, seventeen activists had been arrested for use of violence, even
though many witnesses would later testify that it was the police who had
started the violence and not the other way around.
After a long wait,
eight of the arrestees were prosecuted in February and March . Leading
up to the trial, several large Antillean and Surinamese organizations expressed
concerns that the case served as “an attempt at intimidating the Antillean and
Surinamese community in the Netherlands” to stop them from criticizing the
kingdom.
During the trial, defendants made similar arguments, contending
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, April , ; “In Amsterdam: Betoging Tegen
Kolonialisme,” Het Vrije Volk, March , .
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, April , .
Rudi F. Kross, “Het Proces,” De Vrije Stem, March , ; “Politie Provoceerde het
Geweld,” De Waarheid, Feb. , .
Quote from “Surinaamse Organisaties Protesteren Tegen Proces,” De Waarheid, Feb.
, .
“The Best Place to Help the Panthers Is at Home”
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875823000427 Published online by Cambridge University Press
that the police had prevented them from “practicing their fundamental civil
rights to freedom of expression” because they were “scared that our protest
against the problems in the Antilles will be heard by the Dutch.”
They
did not manage to convince the judge, who found four of the defendants
guilty and imposed on them hundred-guilder fines.
One of the defendants in the Antillenhuis trial was Lucien L. Lafour, who
was suspected of having hit an officer on the head with a stick. Lafour, who also
went by his “Muslim name” Brada X, was half Surinamese and had been a
public supporter of the Black Power movement for several years.
Knowing
that his speech would be heard by a full court house and a wide range of jour-
nalists, he used the opportunity not only to speak to the allegations made
against him, but also to make a political statement on colonialism and racial
inequality. In the first half of his address, Lafour drew the attention of his lis-
teners to the racial biases of the judicial system, the police officers at the
Antillenhuis, and the Dutch marines whose actions on May had sparked
their protest. “Charged with collective assault. You wonder if this isn’ta
mistake, a typing error, because isn ’t this what the marines should be
charged with, who are busy keeping the people of Curaçaoa enslaved?” he
asked the court, referring to the Dutch marines who were sent to shut
down the protests.
In the second half of his speech, he shifted his focus to
the need for Black resilience in resisting colonial oppression. Drawing stark
comparisons between the Antillenhuis protesters, the leaders of Trinta di
Mei, and prominent Black Power activists in the United States, Lafour
warned the court that “it would be madness to think blacks can be stopped
… Blacks will persist.”
The BPSC, which had followed the trial closely, was highly impressed with
the rhetoric of the defendants and decided to start an additional fund-raising
campaign to help the Antillenhuis protesters pay their fines. While these pro-
testers had not been directly involved in their efforts to support the Black
Panthers, the committee believed that both parties fought the same
“Kritiek op Proces na Demonstratie voor Antillenhuis,” De Volkskrant, Feb. , ;
“Rechtbank: Begrip voor Rellen Antillenhuis,” Trouw, Feb. , ; “Berechting
Rellen bij Antillenhuis, ” Het Vrije Volk, Feb. , ; “Antillianen Protesteren Fel,”
Het Parool, Feb. , .
Letter to Stanley Brown, The Hague, March , Vito-artikelen, Archief, –,
N.B. Correspondentie e.a., Archivo Nashonal, Willemstad, Curaçao; “Officier Eist
Geldboetes in Antillenhuis-Proces,” De Volkskrant, Feb. , ; “Verdachten
Ontkennen in Antillenhuis-Proces,” Limburgsch Dagblad, Feb. , .
Hans Stevens, “Vroeger Konden We Woningen Bouwen: Waarom Nú Niet?” De Tijd,
March , ; Lucien Lafour, “Deep South,” Trouw, May , ; Lafour, speech,
private archive of Lily van den Bergh.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Debby Esmeé de Vlugt
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875823000427 Published online by Cambridge University Press
anticolonial battle and were therefore equally deserving of its solidarity.
On
top of that, Lafour himself joined the BPSC, where he became responsible for
communication between the committee and its Antillean and Surinamese
partners.
Already in its earliest days, the BPSC had announced that they
were “working on the addition of a Surinamer,” which they considered to
be “no unimportant participant in this kind of committee. ”
In his speech
to the court, Lafour had proven to be the perfect candidate for this position.
Over the following months, he would help the committee improve its inter-
racial collaborations, helping the BPSC progress towards its goal to “fight
against … the exploitation of our colonies.”
While the BPSC strongly valued these interracial collaborations, they were
by no means perfect. Although the white Black Panther supporters could be
considered ahead of their time in that they understood their role within the
movement as somewhat passive, it was clear that they struggled to fully trans-
late the Panthers’ antiracist rhetoric into the Dutch context. On paper, the
committee repeatedly spoke out against structural and institutional racism,
but in practice the topic was often overpowered by their interest in imperialism
and capitalism. This was certainly the case when members discussed racism in
the Dutch empire. In fact, early interviews show that most of the committee’s
initial efforts to tackle Dutch racism came from Caldwell rather than
Schumacher or the other Dutch members of the BPSC.
It was also clear,
at least in the beginning, that the solidarity committee upheld an exoticized,
even glamorized, image of the Black Panthers, which sometimes projected
the BPP as little more than a media hype.
One clear example of this was a
deeply problematic statement by BPSC member Van den Bergh, who
argued that Big Man’s lecture had been well attended because seeing an
African American in real life was “like seeing a wild animal at Artis,” referring
to the local zoo.
Such statements created a distance between the BPP and the
Dutch public and contradicted the BPSC’s commitment to inclusivity, as it
gave the impression that Black activism was foreign to the Netherlands.
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, March , ; letter to Stanley Brown, The
Hague, March , Archivo Nashonal, Willemstad, Curaçao, Vito-artikelen, Archief,
–, N.B. Correspondentie e.a.
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, March , ; April , .
“Panters,” Jan. , .
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, Jan. , .
See, for example, the BPSC’s interview with Terwogt, where Caldwell intervened when
Schumacher kept talking exclusively about the Black freedom struggle in the United
States. Himself an African American, Caldwell interrupted Schumacher to ensure that he
would also mention racial inequality in the Netherlands and stated that “things will
happen here, too.”
Malloy, Out of Oakland, –, has argued that this was also the case elsewhere in Europe.
“Panters,” Jan. , .
“The Best Place to Help the Panthers Is at Home”
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875823000427 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Besides, Van den Bergh’s statement showed how deeply unaware the BPSC
was of the painful history of racism in the Netherlands, which included a
long tradition of eugenics, human zoos, and dehumanization.
Besides alliances with these Caribbean organizations, the BPSC also colla-
borated with a variety of groups in the Dutch New Left, including Cineclub
Amsterdam, the Freedom School, the Netherlands Students’ Bureau for
International Cooperation (NESBIC), the Red Youth (Rode Jeugd), and
the United Support Groups of the NFL (Verenigde Steungroepen aan het
FNL).
While all of these organizations had different agendas and platforms,
with some being communist and others more interested in Third World soli-
darity, they were united in one critical aspect: their opposition to American
imperialism. Although the Dutch government maintained close diplomatic
ties with the US and was, according to historian Rob Kroes, even considered
“NATO’s most faithful ally” in the region, years of American interference in
Europe and violence in Vietnam had made Dutch youths critical of the super-
power.
Or, as student activist Pieter Hildering phrased it in a letter to the
Panthers at the time, “ this country, as well as … the rest of the pig-tortured
world, has just had enough of the dirty deals [Americans] think they’re
making.”
In this context, the BPSC was seen as a welcome addition the
countercultural scene, as it provided Dutch radicals with a direct link to
what they believed to be “the only group in the United States that is able
to transform their country.”
Of all the groups that collaborated with the BPSC under the umbrella of the
Grand Committee, two stood out in particular: Cineclub Amsterdam and the
Freedom School. Cineclub, which was established by filmmaker At van Praag
in , was an Amsterdam-based film production and distribution company
that specialized in the acquisition, creation, and screening of documentary
films on global liberation movements. The organization’s main purpose was
to use film “as a means to create consciousness, as a ‘weapon in the fight’
For the history and legacies of Dutch racism see Philomena Essed and Isabel Hoving, Dutch
Racism (Leiden: Brill, ); Gloria Wekker, White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and
Race (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, ).
Solidariteitscomité Black Panther Party, invitation to grand committee meeting;
Solidariteitscomité, April , ; “Black Panther Demonstratie in Amsterdam,” ;
“Ongeveer Sympathisanten Black Panther demonstreerden,” ; “Black Panther-Dag
in Amsterdam,” .
Rob Kroes, “The Great Satan versus the Evil Empire: Anti-Americanism in the
Netherlands,” in Rob Kroes and Maarten van Rossum, eds., Anti-Americanism in Europe
(Amsterdam: Free University Press, ), –, –.
Pieter Hildering, “Letter from Holland,” Black Panther, Feb. , .
“Vrijheidsschool,” De Telegraaf, March , ; “Cineclub organiseert Vrijheidsschool,”
De Volkskrant, Feb. , ; “Vrijheidsschool Gaat Acties Voeren,” Algemeen
Handelsblad, Feb. , .
Debby Esmeé de Vlugt
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875823000427 Published online by Cambridge University Press
that did not prioritize anyone’s individual career or personal success.”
By the
turn of the decade, Cineclub had drawn approximately , members and
screened its films multiple times a week.
The company first became involved
with the BPSC in the fall of , when Van Praag was invited to join the
founding committee. Although the Cineclub director did not stay in the com-
mittee for long (for reasons unknown), his company remained highly involved
in its work. Starting with the opening event with Big Man, Cineclub supplied
the BPSC with an array of relevant slide shows and documentary films, which
included a recorded interview with Bobby Seale, Agnès Varda’s Black Panthers
(), and Santiago Álvarez ’s Now ().
As mentioned previously, these
films played an important role in the educational program of the BPSC, as they
were shown at nearly every lecture they gave.
In February , Cineclub and several other action groups founded a new
organization which they the Freedom School. At first, the Freedom School
was established as an educational initiative to teach Dutch students and educators
about the oppression and liberation of the Third World. During its first event,
which was described as a “discussion week,” some participants got together
to debate issues related to non-Western school curriculums, discriminatory
admissions policies at Dutch universities, and what students and educational
staff could do to challenge these practices. Every session was concluded with a
Cineclub film about a foreign liberation movement, including those in China,
Argentina, Vietnam, France, and the United States.
While this discussion
week was a great success, however, the educational side of the Freedom School
would not last long. Within a matter of weeks, the Freedom School transformed
from an educational platform to a loose-knit network of radical student protest.
Despite the broad range of topics discussed at the initial Freedom School
discussions, the new organization was particularly interested in one revolution:
that of the Black Panthers. During their first get-together in February, many of
the participants had come to the conclusion that American imperialism posed
the number one threat to global freedom, as it was responsible for “ the oppres-
sion of all black people, the exploitation of the third world, the war in
Vietnam, [and] the political and economic domination of Europe.”
“Geschiedenis,” Cineclub Vrijheidsfilms,athttps://cineclubvrijheidsfilms.nl/geschiedenis;
J. P. G. van Laarhoven, “‘PAN’: Nederlandse Film Als Socialistisch Wapen,” MA disserta-
tion, Utrecht University, , –.
Van Laarhoven, .
An overview of the films in Cineclub’s collection can be found in the inventory of Cineclub
Vrijheidsfilms (Amsterdam), “Collectie Beeld- en Geluidmateriaal Cineclub Vrijheidsfilms,”
International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
“Vrijheidsschool Gaat Acties Voeren,” Algemeen Handelsblad, Feb. , ; “Cineclub
Organiseert Vrijheidsschool,” De Volkskrant, Feb. , ; “‘Vrijheidsschool’ Bereidt
Acties Voor,” Trouw, Feb. , .
“Vrijheidsschool,” De Telegraaf, March , .
“The Best Place to Help the Panthers Is at Home”
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Together with its parent organization, Cineclub, the student organization
began organizing regular demonstrations for the party. The largest of these
took place on March, following a Black Panther-themed week at the
Freedom School. Hundreds of students gathered at the US consulate to call
for the release of Bobby Seale and to denounce the reluctance of the Dutch
government to guarantee protection to Eldridge Cleaver, who had been
invited to attend the event but had to cancel when the Dutch government –
“which clearly dances to the tune of the USA ”–threatened to extradite
him.
Other Freedom School protests took place at the Krasnapolsky
Hotel in Amsterdam, where the group disturbed a televised election night
to condemn the Dutch government’s membership of NATO, and at
Leidseplein, after one of their Black Panther information fairs had been dis-
turbed by the police. The latter ended with several Freedom School
members setting their banners on fire and getting arrested on charges of
arson.
Cineclub and the Freedom School became, with the exception of the Black
Panther Solidarity Committee, the best-known organizations in the Dutch
Black Panther solidarity movement. While their priorities and approaches
were different, most of the groups’ activities were organized in collaboration
with the other members of the Grand Committee. After all, each of them
had something distinct and valuable to o ffer. The BPSC, which consisted pri-
marily of journalists, was most knowledgeable on the history, philosophy, and
political programs of the party. Their newsletters and lectures provided Dutch
Black Panther enthusiasts with essential information and updates on the party.
Cineclub was able to make the BPSC’s message come alive by providing inspir-
ing and insightful visual representation to this information. Once the crowd
had been fired up, the Freedom School played into their energy and led
them onto the streets, sometimes mobilizing as many as four hundred students
and young professionals at once. By March , collaboration within the
Grand Committee had become so close that “one could hardly speak of sep-
arate organizations anymore,” as a report from the Dutch security agency
Vrijheidsschool, “Eldridge Cleaver Mocht Niet naar Nederland Komen,” Vrijheidspers
Informatiekrant, n.p., Amsterdam, (), ZK (?), , International Institute
for Social History, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; “Betoging voor Vrijlating,” ; “Politie
Jaagt Demonstranten Weg bij VS-Consulaat,” Het Parool, March , ; “Kans dat
Cleaver Komt Erg Gering,” Trouw, March , .
“Een Maf Avondje Verkiezingen,” De Telegraaf, March , ; “Geen
Aardverschuiving: Winst D’ Valt Tegen,” Trouw, March , ; “Samkalden had
Zeer Rumoerige Verkiezingsavond,” Algemeen Handelsblad, March , ; “Vier
Arrestaties bij Betoging,” ; “Onrust in A’dam bij Betoging Zwarte Panters,” Turbantia,
March , ; “Demonstratie voor Zwarte Panters Liep Uit op Verkeerschaos,”
Leeuwarder Courant, March , .
Debby Esmeé de Vlugt
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875823000427 Published online by Cambridge University Press
stated.
Together, these groups transformed Black Panther solidarity in the
Netherlands from a single committee into a movement spanning hundreds
of activists and multiple organizations.
INTERNAL CONFLICTS AND THE DEMISE OF BLACK PANTHER
INTERNATIONALISM
Unfortunately, the vast growth of the solidarity movement did not occur
without complications, many of them emerging from these very same colla-
borations. Though the Grand Committee may have seemed like a well-oiled
machine to outsiders, the diversity of parties involved also made things quite
difficult. At its best, the Dutch solidarity movement was a loose-knit
network of individuals and semi-organized pressure groups that came together
to defend the party’s campaigns and ideology. At its worst, however, the move-
ment was a chaotic and disorganized web of young activists who were never
quite sure what the Black Panthers expected of them and who had many
different views on what their allyship was supposed to look like. This led to
a number of internal disagreements, especially between the BPSC and the
Freedom School, the most prominent of which concerned their preferred
methods of resistance.
In a number of their protests, members of the
Freedom School had resorted to minor forms of violence, such as smashing
windows, throwing stones at police officers, and throwing firecrackers at poli-
ticians.
At their own events, they had also set banners and portraits of
President Nixon on fire and had painted Black Panther slogans on the walls
of public buildings.
The BPSC, by this point regarded as the “old guard” of the solidarity move-
ment, strongly disapproved. The actions of the Freedom School were, in the
committee’s view, too reckless, and created confusion within the movement,
distracting outsiders from the important message they tried to convey.
While the BPSC emphasized that it was not against political protest per se,
it believed that any resistance coming from the movement “would have to
“Notitie Betreffende Solidariteitsdemonstratie met Zuid-Molukkers, Amsterdam, Nov.
,” Inzagedossier Molukse Zaken, Activiteiten van Zuid-Molukkers na het Bezoek
van President Soeharto Sept. ,athttps://inlichtingendiensten.nl/groepen/molukken.
“Panthers,” De Volkskrant, April , .
“Gevechten bij Amerikaans Consulaat,” Algemeen Dagblad, March , ; “Politie
Jaagt Demonstranten Weg bij VS-Consulaat,” ; “Ongeveer Sympathisanten Black
Panther demonstreerden,” ; “Een Maf Avondje Verkiezingen,” De Telegraaf, March
, .
Vrijheidsschool, “Straatakties, Plakken, Kalken, Krantverkoop, We Gaan Door, Doe Mee!”,
Vrijheidspers Informatiekrant, n.p.; Vrijheidsschool, “Stop Murdering Black Panthers!!!!!,”
private archive of Lily van den Bergh.
“The Best Place to Help the Panthers Is at Home”
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proceed in a completely disciplined manner, in accordance with the traditions
of the American Black Panthers themselves.”
The “new guard” of the move-
ment, under the leadership of Cineclub director At van Praag, labeled the
stance of the BPSC elitist and pushed for a more militant form of protest.
They believed that disturbances of these kinds were useful tools in getting
their message across and that they gave those they targeted, like the US con-
sulate, a deeper sense of urgency to act. Even more aggressive resistance was
not out of the question, as they were convinced that “protest without violence
is simply no longer possible in today’s society.”
Plus, they added, “the
Panthers say that the best place to help them is at home,” meaning they
also had to use BPP tactics to fight oppression in their local environment.
Although the groups were able to work around their differences for a while,
tensions became increasingly unmanageable and needed to be resolved.
Eventually this happened not at one of their regular meetings in
Amsterdam, but at the official BPP Solidarity Committees’ Conference in
Frankfurt on and April . This conference was organized by
Matthews, who had invited some four hundred delegates from different
parts of Europe “to coordinate and learn from our common struggle.”
Besides the formal solidarity committees, the international coordinator
invited anyone who wished to organize in support of the Black Panther
Party to attend. Writing about the conference in the International News
section of the Black Panther, Matthews explained that she aimed to draw
the committees’ focus towards “the brutal attempt of the racist fascist
power structure of the United States to annihilate the Black Panther
Party.”
She wanted to construct a plan of action to address this issue from
across the Atlantic. By the end of the conference, the European solidarity
network had agreed on the following points of action: ()to“intensify our
support [through] our coordinated attack on U.S. Imperialism in our own
countries,” ()to“organize mass actions in solidarity with the Black
Panther Party and against the fascist repression in the U.S. … directed to
the working masses and oppressed peoples of our countries,” ()to
“condemn the repression and harassment of the Party’s representatives in
various European countries,” and ()to“demand that all European countries
give free travel papers” to Eldridge Cleaver.
“Panthers,” April , .
Meulenbelt, De Schaamte Voorbij, .
“Ongeveer Sympathisanten Black Panther demonstreerden,” .
Letter to the editor of Het Parool.
Connie Matthews, “B.P.P. Solidarity Committee’s Conference,” Black Panther, May
, ; House Committee on Internal Security, The Black Panther Party, –;
“Europese Steun voor Zwarte Panters,” Amigoe di Curaçao, April , .
Matthews, .
Ibid., .
Debby Esmeé de Vlugt
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These new resolutions indicated a rather profound transformation in the
European solidarity network. Exactly one year after Seale and Hewitt had author-
ized Matthews to set up a network for education and fund-raising, the inter-
national coordinator announced a new approach to solidarity that was much
more proactive and politically engaged than originally intended. This worked
to the advantage of the Freedom School and Cineclub, whose hands-on approach
to solidarity was closer to Matthews’sviewthantoSealeandHewitt’soriginal
one. Hearing these resolutions at the conference, Van Praag’s delegation
decided that this was the perfect time to settle their disagreements with the
BPSC once and for all. They requested to present their case to the European con-
vention, after which they proposed to take a collective vote on the issue. This vote
would decide whether the Dutch solidarity movement would continue with
Schumacher’s “protest through education” or whether they would follow the
more proactive path of the “new guard.” Schumacherand Kross, who represented
the BPSC at the convention, strongly opposed Van Praag’s proposition, as they
had come to Frankfurt in much smaller numbers than the Freedom School
and therefore had fewer votes of their own.
Despite the objections of the
BPSC, the other European delegates agreed to accept the motion and take a
vote on the issue. In the end, extra votes for the BPSC would not have made a
difference: the European committees largely voted in favor of Van Praag and
decided that the BPSC had to be dissolved. Effective immediately, the committee
had to hand over its activities to the Freedom School, which now became the
official Dutch Black Panther solidarity committee – albeit under its own name.
The fate of the Black Panther movement in the Netherlands was thus not
determined by internal differences within the Dutch New Left alone, but also
by the changing attitudes of the European solidarity network writ large. While
this same network had mentored the founders of the BPSC and helped them
establish an educational program only four months earlier, recent develop-
ments within the Black Panther Party itself had convinced Matthews and
her followers that education and fund-raising were no longer enough: it was
time to take more radical action. To the original Black Panther committee,
this new form of solidarity was unacceptable. Although Matthews encouraged
them to join the Freedom School in their ongoing e fforts, all – with the excep-
tion of Lily van den Bergh, who had already sided with the Freedom School in
the preceding months – left the movement upon their return to the
Netherlands. “All we have to do now is to wait for the windows of consulates
“Panthers,” April , ; Meulenbelt, .
Vrijheidsschool, letter to the editor; “Black Panthers-Comité Uit Elkaar,” Het Vrije Volk,
April , ; “Panthers,” April , ; “Nederlandse comité Panthers ontbonden,”
Trouw, April , ; Frits N. Eisenloeffel, “Wereld Drie,” Algemeen Handelsblad,
May , ; “Black Panther-Dag in Amsterdam,” ; Meulenbelt, .
“The Best Place to Help the Panthers Is at Home”
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and embassies to be smashed,” a bitter Schumacher shared in De Volkskrant,
before sarcastically adding, “an unusually powerful argument.”
With the “moderate figures” of the BPSC (as the Dutch security agency
described them) gone, the local solidarity movement grew increasingly more
fanatic.
Now that they no longer had to take the wishes of the BPSC into
account, members of the Freedom School were free to express their solidarity
as they pleased. Now under the leadership of Van den Bergh, the group contin-
ued to organize lectures with film screenings, fund-raisers, and small-scale pro-
tests over the summer of .
They also started publishing their own
newspaper, the Freedom Press Information Paper.
This paper was slightly
more elaborate than that of the BPSC, though its content was almost identical.
The main difference from the former was its visual appeal. Whereas the BPSC’s
newsletter had been written on a typewriter and was completely free of images,
the Freedom Press paper was filled with Emory Douglas’s iconic Black Panther
art, portraits of Black Panther activists, pictures of previous solidarity protests,
and countless political slogans. Copies of the paper were handed out at lectures
and protests, of which there were only a couple after the Frankfurt conference.
Several months after taking control of the Black Panther solidarity move-
ment, the Freedom School also became involved in the highly controversial
case of the Wassenaar . This case revolved around a group of South
Moluccan activists who had forced their way into the residence of the
Indonesian ambassador on August , one day before President
Suharto’s state visit to the Netherlands. The purpose of their protest was to
demand a meeting between Suharto and Johan Manusama, President of the
unrecognized Republic of South Malaku (RMS). While the ambassador
escaped the scene, a security officer was killed by protesters.
The actions of
the Wassenaar immediately caught the interest of the Freedom School.
The Black Panther supporters saw many similarities between these anticolonial
“Heroes of Wassenaar” and the Black Panther Party, both of whom they con-
sidered to be key players in the liberation of the Third World.
On
“Panthers,” April , .
“Notitie Betreffende Solidariteitsdemonstratie met Zuid-Molukkers, Amsterdam, Nov.
.”
Vrijheidsschool, “Vrijheidsschoolactie,” Vrijheidspers Informatiekrant; Vrijheidsschool,
“Steunfonds voor Vrijlating Black Panthers,” Vrijheidspers Informatiekrant.
Originally called the Vrijheidspers Informatiekrant.
Meulenbelt, .
Peter Bootsma, De Molukse Acties: Treinkapingen en Gijzelingen – (Amsterdam:
Boom, ), –; Fridus Steijlen, “Actie Wassenaar : Een Wake Up Call,”
Moluks Historisch Museum,atwww.museum-maluku.nl/actie-wassenaar--een-wake-
up-call.
“Groep Linkse Jongeren op de Bres voor Zuidmolukkers,” Trouw, Oct., , ;
“Bondgenootschap,” De Volkskrant, Oct. , ; “At van Praag: Actie in Wassenaar
Debby Esmeé de Vlugt
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875823000427 Published online by Cambridge University Press
November , the Freedom School and the Moluccan activists got together
for a massive demonstration in Amsterdam where hundreds of activists rose up
in support of the Moluccan and African American liberation movements.
Protesters carried banners with slogans such as “Viva R.M.S. en Black
Panthers” (“Viva R.M.S. and Black Panthers”) and “ Politieke gevangenen
vrij!” (“Free political prisoners!”), referring to the Wassenaar as well as
the countless incarcerated Black Panthers in the US.
Although the crowd
left several trams, cars, and buildings damaged, the protest proceeded
without any police interference.
The day was concluded with a meeting
at Paradiso, where Cineclub screened a Black Panther movie and two
British Black Panther advocates, who had been invited through the
European network, addressed the crowd.
Despite the large numbers of activists attending this protest, however, it
seems that the Freedom School soon lost interest in the party. After their col-
laboration with the Moluccans in November , which had already been
their first Black Panther activity in months, they did not organize any
further protests for the BPP. Instead, they decided to focus on more local com-
munity activism in Amsterdam, especially in working-class neighborhoods
such as the Jordaan and De Pijp. Soon, they disappeared from the public
eye completely. Its parent organization Cineclub did continue to screen
Black Panther movies, but ceased to make an effort outside its regular
screenings.
The decline of Black Panther solidarity in the Netherlands did not stand in
isolation but reflected much deeper disparities within the BPP itself. As
Cleaver was growing his network in Europe, his colleagues at home were start-
ing to worry that the global ambitions of the International Section were alien-
ating the party from its African American base. While Cleaver was convinced
that Black America could only be liberated once the US government lost its
superpower status, the Oakland-based Panthers increasingly felt that his diplo-
matic efforts distracted the party from its commitments at home. Of all
Cleaver’s comrades, founder and chairman Huey Newton proved to be his
gaf ons Geweldige Shock,” Trouw, Oct. , ; “Vrijheidsschool: Op de Bres voor
Scholieren en Zuidmolukkers,” Tubantia, Oct. , .
“Z.-Molukkers Hielden Huis in de Hoofdstad,” De Telegraaf, Nov. , .
“Zuidmolukkers op Oorlogspad,” De Tijd, Nov. , ; “Net Geen Geweld bij
Demonstratie voor Z.-Molukken,” NRC Handelsblad, Nov. , ; “Trams en Auto’s
Beschadigd bij Demonstratie van Zuidmolukkers,” Leeuwarder Courant, Nov. , ;
“Zuidmolukkers in Actie voor ‘Helden van Wassenaar’,” Tubantia, Nov. , ;
“Onrustige Betoging van Jonge Zuidmolukkers,” NRC Handelsblad, Nov. , .
It is unclear which British Black Panther advocates spoke at the event. According to Dutch
intelligence officers, both Michael X and Kathleen Cleaver were supposed to be there, but
neither seems to have been present.
“The Best Place to Help the Panthers Is at Home”
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fiercest opponent. Several months after his release from prison in , the
party’s founder decided to stir the BPP back in the direction of community
service. From his perspective, tackling child hunger, building medical facilities,
and ending police brutality in poor Black communities were much more ben-
eficial to the survival of his people than “waiting for a revolution that might
never come or depending on international allies thousands of miles
away.”
This sentiment was shared by chief of staff David Hilliard, who
believed that the revolutionary ideals of the International Section were unreal-
istic. “When we begin our attack who’s going to join us?” Hilliard wrote in his
autobiography. “Party comrades will jump off the moon if Huey tells them to.
Our allies won’t.”
The FBI cleverly played into the question of transnational alliances in its
efforts to sabotage the Panthers. In its forged correspondence between the
party’s headquarters in Oakland and the International Section in Algiers,
the bureau repeatedly suggested to Newton that Cleaver was undermining
his authority, while implying to Cleaver that Newton did not respect his
work abroad. As historian Robyn C. Spencer has shown, Matthews inadvert-
ently played an important role in these strategies. Following her successful
work for the party in Europe, the International Coordinator had spent
some time in the United States, where she had become more involved in
the Oakland chapter of the party, working closely with Newton. “Now a
close associate of both Cleaver and Newton,” Spencer writes, “she was used
by the FBI in their plan to ‘create doubts’ about people close to
Cleaver.”
By the time the Panthers realized how the bureau had used
Matthews to foster internal hostilities, the damage had already been done, as
Newton expelled both Matthews and Cleaver from the party in .
When all of this took place, it was already clear that the European solidarity
network had chosen his side in the dispute. Over the spring of , many
former Black Panther supporters laid down their Black Panther work and
instead joined Eldridge and Kathleen’s new organization, the Revolutionary
People’s Communications Network (RPCN). Though short-lived, the
RPCN came to rely heavily on the Cleavers’ contacts in France and West
Germany, but also involved Van den Bergh, who had built close friendships
with both Matthews and Kathleen Cleaver over the preceding years.
Between and , the former BPSC and Freedom School leader regu-
larly traveled back and forth between the Netherlands and Algeria to supply
Malloy, Out of Oakland, .
David Hilliard and Lewis Cole, This Side of Glory: The Autobiography of David Hilliard and
the Story of the Black Panther Party (New York: Lawrence Hill Books, ), , cited in
Bloom and Martin, .
Spencer, The Revolution Has Come, .
Debby Esmeé de Vlugt
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the International Section with money, technical equipment, and other materi-
als.
She was even staying with the Cleavers during Eldridge’s formal expul-
sion on live television and later traveled to the US to distribute a videotaped
interview with him in an effort to persuade members of the BPP to join the
RPCN.
Van den Bergh, as well as several other European activists, contin-
ued to stay in touch with the Cleavers until Eldridge went underground in
Paris in and abandoned his pursuit of a revolution for good.
Though the Black Panther Party itself continued to exist for another
decade, the Cleavers’ departure marked an end to three years of European soli-
darity with the organization. The solidarity network had formally taken took
off in , the year in which Seale and Hewitt toured Scandinavia, Matthews
was appointed international coordinator of the party, the Cleavers established
their International Section, and Big Man embarked on his European journey.
While European support was always marginal in the greater scheme of Black
Panther activism, as the relative absence of the continent in the historiography
alludes, these efforts do show how Black radicals strategically pursued new and
perhaps unexpected alliances to support themselves financially and politically.
This was quite unique both in the context of the Black Power movement,
where white involvement was typically rejected, and in the context of
European solidarity, where activists rarely had any direct contact with those
they organized for, much less operated under their supervision.
Although the Dutch branch of the European solidarity network never
became as successful as its Scandinavian and West German counterparts, its
history still provides some critical insights into the dynamics of the
Panthers’ transatlantic project. Within a matter of months after its founding,
the BPSC and its partners managed to bring together hundreds of activists
from around the Netherlands to support the Black radicals, using their profes-
sional expertise in the media to their advantage. In embracing the Panthers’
ideology of revolutionary nationalism, they were able to create a meaningful
Kathleen Cleaver, daily reports, Feb. – April , daily reports, by Kathleen
Cleaver, communications secretary , , Carton , Folder , International
Section Subseries, Black Panther Party Series, Eldridge Cleaver Papers, Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley; Paul J. Magnarella, Black Panther in Exile: The Pete
O’Neal Story (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, ), .
Peter Sachs Collopy, “The Revolution Will Be Videotaped: Making a Technology of
Consciousness in the Long s,” PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, ,
–; Lily van den Bergh, “Ondergang of Vernieuwing van een Revolutionaire
Partij?”, De Groene, May , ; correspondence between Lily van den Bergh and
Kathleen Cleaver, Nov. , July , Van den Bergh, Lily, Carton , Folder ,
International Section Subseries, Black Panther Party Series, Cleaver Papers; Videofreex,
“CBS – Lily and Cleaver Tapes,” video, ::, March , Video Data Ban, at
www.vdb.org/collection/browser-artist-list/cbs-lily-and-cleaver-tapes.
“The Best Place to Help the Panthers Is at Home”
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875823000427 Published online by Cambridge University Press
partnership between the Black Power movement, the Dutch New Left, and the
local anticolonial movement. This triangular alliance allowed activists in the
Netherlands to directly support the African American freedom struggle
from afar, while also challenging the increasing influence of the US in Cold
War Europe and confronting their own colonial legacies in the Caribbean
and Southeast Asia. At the same time, it shows how internal disputes over soli-
darity practices led to the local movement’s demise just as rapidly. Though
some former members found new causes to support, with both Meulenbelt
and Van den Bergh becoming leading figures in the Palestinian solidarity
movement, others were never involved in such projects again.
It is difficult to determine what the Dutch solidarity movement truly
managed to do for the Panthers. Politically, it is safe to say that neither the
BPSC nor the Freedom School was able to achieve much. Despite well-
attended protests at the US consulate, it does not seem like the solidarity acti-
vists were able to change the relationship between the Netherlands and the
United States in any way. In fact, there is no proof that American or Dutch
officials even informed the US government of the Black Panther protests in
Amsterdam. At the level of Dutch colonialism, the BPSC had slightly more
impact, albeit minimal. With money gathered for the BPP, the committee
was able to offer anticolonial activists in the Netherlands some relief, but
only after they had already been arrested. Moreover, by drawing clear compar-
isons between the African American, Caribbean, and Moluccan struggles, the
committee brought conversations about racism to the forefront of the Dutch
New Left, though not always without biases on their own side. Perhaps the
main contribution Dutch activists made to the Panthers themselves was
financial. Based on Big Man’sreflections in his autobiography, the
Oakland-based Panthers actively used the allies’ donations to fund legal assist-
ance for imprisoned members.
Likewise, the Cleavers received considerable
material aid from their European allies and used this to strengthen and expand
their Algerian base. One could even argue that the allies did their job too well,
as the growing influence of the International Section would eventually pave
the way for Cleaver’s expulsion from the party.
Realistically, however, too little is known about the European solidarity
network to truly determine its significance in the broader history of the
BPP. Future research would have to examine how exactly the European
network was organized, how the different solidarity committees were con-
nected to each other, and how they were able to support the International
Section on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. After all, this article has
been the first to show that an overarching network even existed, leaving
Howard, Panther on the Prowl, .
Debby Esmeé de Vlugt
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875823000427 Published online by Cambridge University Press
plenty of room for further inquiry. Particularly interesting would be a study of
Afro-European involvement in this network, which was unlikely to be limited
to the Dutch context. It would be worth exploring how these activists viewed
their own connections to the African American party and how they related to
those who identified with the BPP in a different capacity, such as the Black
Panther Movement in the United Kingdom, which was not established by
but after the example of the American organization. This would create a
deeper understanding of the European solidarity network, which, despite its
brief existence, was never homogeneous and was always in motion.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Debby Esmeé de Vlugt is a Lecturer in the History of International Relations at Utrecht
University and a PhD Candidate at the Institute for History at Leiden University. Her research
explores the transnational history of the Black Power movement, focussing in particular on
Black Power activism in the Dutch Atlantic. Earlier versions of this article were presented at
the British Association for American Studies Postgraduate Conference and the
HOTCUS Winter Symposium. Special thanks go out to both audiences, as well as her
former colleagues at the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies and the peer reviewers
from the Journal of American Studies, for their feedback. Finally, she would like to acknowledge
Dr. Peter Sachs Collopy and the family of Lily van den Bergh for their help in gaining access to
some invaluable archival materials.
“The Best Place to Help the Panthers Is at Home”
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875823000427 Published online by Cambridge University Press
