In December 1966, 16-year-old Bobby Hutton became the Black Panthers’ very first recruit. But on April 6, 1968, two days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Hutton would also become the first Panther to be killed by police.
His family had fled from Arkansas to Oakland when he was a toddler to escape threats from KKK affiliates. And so the youngest Panther, affectionately nicknamed “Lil’ Bobby,” was hungry to fight anti-Black oppression in California, too.
That’s exactly what he was fighting for on that day in 1968, when things went terribly wrong.
As the nation raged after King’s death, Hutton and 32-year-old Eldridge Cleaver ended up in a shootout from an apartment basement with bloodthirsty police. After 90 minutes, Hutton stripped down to his underwear and came out of the building, hands up in surrender.
It wasn’t until 1980 that Cleaver admitted HE spearheaded the ambush against the Oakland police that got Hutton killed, not the other way around. He had been expelled from the BPP years prior, while Hutton never made it to his 30th birthday.
Law enforcement is still a hazard to our children. It’s OUR responsibility to protect, educate, and uplift Black youth – to build the world Hutton hoped for, one where youth are our future, not our martyrs.