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“If Bunchy had been on the same plantation as Nat Turner you can believe he would have rode with Nat Turner. That’s the type of person Bunchy was.” Kumasi
NBC television has resurrected Al Prentice “Bunchy” Carter with a new series called "Aquarius." The imperialist media has brought back both Carter and Charles Manson. Carter was an iconic black revolutionary from Los Angeles. Manson was a cold-blooded serial killer who led the Manson Family that murdered many in California. Somehow Hollyweird has united these two polar opposites for television. It is not that weird when we understand that these forces are part of the state, whose job it is to keep Africa, Africans and all oppressed people confused.
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Gerald Horne, who wrote the volume “Confronting Black Jacobins: The U.S., the Haitian Revolution, and the Origins of the Dominican Republic,” taught Carter’s daughter Danon at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has written extensively on Hollywood. Horne says Hollywood has done a number on Africans in America, from “Birth of a Nation” to “Gone With The Wind,” depicting black women as mammies, servants and sex objects.
Linden Beckford, Jr. a graduate of Grambling University is currently writing a biography of Carter. Unlike Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver and George Jackson, Carter has almost been forgotten from the history of Africans in America except for die hards. Yes, the Fugees (Wyclef Jean, Lauryn Hill, and Pras Michel) mention Carter on the 1996 soundtrack film “When We Were Kings” about the famous ”Rumble in the Jungle” heavyweight championship match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman which took place in 1974. And yes M-1 and Stickman (dead prez) did “B.I.G. respect,” a song on their Mixtape “Turn off the Radio" that mentions Carter. But that is about it.
Who were Carter and John Huggins and why are they important for the 21st Century?
Carter was assassinated on January 17th, 1967, along with John Huggins (February 11, 1945– January 17, 1969) at Campbell Hall at UCLA in Los Angeles.
The team of Carter and Huggins are interesting for several reasons. Number one, Carter was born in Louisiana but was made in Los Angeles. Huggins was born on the other side of the country in New Haven, Connecticut. Number two, Carter was a product of the black proletariat, while Huggins was from the black middle class. One of Huggins’ aunts, Constance Baker Motley (September 14, 1921-September 28, 2005), was an African born in America whose parents hailed from Nevis in the Caribbean. She was a lawyer, judge, state senator and Borough President of Manahan, New York. Huggins committed class suicide – he and Carter had no problem working together.
It is a tragic coincidence in history that eight years before Carter and Huggins joined the ancestors the first democratically elected president of the Congo, Patrice Emery Lumumba, Joseph Okito, vice-president of the Senate and Maurice Mpolo sports and youth minister were killed by an unholy alliance of the CIA, Belgian imperialism, and other agents of imperialism headed by Mobuto Sese Seko Ngbendu Wa Za Banga aka Colonel Joseph Mobuto on January 17, 1961.
Carter and Huggins were gunned down by members of the cultural nationalist "US Organization." An FBI memo dated November 29, 1968, described a letter that the Los Angeles FBI office intended to mail to the Black Panther Party office. This letter, which was made to appear as if it had come from the US Organization, described fictitious plans by US to ambush BPP members. The FBI memo stated that “It is hoped this counterintelligence measure will result in an ‘US’ and BPP vendetta."
Many feel that the leader of US, Ron Karenga, was working for the other side. An article in the Wall Street Journal described Karenga as a thriving businessman specializing in gas stations who maintained close ties to the eastern Rockefeller family and L.A’s Mayor.
Michael Newton pointed out in the volume “Bitter Grain: Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party” a Wall Street Journal article which said, “A few weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King … Mr. Karenga slipped into Sacramento for a private chat with Governor Reagan, at the governor’s request. The black nationalist also met clandestinely with Los Angeles police chief Thomas Reddin after Mr. King was killed.”
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At that moment in history, many cultural nationalists maintained that the cultural revolution must take place before a political one could proceed. Huey P. Newton, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party, countered with the view that, “We believe that culture itself will not liberate us. We’re going to need some stronger stuff.”
The Black Panther Party led by Newton and Bobby Seale was like the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC). It was an anti-imperialist alliance. Many, like Carter, embraced revolutionary nationalism, while others like Newton, George Jackson and Fred Hampton took a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist (MLM) position. Hampton openly said he was fighting for socialism leading to communism.
Carter was a firm supporter of the Native American struggle. It was Carter who changed Elmer Pratt into Geronimo ji-Jaga Pratt (September 13, 1947–June 2, 2011) after the great Native American warrior. Geronimo (June 1829–February 17, 1909), or “the one who yawns,” was a prominent Apache leader who fought against Mexico and Arizona for their expansion into Apache tribal lands for several decades during the Apache Wars. Geronimo replaced Carter as the Deputy Minister of Defense of the Southern California Chapter of the BPP after Carter was taken out. Carter left a memo saying his wish was for Geronimo to replace him.
Carter was never known as an anti-Communist. Before joining the Party, Carter was recruited by Raymond “Maasi” Hewitt to a Maoist study group called the Red Guard. I was a part of the same group. However, Carter came in after I left Los Angeles. Carter was influenced by Jean-Jacques Dessalines of Haiti and Dedan Kimathi of the Land and Freedom Army (so-called Mau Mau). The Los Angeles Chapter under Bunchy’s leadership required that members take the Mau Mau Oath.
Here is the Mau Mau Oath:
“I speak the truth and vow before God
And before this movement.
The movement of Unity,
The Unity which is put to the test
The Unity that is mocked with the name of 'Mau Mau.'
That I shall go forward to fight for the land,
The lands of Kirinyaga that we cultivated.
The lands which were taken by the Europeans
And if I fail to do this
May this oath kill me
May this seven kill me,
May this meat kill me”
Carter and a small segment of people who lived in my area of Los Angeles had an international world view. He was a legendary figure in my neighborhood. After he was released from prison he attended Los Angeles City College. Carter was my senior and I didn’t meet him until he was released from jail.
He and others like Sigidi Abdullah from S.O.S Band of “Take Your Time (Do It Right),” Rhongea Southern (now Daar Malik El-Bey) who worked closely with Abdullah, Earl Randall, who went on to work with Willie Mitchell at Hi Records and wrote Al Green’s “God Bless Our Love,” Fred Goree who became Masai Karega Kenyatta and a DJ on WCHB 1440AM in Detroit, all went to L.A.C.C. at the same time. Sigidi told me that Carter asked him to organize a talent show at L.A.C.C.
I remember singing the Spinners' “I’ll Always Love You” at this event. El-Bey was my guitarist. Carter’s political consciousness was raised before he joined the Black Panther Party according to Kumasi, who Huey P. Newton asked to replace Carter as the leader of the Southern California Chapter of the BPP.
Says Kumasi, “When Malcolm X first came to Los Angeles he built the first outpost right there in our neighborhood. The Mosque (Temple 27) itself was close to us and all of us had visited the Mosque. As a matter of fact Bunchy and many of the Renegade Slausons (Bunchy had his own set of Slausons inside the Slausons) were the first youth Fruit of Islam (FOI) in LA. Carter was only 15 years old at that moment of history."
Carter was a 20th Century Renaissance man. He was great at many things and was a poet and a singer. Elaine Brown has written that many Panthers sang together: “John (Huggins) sang bass to my contralto and Bunchy’s falsetto.” Brown pointed out in her autobiography, "A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story,” how the trio use to sing the Young Hearts' “I’ve Got Love for my Baby.” He was also a great dancer. David Hilliard maintains that if it were not for racism Carter may have become an Olympic swimmer.
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Brown says while all this is true, Carter was first and foremost a revolutionary. This is extraordinary if you consider that Carter suffered a childhood bout of polio, and moved to Southern Central LA, where his mother Nola Carter enrolled him in a “therapeutic” dance class. Carter’s Louisiana-born mother is still in the land of the living at the time of this writing.
She is almost a century old and has lost two sons. Arthur Morris, Carter’s older step brother who acted as Carter’s bodyguard. Morris was the first member of the BPP to lose his life. He was killed in March of 1968. Little Bobby Hutton, who was influenced by Carter, was killed on April 6, 1968. Her youngest son, Kenneth Fati Carter, is currently locked down in Corcoran State Prison in California.
The mother of Raymond Nat Turner (Black Agenda Report’s poet-in-residence), Caffee Greene, hired Carter to work at the Teen Post in Los Angeles. Greene first hired Raymond “Maasi” Hewitt, who was replaced by Carter. It was at the Teen Post that I first heard Eldridge Cleaver speak. Cleaver and Carter were both Nation of Islam Ministers in prison.
Turner saw the cultural side of Carter. Turner would say, “Yeah, I heard Bunchy sing Stevie’s 'I’m Wondering' and 'I Was Made to Love Her' and I used to hear Tommy (Lewis) play piano at the Teen Post my mom directed." He continued, “It was also fun to watch Bunchy dance—Philly Dog, Jerk & Twine ... a lil’ ‘Bitter Dog’ with the Philly Dog ever once in a while ... 'Bebop Santa from the Cool North Pole' and 'Black Mother' were also great to hear.” Tommy Lewis, Robert Lawrence and Steve Bartholomew were murdered by the Los Angeles police at a service station on August 25, 1968.
Kumasi opines that Carter and George Jackson were like Henri Christophe and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. While they were well-versed in history, revolutionary theory, and current events, both were soldiers ready to take to the battlefield. Carter made a contribution to Africa, Africans and oppressed humanity. We should remember him every October 12th.
Norman (Otis) Richmond, aka Jalali, was born in Arcadia, Louisiana, and grew up in Los Angeles. He went on to be published in the Toronto Star, the Toronto Globe & Mail, the National Post, the Jackson Advocate, Share, the Islander, the Black American, Pan African News Wire, and Black Agenda Report. Internationally, he has written for the United Nations, the Jamaican Gleaner, the Nation (Barbados), and Pambazuka News.Currently, he produces Diasporic Music a radio show for Uhuru Radio and writes a column, Diasporic Music for the Burning Spear Newspaper. For more information, email norman.o.richmond@gmail.com
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