You cannot look at the success of black people by seeing who is on the front of Ebony magazine or by looking at Oprah. When you consider that only 1 … - Elaine Brown

A women in the Black Power movement was considered, at best, irrelevant. A woman asserting herself was a pariah. A woman attempting the role of leadership was, to my proud black Brothers, making an alliance with the "counter-revolutionary, man-hating, lesbian, feminist white bitches." It was a violation of some Black Power principle that was left undefined. If a black woman assumed a role of leadership, she was said to be eroding black manhood, to e hindering the progress of the black race. She was an enemy of black people.

Oakland is the birthplace of this party. Oakland will be the birthplace of revolution in the United States. And that will be so despite the pigs. It will be so despite any petty despots who claim to be our comrades. It will be so despite the criticism of the infantile leftists, who have accomplished nothing. It will be done despite the voodoo drums of the so-called Black Nationalists.

A post-war anti-Communist paranoia was constructed by J. Edgar Hoover, a friend and manipulator of every president since the 1920's. It flared in the machinations of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), formerly the Dies Committee. It spread like the proverbial prairie fire, fanned by the shameful Senate hearings conducted by Hoover's close friend Joseph McCarthy.