3 | Like A Boss | The Women of the Black Panther Party
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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Black History for Real early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. All right. I got a serious question for you. Hit me. We all had that one song to get us in the boss mode. You know, when you got a big presentation at work or a podcast episode to do.

What's the song that gets you feeling yourself? The song continues to change, but right now I'm still flying off that Renaissance high and it's got to be all up in your mind. I would sing it, but I don't think we got the rights. I don't think we can afford it. Not them Beyonce coins, not them Beyonce coins at all. But you know what?

I think Elaine Brown, the first and only woman to lead the Black Panther Party, would have appreciated some Miss Beyonce who run the World Girls quarter. I can imagine her popping into her little 8-track club, picking her afro, and preparing herself to deal with the constant criticism of her leadership. But you know what? I'm going to let you tell it. Let's get into some Black history for real.

It's August 1974. Black Panther Party members from across the country pack a room inside an Oakland meeting house. The air is thick with anticipation. Anxious murmurs ripple through the crowd, carrying nervous discussions about why they were all summoned. Finally, a small group of burly men file onto the stage. It's probably no accident that their pistols are barely hidden under their jackets for everyone to see. The message is received, and the talk dies down.

And how timeless that there's usually a way to get a message across. Once security is in place, a skinny, model-esque woman with a big afro struts across the stage onto the podium. Her name is Elaine Brown, and it's critical that there be no room for her looks nor her gender to mislead the sea of militant men staring up at her. You mean to tell me pretty women that's beautiful can't just be pretty and beautiful?

Well, you know, conscious, I got to say, is a self-identified LSH late stage hottie. I can confirm it is possible. You like that one? You like that one? Hey, I like that right there. I think you should. You should. If it ain't been copyrighted yet, go put it on a T-shirt. Listen, put it on a T-shirt. Put it on a magnet. I can confirm that it is possible to be both hot and smart.

That said, Elaine's well aware of the patriarchal bias that has infested the otherwise radical Black Liberation Organization. Despite her relatively long and effective history within the Panthers, she knows it'll be no walk in the park to get them to accept her as the first woman to lead the entire organization, especially since many have been questioning her background and motives. She takes the microphone and jumps right in.

The other fact is, I'm taking his place until we make it possible for him to return. The uncomfortable rumblings return. One of the security guards pulls his coat back to flash his gun, but Elaine waves him to stand down. Her voice grows steadier.

Oh, shit.

So in other words, she really came in like, don't test my gangster. Get down and lay down. Whoever got something to say about it, this is what you can do. Oh, she was not messing around. The murmurs erupt into full voices, but Elaine hears something else that boosts her confidence. Cheers and applause. Despite some objections, the members are overwhelmingly on board with the succession plan that the party's founder, Huey P. Newton, has left in place.

Elaine will have to deal with the hissing later, but she is determined to deal with it along with everything else that is plaguing the organization. By 1974, the party had been hollowed out by arrests, exiles, and murders by the police. And Huey's own escape to Cuba to avoid murder charges has now led to Elaine's ascension. The party is hanging on by a thread.

Elaine will have to battle mistrust about her past and the deeply ingrained sexism from within its ranks only amplifies that mistrust. She'll also have to take on the escalating police violence against the organization, all in order to continue its mission of fighting for Black liberation.

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From Wondery, this is Black History for Real, where we chronicle the stories of movers and shakers from Black history all over the world. The stories will inspire you, educate you, and more often than not, leave you shaking your damn heads. I'm Francesca Ramsey.

And I'm Consciously. Continuing our four-part series of Women of the Black Panther Party, today we're telling the story of Elaine Brown. Elaine was the first and only elected chairwoman of the Black Panther Party.

Her appointment was not only a crucial moment for women in the Black Panther movement, but also inspired conversations about gender equality within other Black organizations. That's because all of the heaviest hidden civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, were

were male-led. Not only did Elaine encounter misogyny at every turn, her reign was constantly threatened by other party members who distrusted her background and disagreed with her push for more female representation in the ranks, which eventually led to a monumental showdown. This is episode three, Like a Boss. Like a boss.

It's 1965, and 22-year-old Elaine Brown hums a calming tune to herself as she weaves through a crowd of salivating men at the Pink Pussycat Club in Hollywood. She's just moved from her hometown of Philadelphia after dropping out of Temple University to pursue a music career.

To make ends meet, Elaine works in the strip club as a cocktail waitress. Elaine artfully dodges yet another handsy patron by balancing a tray of drinks. She wonders if she's made a mistake, especially with everything else going on in the world.

Los Angeles has barely recovered from the massive unrest of the watch rods after a black 21-year-old and his mother were beaten in broad daylight. The city erupted in the protests, which sometimes turned violent. And the city's unrest has left Elaine feeling a little guilty. Injustice is swirling around her, and here she is dreaming of being a singer.

Meanwhile, her career is going nowhere. As Elaine carefully places down a martini glass, a man interrupts her. You've got a beautiful voice. Elaine Demure is caught off guard. She'd almost forgotten she'd been humming. She looks up to see a handsome, older white guy with a piercing gaze that never leaves her face, despite the other very ample eye candy present.

She offers a polite thank you and goes to turn away, but he grabs her arm. Normally she'd pull away, but it's a gentler touch than usual. The man notices the look on her face and apologizes. Another surprise. She lowers her guard a little bit more. He introduces himself. Working. He laughs as if she's the funniest person in the world.

Jay tells her she should be working as a singer. And he should know since he's a music executive. You don't really want to be slinging drinks forever, do you? Taking it back, Elaine struggles to answer. What does she really want? Jay claims to work with the likes of Harry Belafonte and Frank Sinatra.

Elaine rolls her eyes. Yeah, right. At a nearby table, two bystanders argue about the recent Watts riots, interrupting Elaine and Jay's conversation. Jay turns to the bystander with a gentle correction. What's happening in Watts is an uprising, not a riot. It's an important distinction. Elaine raises an eyebrow, impressed but also intrigued. Suddenly, Jay's not like any white man she's ever met.

The bartender yells for Elaine to get back to work, and she suddenly realizes she's been wrapped up with Jay for some time. She says she has to go, and he asks her to meet him when her shift is over. She would usually say no, but right now she's thinking about how she feels stuck, and how in just a few minutes, he's got her pondering the importance of language, how it can change the world, and how she really wants out of this life. So she thinks, what the hell, why not?

Although Jay Richard Kennedy is married and 30 years her senior, he and Elaine quickly begin a whirlwind affair. Turns out Jay really is a music executive who's worked with Belafonte and Frank Sinatra and also has ties to FDR. Of course, Elaine is impressed.

But it's his left-wing activism that's reeled her in as her life goals begin to come into focus. Jay teaches Elaine all about the civil rights movement, capitalism, and communism. Through their relationship, she begins to realize that her blossoming passion for social justice reinforces why she wants to be an artist in the first place, to elevate people.

As her ambition grows, she's inspired to seek a bigger role in the Black liberation movement, which is becoming more radicalized with the emergence of organizations like the Black Panther Party. But as much as these radical changes entice Elaine, they're beginning to disturb Jay.

He believes that the Soviet and the Chinese governments are attempting to infiltrate the civil rights movement and use it to their own ends. And while he may be more progressive than most, he's still a rich white man. And he's not exactly comfortable with black communists taking up arms. When Jay Spears began to take form of undermining the movement,

many started to rightfully suspect him of being a CIA informant. Elaine and Jay eventually break up, but she continues using what she learned under his wing when she later became the editor for the African American newspaper Harambe. So, it's really hard for me to not think that he really was playing her. It feels a little bit too convenient. He starts talking to her about progressive stuff, but

But then very quickly is like, wait a second, not that kind of liberation. Don't do it that way. No, definitely. Definitely. I feel like if we if we incite and, you know, I mean, like, like, you know, what some would call hood politics, it would fall under, you know, cooperating with a Fed or a snitch or CIA informant because he obviously was one. Yeah.

Yeah. It just sounds too good to be true. Like, it is the classic quote-unquote white savior. Like, he swoops in. He's like, you got talent, girl. Also, you should have rights. Just kidding. Not those kind of rights. And not only that, like, I feel like I'll, like...

sounds the alarm in a way or gaslights like maybe they're trying to infiltrate your movement like look at you yeah it's like he's literally saying the quiet part out loud as if to like evade suspicion do you think the accusations against elaine brown being an informant are credible

No. I think considering how much good she did for the movement and how she put her life on the line to stand up for what she believed in, just don't think about something that an informant would do. I think to be an informant, I think you have to be a good actor and you have to be good at lying. And nothing about Elaine's politics strike me as insincere.

It's 1968 and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has just been assassinated in Memphis. As the horror sends shockwaves through the movement, it inspires Elaine to attend her first Black Panther party meeting. Just months after King's assassination, Panther founder Huey Newton is convicted of killing an Oakland police officer during a traffic stop. He's sentenced to two to 15 years in prison.

But it doesn't stop Elaine from becoming a rank-and-file member. She's increasingly determined to make a change. You can usually find the enthusiastic young comrade studying revolutionary literature, selling Panther newspapers, and cleaning guns. It's 1968, and Elaine is sitting with her teeth clenched inside the office of a superior at the Black Panther Party headquarters. It's taken weeks to get this meeting on the books, and she's already beginning to feel like it's a waste of time.

She's been trying to explain the importance of investing more time and effort into a promising new program the party has been organizing. Launching soon in Oakland, the free breakfast program has sparked huge energy and enthusiasm among the membership.

And Elaine thinks it has the potential to revolutionize the party's image by emphasizing a multiracial, gender-neutral priority of helping kids. This and the party's other survivor programs could offer a great counterpoint to the violence that has been used to demonize the Panthers. And she has a few ideas how to market it.

The supervisor rolls his eyes. The party isn't going to change its priorities just because some little girl is having fun getting ready to serve breakfast. A lot of her superiors think Elaine should just be grateful to carry out assignments and leave strategizing to the leaders. There's a knock at the door as Elaine bites her tongue. When Huey Newton answers, she almost bites a clean off.

He's existed in her head as this larger-than-life figure, almost like a saint. Here he was, smiling at her. His conviction has just been overturned by an appeals court, and he's back as chairman of the party. Although the chairman's presence makes her a little nervous, she speaks up before the supervisor can tell her to leave. Her ideas are worth being heard, and if the supervisor won't listen to her, maybe Huey will. Elaine rattles off her talking points.

The state has largely ignored child hunger and this program could illuminate governmental shortcomings. With the right messaging, it could also prompt the state to tackle the issue themselves. There's a potential for this program to gain steam across the country, and the Panthers could use it to provide political education, exposing hungry community members to their cause.

Huey just stares at Elaine, expressionless. Her confidence falters. Maybe the doubters were right and that it's silly to think her suggestions matter here. But eventually, Huey cracks a smile.

He tells her that these are great ideas, some of which he and Bobby Seale have already started discussing themselves. Huey says they could use her help spreading them if she's interested in editing the Panthers newspaper. Are you kidding? Elaine's passion for influencing people has only just ignited. She's got big dreams, and this is just more proof that she's also got whatever it takes to achieve them.

While the Panthers were known for their militant approach to Black liberation, they also called for universal health care, education, decent housing, free medical care, and the transportation for seniors. The party, which at its height had more than 2,000 members in chapters throughout the country, created free school breakfast programs for children of all races, which fed more hungry children in the state of California. The Panthers also provided sickle cell anemia testing, legal aid, and adult education. ♪

When I was younger and I first asked my teachers in Texas who the Black Panther Party was, they told me they were the Black version of the KKK. I'm being so serious. I know you are serious, but I have to laugh because it's so ridiculous. Because if you know anything about what the KKK did...

You would never put those two in the same sentence, ever. Because, you know, the KKK is not advocating for universal health care. They're not feeding nary a child, let alone white children. They're not feeding anybody. When my teachers taught me that the Black Panther Party was the black version of the KKK, it really impacted every time I seen a visual of

that black beret, the leather, the fist on TV or movies, you know what I'm saying at all? I fucking made it where I viewed it in a bad light.

That was the goal. They wanted you to think that they were bad, that they were killers, that they were, quote unquote, anti-white, when the reality is, you know, no organization is perfect. There were clearly flaws, but they did a lot for the community. And unfortunately, a lot of that stuff was buried throughout history. Yeah, especially them getting a lot of their survival programs stolen from them or, you know, making it where, uh,

they just erased or already got stolen from while being a target. It's kind of crazy. Many of these so-called survivor programs were created and sustained by women, but women weren't always given leadership roles. Still, Elaine found the party more radical than organizations led by white feminists. The

The brothers of the Black Panthers were talking about self-determination, about caring for their families and the families of their neighbors. Here were men who were saying, listen, we are willing to take charge of our lives. We're willing to stand up. And as a child who had no father at home, they had a certain subjective appeal to my psyche and to my emotional need to say, yes, there were men in this world who cared, a Black man, who cared about the community and wanted to

do something and were willing to take it to the last degree. When I first started learning about gang culture, I learned about how a lot of the gangs, especially out in the West Coast, spun out of the taking out of leadership that came from the Black Panther Party. Yeah, the thing that I feel like I keep saying every episode, so I don't want to be a broken record here, but what's wild is that

how much things have changed over time and yet how they've stayed the same. Because we still see so many young people, especially young Black men, who are in need of father figures and the realities of the way that the Black Panthers were demonized. And yet they were able to provide so much for these young men and give them direction and give them inspiration. And that's exactly what we continue to need to this day.

It reminds me of that meme I seen during 2020 during the uprising. They kill our fathers and lock them up and they make fun of us for being fatherless. And it's something to me that always is a hit because I recognize how pathologized the black community is, but it's usually pathologized in a way where it's like, yeah, black fathers,

It's missing because black men don't want to be fathers. And it's like, son, are there deadbeats? Yes. Is it a lot more than it being deadbeats though? Yes. It's like way more complex than that. And I see that the black community usually like, you fatherless people over there.

Yeah. I mean, again, we've talked about this so many times. There are deadbeats in every single community. There are people who have children with multiple different dads in every community. But to your point, it only is pathologized when it's Black people. When we do it as a problem, when everybody else does it, they get a reality show. Yeah.

All my bars. I'm not even naming names, but y'all know who I'm talking about. We know. Hey, you, you get to get you a reality show. You, probation. You, incarceration. Elaine recalls that the Panthers' survival programs represented the beginning of breakdown within the party ranks of the roles between men and women.

You could have a thousand dialogues on gender issues, and you would have never gotten that result faster than you did by saying, look, if you love these children, if you love your people, you better get your ass up and start working in that breakfast program. Despite the male-centric leadership structure, Elaine's passion and brilliance in leading these programs allowed her to move up the ranks faster than any other woman in the party.

In addition to helping set up the first free breakfast for children program, Elaine also spearheaded the development of the party's initial free busing to prisons and free legal aid program. She later returned to her roots as a singer when she was commissioned by the party chief of staff to record a Black Power themed album, Seize the Time. And eventually she assumed the role of editor of the party's Southern California publication.

And if you're wondering whether Huey liked what he saw in the pretty young thing with those good ideas, I'll let her tell y'all in her own words. He became my lover and my leader. So the two got together not long after Huey returned from exile, which probably didn't hurt Elaine's ability to break barriers in party leadership. But even so, her talents were undeniable, and her future in the Panthers got brighter with every passing day.

It's 1971, and Elaine has rightfully claimed a place among the party's inner circle. She's won a lot of respect along the way, but there's a clear rift widening between those who agree with her position of emphasizing survival programs and those who think that this is a sign that the Panthers have become weak and feminized. Elaine sees Eldridge Cleaver, the party's minister of information, as one of her biggest obstacles. ♪

Eldridge is convinced that this new punked-out and gun-shy direction will be the death of the party. He and his wife, Kathleen, have been promoting a more aggressive stance from exile in Algeria. Based on the rhetoric Eldridge is pushing, Elaine comes to the conclusion that Kathleen is putting her role as the dutiful wife above that of the party's communications secretary.

In an attempt to settle their differences, Huey has brought Elaine to the recently liberated North African country of Algeria to meet with Eldridge. But it's not going as planned. Listen, shut up and listen. Eldridge doesn't seem to notice Huey flinching as he's raising his voice at Elaine. But Elaine doesn't flinch. Instead, she just smiles. She knows Huey and his discomfort could be the opening she needs to finish this damn debate once and for all.

Oh, man, this this this is the point where the Black Panther Party starts to visibly kind of devolve from the inside and be attacked from the out. And, you know, white people being in the movement and women's leadership in the movement were the two obstacles or the two issues that I can, you know, we know that drove the vision of the corrosion of the Black Panther Party.

Well, despite tensions running high, Elaine responds calmly. The party can't do battle with the pigs alone. Our own people are becoming afraid of us. Every time the pigs attack us, the whole community suffers. The people just aren't ready for that. The only thing holding the party and the people together is the programs.

Eldridge shoots back, bullshit. Revolution has to be won, not coddled like eggs. Nobody's put down the gun, Eldridge. But if we don't have the programs, we won't organize the people to pick up the gun. Face it, the only thing we've done so far to advance the struggle, besides losing a lot of brothers, is the programs. I don't give a fuck about some serve the people's program. When I said revolution in our time, I meant it.

You mean the revolution that will die with its secret because all the revolutionaries will have died trying? You too emotional. I should bury your words. Now it's Elaine's turn to flinch. Eldridge doesn't make idle threats. He's prone to direct them at women, but she'd hoped her status in their friendship would have protected her.

Eldridge leaves and slams the door, leaving her shaking. Elaine wishes it hadn't come to this, but at least now there's no denying Eldridge is a man who lashes out at women in fear. And he just revealed to Huey that it's this sexist fear behind all the attacks on Elaine and her initiatives rather than logic.

Man, there's nothing more that gets under a man's skin than a woman who's beautiful and smarter than him. And that is exactly what Elaine is. She'd only hoped for squashing the debate, but Huey goes a step further. Elaine is shocked when he announces he wants to expel Eldridge from the party. With Eldridge out, they'll need a new minister of information leading the party's PR efforts. And Huey knows just who to tap.

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Before Elaine was named chairman, she claims that Huey and co-founder Bobby Seale got into a bloody fight. Although Bobby denied this, he quit the party. And since Eldred's expulsion revealed a dangerous rift, this left Elaine as one of the few members of leadership that Huey could trust. So she was the natural successor when he was forced into exile. With her new title, Elaine went to work on rooting out the sexist barriers to revitalizing the party.

And although she had Huey's ear and the cleavers were gone, unfortunately, the debates about gender and the party's direction didn't end with her being appointed chairwoman, especially after Elaine and Huey broke up.

Elaine explained,

And with that being said, the feminists these days, the black feminists specifically in this time has to deal with boys claiming that they making criticisms against black feminism, but they really just surface level critiques that black feminists made against white feminists like decades ago. That's what I learned.

Just as Assata and Affini had come to understand, Elaine found that women in the party had to present themselves in a manly way in order to get ahead. She says that this further reinforced women's subordination in the party because they were not being respected for who they were as women, but rather for the masculine facade they were often forced to wear. It was also clear that, especially during the party's early years, founders had no clear plan for integrating women into the party's leadership.

So Elaine wasn't really set up for success. A woman leading the party was completely new territory and there were so many dangers she could never have foreseen. Contrary to what she told Eldridge, the party's less violent posture did little to deter police violence. In a 1969 memo, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote that the party's breakfast program

has been met with some success and has resulted in considerable favorable publicity for the party. And as such, it's potentially the greatest threats to efforts by authorities to neutralize the Black Panther Party and destroy what it stands for. Well, what I would say, Black Panther Party became the biggest domestic threat to international security.

The crowd is still buzzing as Elaine exits the stage after her first speech as chair. She knows she hasn't completely fended off the threat of mutiny, but she thinks her speech has at least calmed it. For now. Before she can even make it back to her office, a deputy approaches. She asks if it can wait, but already knows the answer before he shakes his head. He's holding important documents that just came in. These papers might prove one of the party members is a cop, another infiltrator.

Of course, the pigs was never going to stop running Huey out of the country. She grabs the documents as the deputy briefs her. He also updates her on the organization revoking their support for a new free breakfast chapter. Elaine knows if she wants the launch to be successful, she'll have to do some stern phone calls to pressure the organization to stay on board. Elaine sighs and thanks the deputy. It's time to get to work on leading the party in Turnwall.

By the time of Elaine's reign as chair, many of the party's leaders had been imprisoned or killed in shootouts with the police, including her friend Bobby Hutton, a 17-year-old kid. He was shot more than 12 times by Oakland police, despite surrendering and proving to be unarmed. To add insult to injury, he'd gone so far as to strip down to his underwear to convince the police he was not a threat. But it wasn't enough.

In 1969, 21-year-old Fred Hampton and 22-year-old Mark Clark were gunned down by Chicago police as they slept in an apartment. Elaine had inherited a party that she described as the target of the most violent aggression of police forces of America. And although battered, she said...

It was at once a lion to be tamed and a terrible sword of freedom to be honed. In August 1974, when I assumed leadership, the Black Panther Party was the only armed revolutionary organization operating inside the United States of America. But by then, Elaine could barely even remember what it felt like to give up. This organization was the key to elevating the world. She had to find new ways to keep the lion roaring.

It's election night, 1977. Elaine stares down the television with bated breath. A stone-faced Lionel Wilson sits beside her as the results from his campaign to become Oakland's first Black mayor roll in. As chair, Elaine has increased the focus on electoral politics and community service, running for Oakland City Council herself for a second time in 1975 and losing with only 44% of the vote.

At this point, she's not sure she can withstand another L. Meanwhile, there are still countless members of the organization waiting for her to make a fatal misstep. So far, the race is too close to call. Under Elaine's advisement, Wilson ran on a campaign to revitalize downtown.

Of course she wants Wilson to win. But she also needs a personal victory to reaffirm the movement still has weight, which will in turn reaffirm her support within the Black Panther Party. As the votes continue to roll in, Elaine wipes sweat from her brow. The results of tonight's election will determine if everything she's been working on has been for nothing.

Sheerholz can't believe it, but there it is, clear as day on the TV. Wilson will make history as the first Black mayor of Oakland. Everyone in the campaign headquarters cheers, but Elaine simply lets out a sigh of relief. She'll live to fight another day.

Elaine sits in her office after an exhausting day of putting out fires. The party membership is still dwindling, and naysayers can't seem to recognize how badly they need women to reverse it. She continued to install women in key administrative positions, which hasn't stopped evoking outrage from some of the men. A male staffer enters.

Elaine waits in silence for him to state his case. He seems annoyed by the prospect of even speaking to her, but eventually forces himself to spit it out. "I hear we can't call women bitches no more." She was waiting for this. She had recently figured out that the part of the reason she was having so many problems with male members was because of the rampant misogynist language that was permitted.

If these guys thought that women working beside them were bitches, what did they think of her? No shit, you can't call them bitches no more. The staffer stares at her and sees daggers in her eyes. There's a tense moment, but Elaine doesn't back down. Finally, he turns and exits, mumbling something about things being different when Huey returns from exile, which is scheduled to happen soon. Elaine hopes he's wrong. It feels like she's finally getting a handle on things.

In 1977, Huey returned to the U.S. to stand trial for the murder of a sex worker and reclaimed his role as chair. Elaine is fighting it as best as she can, but already Huey is proving the staff are right. The party would take a different approach to gender violence under his command. She's heard rumors that Huey intends to discipline Regina Davis, an administrator of the Black Panther School, for reprimanding a male colleague who didn't carry out an assignment.

To Elaine, this seems absurd and sexist. Anyone should be able to speak up against unfinished tasks, and no one should be above criticism.

Elaine bursts into Huey's office. He looks shocked she'd enter without knocking and holds up an annoyed finger as he finishes a conversation on the phone. Elaine pays the finger no mind. What is this I hear about Regina? I'm on the phone, Elaine. That can wait. Are you really disciplining her for correcting a colleague? You forgetting who you're talking to? I'm talking to my friend, and he's better than this. No, you're talking to your chairman. You don't run things anymore.

Elaine takes a step back. Something that's changed in Huey since Cuba. She never believed he actually killed the girl he's charged with murdering. But then again, she never thought Eldridge would threaten to bury her either. Maybe she was wrong about Huey being different. Just know, I don't agree with this. You've made that clear. Now you can leave. To Elaine, this feels bigger than just one argument. Bigger than a matter of just agreeing to disagree and leaving the room.

If Huey going to reverse all the progress she's made towards protecting women, what does that mean about her placing the party? A few days later, Elaine rushes to an Oakland hospital. She knew the consequences would be terrible, but she still can't believe what she's been hearing about the disciplinary action taken against Regina Davis. It takes Elaine seeing it for herself for it to really sink in.

She approaches a drugged-up Regina by her hospital bedside and squeezes her injured comrade's hand, but she can't respond to Elaine's many tearful apologies. The men beat Regina so bad, she was left with a broken jaw. When Elaine hears the news, she confronted Huey, and he insisted that it was his duty to keep solidarity among the men. All he could offer was a debate about gender violence in the Central Committee.

which felt like a slap in the face then and a punch now. As she takes in Regina's swollen and bandaged face, her eyes welling with tears, Elaine makes a decision. She can no longer stay in a party that condones beating women, a party that refuses to be changed despite her best efforts. If this is the end of her making an impact on the world, then so be it. As the tears begin to fall, she cries not only for Regina but for herself.

Elaine Brown left the Black Panther Party in 1978 after serving as a chairperson from 1974 to 1977.

In her memoir, she writes, And she would find other ways to elevate people. She remained committed to civil rights, racial justice, and community empowerment, but her departure from the party marked a significant turning point in her involvement in the Black Panther movement.

Although she ascended to the highest levels of the Black Panther Party, Elaine was not the first woman in the party to hold a leadership role. That distinction is held by Kathleen Cleaver. She had been the communications secretary for four years before she left the party, when Elaine replaced Kathleen's husband, Eldridge, as Minister of Information.

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Black History for Real is hosted by me, Consciously. And me, Francesca Ramsey. Black History for Real is a production of Wondery and DCP Entertainment. This episode was written by Hari Zied. Sound design by Aaron May. The theme song is by Terrace Martin. For DCP Entertainment, associate producers are Quentin Hill, Brittany Temple, and Chris Colbert.

The senior producer is Ryan Woodhall. Executive producers for DCP Entertainment are Adele Coleman and DJ Treacy Treese. For Wondry, Lindsay Gomez is the development producer. The production coordinator is Desi Blaylock. Sophia Martins is our managing producer. Our producer is Matt Gant. Our senior story editor is Phyllis Fletcher. The executive producers for Wondry are Aaron O'Flaherty, Marshall Louis, and Candace Manriquez-Wrenn.

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Home to 226 men, the rig is stationed in the stormy North Sea off the coast of Scotland. At around 10 p.m., workers accidentally trigger a gas leak that leads to an explosion and a fire. As they wait to be rescued, the workers soon realize that Piper Alpha has transformed into a death trap. Follow Against the Odds wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app.