mark weiner and mark s weiner and black trials and rutgers

I did learn some helpful things in his Brown chapter, even though it is flawed in so many obvious ways. So I decided to read the last three chapters of the book, on Huey Newton, the Clarence Thomas "trial," and Mumia Abu-Jamal. Actually, though the book is about "Black Trials," and Weiner claims to have a very precise concept in mind when he refers to them (p.5), he really doesn't spend much time on the trials themselves. In addition, it is arguable whether you should characterize Clarence Thomas' confirmation hearings as a "trial." Well, I think he is after "episodes" in the history of Black Americans that illustrate the changing nature of law and the changing way that African Americans have been excluded or accepted into the mainstream of American life. And, he is better at telling a story than in giving us a history lesson or, in fact, limning legal issues. But let's look briefly at the last three chapters.

Huey Newton

Huey Newton entered my consciouness when I was not very able to understand him. I moved with my family from a comfortable Connecticut suburb of NYC to the SF Bay area in August 1967 when I was a fifteen year-old high school sophomore. A product of more than a dozen generations of Puritans from New England, I was ill-equipped to understand the rage, the violence and the outspoken words centering around the "Black Power" movement that was emerging at the time. Even today, almost forty years later, I still remember the race riots at my high school in September 1967, resulting in school closure, the controvery over the Presbyterian Church's (of which I was a member) giving Angela Davis's defense fund $10,000 in 1971, and the 1970 shootout outside a Marin County jail that left a judge and one of the Jackson brothers, among others, killed and injured. And, this was all in the time when the "Summer of Love" had just happened in SF. Who wouldn't have been confused, even if you had lived in the Bay Area all your life?

Thus, I was grateful to Weiner for telling the story of Huey Newton (b.1942), the youngest of seven children in a family which came to Oakland during WWII from Louisiana, who graduated from HS in 1959 and then enrolled at Merritt College in Oakland (a JC) shortly thereafter. He studied philosophy and met Bobby Seale at Merritt. Together they would begin a movement for "The brothers on the block"--black men, largely unemployed, who were vulnerable not simply to the despair of jobless urban living, but also to the depredations and abuse of the Oakland police department. Weiner's treatment is marked by ample discussion not simply of Huey's legal problems (conviction for killing an Oakland police officer) but of his philosophy of "revolutionary suicide." Though his discussion of "political trials" on pp.310-11 was anything but clear to me, he rather effectively showed the way that radical (white) lawyer Charles Garry put on a spirited defense of Newton for the 1967 killing of an Oakland police officer so that he was convicted only of manslaughter and not murder.

Problems with the Treatment of Newton

But then the unclarities begin to surface. Weiner mentions that Newton was commited to Marxism-Leninism, a commitment that turned him against many black political organizations. Then, in parentheses he says, "Communists veiwed the Panthers as an inevitable outgrowth of American exploitation" (p.308). Huh? So, I guess he is trying to differentiate Newton's "Marxist-Leninism" from Communism because if he was a Communist the Communists would have considered the Black Panthers to be fellow-travelers? Is that right? He confused me, and he really didn't need to.

The confusions continue. When Newton was convicted of manslaughter and not murder (making him subject to a sentence of between two and fifteen years--though he never tells us how long the sentence was), Newton said "Manslaughter, not murder. That was a surprise" (p.315). In other words, Newton had seemingly expected a murder verdict, because of the racism of "the system." Nevertheless, Weiner goes on to say that there was a lot of dissastisfaction and anger in the Black community. I guess they wanted an acquittal. Is that what Weiner is trying to say? So, Huey expected a murder conviction but the troops expected acquittal and he got manslaughter? Or maybe he means that Newton expected to be acquitted. Sorry, I tend to read texts closely, and this bamboozled me.

Then, on Newton's retrial he mentions that one of the claims of the defense was that the judge had erroneously neglected to advise jurors that they were entitled to choose between judgments of involuntary and voluntary manslaughter (p.318). Then he says, "Though based on a technical distinction, the claim in fact went to the heart of how Newton's case was perceived by the radical left. Had Newton killed Officer Frey voluntarily, or rather in an act of self-defense conditioned by years of white racism? In the difference hung the whole legal theory of black militancy--its notion of black power, of black self-determination, and of long-standing black civic subjugation by American law enforcement" (p.318). So, is the "whole legal theory" of black militancy based on the notion that every act of a black person must be self-defense? I think that is what he is saying. But then, the notion of black power and black self-determination, which is the foundation of black militancy, suggests not only that "we shall overcome" but that 'we are sufficienct to shape our future destiny.' I am confused. It is as if someone had said to me in a phone conversation, "Listen up, Bill, I am going to tell you the most important point," and then the line was overtaken by static. So that is the impression I get here. Weiner tells a very good story, but when he has to be clear on legal or historical issues he becomes weak and like any other man, to quote the Scriptures.

Speaking of the Scriptures, Weiner mentions that the biblical tradition was one of the three shaping influences of black consciousness in these trials (p.5). And so, when discussing Newton's trial, he refers to Charles Garry's stirring appeal to Matt. 10:34, where Christ says, "Think not that I come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." Christ urged his disciples to take swords not to attack but to defend themselves. Garry continued: "Huey Newton is saying to the black community and black ghetto there has got to be times when you will have to defend yourselves...(p.313)." Then, in trying to interpret this passage, Weiner remarks, "Had Newton murdered Officer Frey? Garry's implicit answer: was not Christ crucified?" (p.314). I don't follow Weiner's reference here at all. To the question, "was not Christ crucified," one has to expect a "yes" answer. Christ certainly was crucified, just as certainly as Fred Vincent died in September 1953. So, you must also expect a "yes" answer to the first rhetorical question. But Weiner wants a "no" answer, it appears. So, the full point of Garry's eloquence was lost because of the bumbling way that Weiner tries to understand the passage.

Conclusion

I think I have said enough. I don't want to take the time to review what he says about the Hill-Thomas debate or about Mumia Abu-Jamal. You get the drift of my review. It confirms for me that people ought not, in general, to write books because books are too difficult to write. They ought to confine themselves to brief essays where they can say what they want to say with clarity. For, when you give someone like Mark Weiner a book in which to say something, he will say some very very good things, to be sure, but he will mar his treatment every few pages--which is just about the time that his briefer essays ought to have ended.

1127