Tag: Elmer Pratt

Oct. 12 is the birthday of one of the most talented and promising young men martyred in the massive state repression against the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, Alprentice “Bunchy” 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 diehards. Carter, then 26 (born Oct. 12, 1942), was assassinated on Jan. 17, 1969 in a Campbell Hall classroom at UCLA in Los Angeles.

Back in the ‘60s, the founders of the Black nationalist Black Panther Party told white radicals asking to join the BPP to go found their own party. Thus, the White Panther Party was born. The WPP was generally viewed as a far lesser threat than the BPP to national security by various national and local police organizations in the United States. However, actions taken by members of the WPP, whether alleged or actual, did serve to expose the FBI’s widespread illegal wiretapping of the BPP’s phones.

In the Louisiana bayou, a descendent of slaves was born into the Pratt clan, whose entire community suffered under racial apartheid. Since Pratt was a strong and thoughtful boy, his community encouraged him to shoulder the task of working to help defend the downtrodden who surrounded him.