Echoes of the Revolution

The grand jury investigations in the Ingleside case smack of COINTELPRO revisited, says former Panther Kathleen Cleaver, a visiting lecturer at Emory University in Atlanta. "This is not law enforcement," says Cleaver, whose late ex-husband, Eldridge, served as the party's minister of information. "It's an attempt to harass those who had the audacity to join the revolution."

Those in law enforcement counter that trying to nail Young's killer and accomplices resembles efforts to convict Byron de la Beckwith 30 years after he killed civil rights worker Medgar Evers in Mississippi. (Beckwith, sentenced to life in prison in 1994, died seven years later.) "This has nothing to do with reliving or destroying the revolution," one source says. "This has to do with a cop being killed and trying to figure out who did it."

In the same respect, after so many years, old grievances harden, and skeptics of the Young probe doubt authorities will persuade anyone to share details about a murder in 1971. "It's a 35-year-old case," says another law enforcement source, "and these are not the kind of people who are going to find religion and confess. If you think otherwise, you're living a pipe dream."

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Birney Jarvis covered Young's murder for the Examiner. The retired reporter considered the soft-spoken sergeant a friend, and when the two occasionally got together for drinks, Young voiced concerns about the antics of radicals and cops alike. "He had a sense that there wasn't enough understanding on either side," Jarvis says. "He didn't think stockpiling guns or cracking skulls would solve a whole lot of problems."

Geraldine Young, John's widow, moved to Sonoma after her husband died, leaving behind the city where she lost him. Those who know her say she dislikes visits she receives from prosecutors and investigators to discuss the case. Now in her 80s and residing in an assisted-living facility, she quietly turned down SF Weekly's request to talk about her late husband.

"No," she says. "No more about that."

The ex-Panthers would like to hear authorities say as much, even as their reverence for the party's legacy precludes compromise. If they stop short of offering details or denials about the Panthers' own sins, and if there's a tendency toward self-absolution and revisionism among former members, there also remains the defiant loyalty to the cause: to give power to the people. Just ask Taylor. "I'll always be a Black Panther."

*Note: Former Black Panthers John Bowman, Richard Brown, Ray Boudreaux, Hank Jones, and Harold Taylor declined to comment to SF Weekly, citing legal concerns about the ongoing probe into Sgt. John Young's murder. Unless otherwise noted, quotes attributed to them in this story were culled from their statements at public forums held during the past year.