2 or 3 things I know about her

Tonight the PBS series Independent Lens presents the film, Negroes With Guns, Robert William's seminal 1962 text of the same title.

Robert Franklin Williams (February 26, 1925-October 15, 1996) organized armed resistance to white supremacy in the American South. He debated the merits of nonviolence with Martin Luther King Jr in 1959. In Monroe, he started the Black Armed Guard, with the National Rifle Association’s blessing, to defend the local black community from Klu Klux Klan activity. FBI persecution eventually forced Williams to flee the US to Cuba, where he regularly made radio addresses to Southern blacks on “Radio Free Dixie,” a station he established with assistance from Cuban President Fidel Castro. From the Wikipedia article.

Ramparts Magazine 10 May 1968

Two days after the murder of Martin Luther King, the Oakland,
California police shot and killed a 17-year-old black leader named
Bobby Hutton. In the same occasion they wounded and arrested author
Eldridge cleaver, a colleague of mine, and arrested a number of
other black men, including another who was wounded. The killing of
Hutton was simply, outright murder, but nobody much noticed. The
local papers changed his age to 22 and said he was killed in "a gun
battle." He was unarmed when he was shot.

King's killer is, as I write, the subject of nationwide
man-hunt; the FBI has accused a man, and put him on their "ten most
wanted" list. Bobby Hutton's killer is putting in his regular shift
on the Oakland Police force; if he gets any special attention at
all, it will probably be a commendation.

Time Magazine, January 12, 1971

When the black Panthers sought a lawyer to defend Huey Newton on a murder charge a few years ago, so popular a story goes, they tested the attitude of Charles Garry in a long interview. "Are you as good as Perry Mason?" One of them growled at the white San Francisco attorney. "I'm better, " Garry replied. "Both of us get our clients off, but Mason's are innocent."

The Panthers happily hired Garry - and they have never regretted it. At Newton's trial, Garry pictured the Panther "defense minister" as a selfless leader of his people and compared his message with that of Jesus, who said:"I came not to send peace but a sword." Despite a public clamor for revenge against Newton, who was accused of murdering a policeman during a shootout in Oakland, he was convicted on the lesser charge of manslaughter. Now Garry, 69, is the top legal defender of Panther leaders across the nation.

October 1966 Black Panther Party
Platform and Program
What We Want
What We Believe

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

2. We want full employment for our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.