Portrait of B. Kwaku Duren and former spouse Neelam Sharma, 2000.
B. Kwaku Duren (born April 14, 1943; a.k.a., Robert Donaldson Duren and Bob D. Duren) is a controversial African American former lawyer, educator, writer, editor, Black Panther, long-time social, political and community activist; and a former convict who now lives and practices law in South Central Los Angeles. He has run for the United States Congress three times and once for Vice President of the United States.[1] As a young man, he spent nearly five years in California prisons for armed robbery.[2] He began reading extensively and taking college classes while incarcerated and after his parole in the fall of 1970, he founded and chaired the National Poor People's Congress. A couple of years later, he and his younger sister, Betty Scott, along with Mary Blackburn and other community activists, founded an alternative school – the Intercommunal Youth Institute (1972–1975) – in Long Beach, California.
In the wake of the shooting death of his sister by a California Highway Patrol officer during a routine traffic stop, Duren helped found and was a co-chair of the Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA) from 1975 to 1977. From 1976 to 1981 he was the Coordinator of the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party (SCC/BPP). From 1979 until 1991 he worked for the Los Angeles Legal Aid Foundation, beginning as a Community Outreach Worker; later, as a paralegal and attorney; he was one of the founding members and first president of the Union of Legal Services Workers of Los Angeles (AFL-CIO/UAW).
Duren attended law school at the Peoples College of Law in Los Angeles. He graduated in fall of 1989 and was admitted to the California State Bar on August 8, 1990.[3] He has worked as a “people’s” lawyer and community activist in South Central Los Angeles ever since.
A founding member of Community Services Unlimited, Inc., he was its executive director from 1977 to 2008. As Chairman of the New Panther Vanguard Movement – since 1994 – Duren was co-editor-in-chief, with his ex-wife, Neelam Sharma, of The Black Panther International News Service, a quarterly newspaper published in Los Angeles from 1995 to 2001.
Early life
B. Kwaku Duren was born in Beckley, West Virginia to William Preston “Brack” Duren and Willie Wade Bennett. Duren is the only son in a family of four children. His father worked as a miner, a prizefighter, and a steel mill worker.[4]
In 1959, Duren's mother relocated from Cleveland to Long Beach, California. Her husband followed his family to Long Beach shortly thereafter. In 1960, Brack Duren was arrested in a house raid by the FBI and charged with committing armed robberies of illegal gambling joints in Cleveland, which he had done after being injured and unable to find work. He was extradited to Ohio where he served many years in Chillicothe Correctional Institution before becoming a jailhouse lawyer, doing research on his own case (with the help of his eldest daughter, Joyce), appealing, and ultimately winning his release on a technicality. He rejoined and remarried his wife after his release from prison and lived the remainder of his life in Long Beach.
At the age of 17 years, Kwaku Duren was arrested for breaking and entering into a television shop. He served six months in an L.A. county jail facility before being placed on probation. Following his release he worked in a pool hall in Long Beach, sold drugs, and, with a partner, committed a series of convenience-store holdups over several years. In spring of 1966, he was arrested for sticking up a cab driver, convicted, and sentenced to five years to life. He spent four-and-a-half years in Chino and Soledad prisons.
During his three-and-a-half years in Soledad, a black counselor introduced Duren to the writings of the African American historian and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois – especially The World and Africa. Even before his slide into criminality, Duren had been a voracious reader. He thus began an intensive study of African–American history while in prison, reading books such as The Autobiography of MalcolmX. He also read works by J. A. Rogers, Erich Fromm, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, and Lenin. He ordered these books through the California State Library and the UNESCO library. He enrolled in and completed classes in economics, sociology, and psychology, as well as astronomy, at San Francisco State University. He was paroled in September 1970 at the age of 27.
Duren, his younger sister, Betty Scott (aka Betty Scott-Smith), and other community activists founded the non-profit Intercommunal Youth Institute (IYI) in Long Beach during the summer of 1973. This alternative school, a project of the Experimental Educational Institute, Inc., was organized by Duren and was modeled after the highly successful Black Panther Party community school in Oakland, California. Duren was the Institute Director and taught world history. Betty Scott was the business manager. The IYI received a certification from the state board of education and also received Title I [federal] funds.
In the summer of 1975, the Venceremos Brigade chose Duren to lead a delegation of youth to an international youth summer camp in Cuba to meet with and to discuss youth issues with other students, and to learn about the Cuban Revolution. Upon Duren's return to the U.S., the FBI and INS detained him. He was released after a lengthy interrogation about his purpose for visiting Cuba.
Death of Betty Scott
On September 20, 1975, while on her way to the Monterey Jazz Festival, Betty Scott and her partner, George Smith, were pulled over at 4 a.m. in Pleasanton, California, near Oakland, reportedly for a speeding violation. Ms. Scott was driving. During the stop, two California Highway Patrol officers, Curtis Engberson and Gordon Robbins, approached the car. Engberson was young, a recent recruit to the CHP. He approached Ms. Scott on the driver's side of the vehicle; Robbins took the passenger's side.
It is disputed whether the officers had their guns drawn, which would not be routine in a traffic stop. Other details of the subsequent events are disputed as well. What is on record is that Scott was shot once in the neck by Engberson, fell into Smith's lap, and died almost instantly. The shooting occurred as a reaction by the young, nervous officer to Robbins's shout, “She’s got a gun!” Smith did keep a gun in the glove compartment, and Ms. Scott had been reaching into the compartment to produce the car's registration in response to Engberson's order to do so. However, powder burns on the victim's neck, the trajectory of the bullet, and other physical evidence, led some to conclude that the police testimony was a fabrication after the fact to diminish culpability. An Alameda County grand jury exonerated the officers, returning a verdict of justifiable homicide.
Smith, who had been in the front seat beside Scott, was charged with attempted murder of a police officer, although he did not have a gun in his possession and was in shock due to Scott's shooting. Charges against him were later dropped after a series of demonstrations organized by the Scott-Smith Defense Committee. Off-the-record testimony by another CHP officer to a member of the Duren family stated that the officer who killed Scott subsequently suffered emotional trauma as a result of his action.[5]
Duren and his family, including Duren's first wife, Virginia Harris, and Mary Blackburn formed the Scott-Smith Committee for Justice to investigate the incident and then sued the CHP for three million dollars in a wrongful death suit. The suit was unsuccessful. The IYI eventually dissolved.
In February 1976, Duren helped create – along with former Black Panthers Michael Zinzun and Anthony Thigpenn – the Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA). Duren became its co-chair. The Coalition, notable for its broad-based alliance between the black and Mexican communities in L.A., had as its purpose to prevent, expose, and resist abuse and misconduct by police, and to seek legal redress for such abuse.
Citizens Against Police Abuse
In 1981, Kwaku was a founding member and co-chair of the Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA), a multi-racial community-based organization with activists in East and Southcentral Los Angeles. He later became a lead plaintiff in the ACLU's domestic spying lawsuit against Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates which sought to eliminate the LAPD's Public Disorder and Intelligence Division (PDID). CAPA, et al. vs. Gates, et al., was settled for $1.3 million and the disbanding of the Public Disorder and Intelligence Division (PDID) and the establishing of the LAPD's Anti-Terrorist Division (ATD).[6]
Black Panther
In the summer of 1976, Duren first enrolled in the Peoples College of Law in Los Angeles. Concurrently, he and some other black activists formed a political study group. He and these activists went to Oakland and met with Elaine Brown, Chairwoman of the Black Panther Party, to discuss reforming the Party in L.A.
In October, nearly a year after his sister's killing, and after meeting with members of the Central Committee of the Party, Duren officially joined the Black Panther Party. In January 1977, while LAPD helicopters circled overhead, Duren inaugurated the new office of the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party (SCC/BPP) on Central Avenue in South Central. He believed that the Party had the potential for raising the consciousness of black youth and others in the continuing struggle for “people’s power.” In the summer of the same year, Huey Newton, who had co-founded the Party in 1966 with Bobby Seale, returned from political exile in Cuba.
Duren continued to work with the Party, reorganizing the Southern California Chapter, growing its membership, and carrying out its community involvement agenda. The re-established SCC under Duren's Coordinator status was always small in member numbers.
A People’s Lawyer
Duren began taking law classes at the Peoples College of Law (PCL) in August 1976. He dropped out about six months into the program and devoted himself to organizing around police abuse/misconduct issues, resulting in the formation of CAPA, as mentioned above, and the reopening of the SCC/BPP in 1977. In late 1979, he was hired as a Community Outreach Worker by Linda Ferguson, Director of the Watts Legal Aid Office (located at Manchester and Broadway in South Central). When a Legal Assistant opening became available about a year later, he was moved into that position; simultaneously, he took paralegal classes at the University of Southern California's Paralegal Program and received a Certificate of Completion.
Around 1981, Duren started an independent law study program with Linda Ferguson. However, his involvement with CAPA v. Gates split his focus, so he withdrew from the study program.
He returned to the formal study of law by re-enrolling in the PCL in 1985. He graduated in June 1989, received his JD degree, and took the bar for the first time in October 1989. He received confirmation that he had passed in November 1989. The California Committee of Bar Examiners delayed his admission to the state bar as the Subcommittee on Moral Fitness put his attorney application on hold. Duren wrote the State Bar's Governing Board and threatened to sue. He was then admitted and continued to work for legal aid, but as a staff attorney. Duren was sworn in by Judge Richard Paez – at the time a superior court judge who had been a former executive director of Legal Aid – in Paez’ courtroom in 1990. Paez was later appointed as a federal judge.
Duren left Legal Aid for private practice in 1991 due to political pressure from the National Legal Services Corporation in the form of heightened scrutiny of his several campaigns for political office (including running for Congress in 1982 and 1986). There was at the time, and still is, a Congressional prohibition of attorneys employed with Legal Aid running for political office (the legislation that proscribes Legal Aid attorneys running for political office was sponsored by the Republican senator from Utah, Orrin Hatch). In 1993, Duren was certified to practice law in Federal Court and in 1998 certified to practice in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He was appointed to the Superior Court Arbitration/Mediation Panel in 1997 and to the Federal Court's Settlement Officer Panel and Pilot Prisoner Mediation Program in 2000.
New Panther Vanguard Movement
In 1994 Duran was a founding member and chairman of the New African American Vanguard Movement, which later became the New Panther Vanguard Movement. The organisation was mainly an attempted recreation of the original Black Panther Party but as a response to the heightened racial tensions of the early 1990s being felt in America.[7]
Disbarment
At the age of 70, on May 10, 2013, Duren was given a two-year stayed suspension from the practice of law in the state of California and placed on two years of probation with an actual 30-day suspension. He was also ordered to take the MPRE and to pay restitution.[8]
Duren stipulated that he failed to perform legal services with competence by not showing up at a hearing which led to his client's foreclosure case being dismissed. Duren also did not inform the client of significant developments in her case, failed to promptly refund $10,000 in unearned fees and failed to give her a proper accounting when she asked for a refund. He later, belatedly, returned $2,000 of the fees. In mitigation, Duren had more than 20 years of discipline-free practice prior to the misconduct, has been involved in numerous pro bono activities and cooperated with the State Bar by entering into a stipulation before trial. As part of the stipulation, Duren was ordered to pay $8,000, plus interest, to the former client.
On March 12, 2017, the Supreme Court of California disbarred Duren after he failed to participate in State Bar Court proceedings related to three counts of misconduct involving a single client matter, which led the State Bar Court to enter his default. The default meant that the court deemed admitted the factual allegations against Duren.[9]
Leroy Eldridge Cleaver was an American writer and political activist who became an early leader of the Black Panther Party.
Huey Percy Newton was an African American revolutionary and political activist who founded the Black Panther Party. He ran the party as its first leader and crafted its ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966.
Fredrick Allen Hampton Sr. was an American Marxist-Leninist revolutionary. He came to prominence in his late teens and early 20s in Chicago as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter. As a progressive African American, he founded the anti-racist, anti-classist Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots, and the Young Lords, and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. Hampton considered fascism the greatest threat, saying "nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all."
Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, also known as Geronimo Ji-Jaga and Geronimo Ji-Jaga Pratt, was a decorated military veteran and a high-ranking member of the Black Panther Party in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Born in Louisiana, he served two tours in Vietnam, receiving several decorations. He moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at UCLA under the GI Bill and joined the Black Panther Party. He was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned.
The black power movement or black liberation movement emerged in mid-1960s from the civil rights movement in the United States, reacting against its moderate, mainstream, and incremental tendencies and representing the demand for more immediate action to counter American white supremacy. Many of its ideas were influenced by Malcolm X's criticism of Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful protest methods. The 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, coupled with the urban riots of 1964 and 1965, ignited the movement. While thinkers such as Robert F. Williams and Malcolm X influenced the early movement, the Black Panther Party's views are widely seen as the cornerstone. They were influenced by philosophies such as pan-Africanism, black nationalism, and socialism, as well as contemporary events including the Cuban Revolution and the decolonization of Africa.
Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter was an American activist. Carter is credited as a founding member of the Southern California chapter of the Black Panther Party. Carter was shot and killed by a rival group, Ron Karenga's "Us", and is celebrated by his supporters as a martyr in the Black Power movement in the United States. Carter is portrayed by Gaius Charles in the 2015 TV series Aquarius.
Kuwasi Balagoon, born Donald Weems, was an American political activist, anarchist and member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army. Radicalised by race riots in his home state of Maryland growing up, as well as by his experiences while serving in the US Army, Weems became the black nationalist known as Kuwasi Balagoon in New York City in the late 1960s. First becoming involved in local Afrocentric organisations in Harlem, Balagoon would move on to become involved in the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party, which quickly saw him charged and arrested for criminal behaviour. Balagoon was initially part of the Panther 21 case, in which 21 panthers were accused of planning to bomb several locations in New York City, but although the Panther 21 were later acquitted, Balagoon's case was separated off and he was convicted of a New Jersey bank robbery.
The Peoples College of Law (PCL) was an unaccredited private law school located in the downtown Los Angeles community of Westlake-MacArthur Park. PCL offered a part-time, four-year evening law program centered on work in the public interest. As of December 2023, there were seven students. The school closed by May 31, 2024 due to accreditation and financial issues.
Thelton Eugene Henderson is an inactive senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. He has played an important role in the field of civil rights as a lawyer, educator, and jurist.
Michael Zinzun was an African American Black Panther and anti-police brutality activist.
The Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA) is a currently active community organization in Los Angeles with the stated aim of organizing marginalized groups such as the poor, homosexuals, blacks, and Latinos to prevent, expose, and resist abuse by police and seek legal redress for such abuse.
Kathleen Neal Cleaver is an American law professor and activist, known for her involvement with the Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party, a political and revolutionary.
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The New Panther Vanguard Movement (NPVM), originally known as the New African American Vanguard Movement (NAAVM) was created in South Central Los Angeles in 1994 as a response to the Los Angeles riots of 1992. Former members of the Black Panther Party and other community activists came together after the riots and shared their frustration with the lack of leadership in the Black community. After various dialogues, they decided to create a grassroots organization that would reflect the vision and community spirit of the Black Panther Party.
The Black Panther Party was a Marxist–Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia. They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria. Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.
Jalil Abdul Muntaqim is a convicted felon, political activist and former member of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the Black Liberation Army (BLA) who served 49 years in prison for two counts of first-degree murder. In August 1971, he was arrested in California along with Albert “Nuh” Washington and Herman Bell and charged with the killing of two NYPD police officers, Waverly Jones and Joseph A. Piagentini, in New York City on May 21. In 1975, he was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with possible parole after 22 years. Muntaqim had been the subject of attention for being repeatedly denied parole despite having been eligible since 1993. In June 2020, Muntaqim was reportedly sick with COVID-19. He was released from prison on October 7, 2020, after more than 49 years of incarceration and 11 parole denials.
Mark Everett Comfort was a community activist who worked in early Oakland grassroots civil rights movements in the 1960s, before moving to Lowndes County, Alabama.
Ericka Huggins is an American activist, writer, and educator. She is a former leading member of the political organization, Black Panther Party (BPP). She was married to fellow BPP member John Huggins in 1968.
The Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention (RPCC) was a conference organized by the Black Panther Party (BPP) that was held in Philadelphia from September 4–7, 1970. The goal of the Convention was to draft a new version of the United States Constitution and to unify factions of the radical left in the United States. The RPCC represented one of the largest gatherings of radical activists across movements and issues in the United States. The Convention was attended by a variety of organizations from the Black Power Movement, Asian American Movement, Chicano Movement, American Indian Movement, Anti-war movement, Women's Liberation, and Gay Liberation movements. Estimates of attendance range from 6,000 to 15,000. Attendees convened in workshops to draft declarations of demands related to various issues, which were ultimately intended to be incorporated into a new constitution which would function as the final vision of those movements. The RPCC also signified a shift in BPP focus from black self-defense to a broader revolutionary agenda. While conflicts did arise during the Philadelphia Convention, the conference was ultimately deemed a success by the Panthers. After the Philadelphia conference, attempts were made to reconvene to finalize and ratify the new constitution in Washington, DC a few months later but ultimately failed due to police interference and Panther disorganization.
References
↑ New York psychologist and independent party activist Lenora Fulani ran for President of the U.S. in 1988 on the New Alliance/Peace and Freedom Party ticket. The campaign was historic inasmuch as she was the first woman and first African American to run for president and achieve ballot access in all 50 states and in the District of Columbia. As a result, she received over one million dollars in matching federal funds. Fulani chose seven vice-presidential candidates to run with her, including a Latina, a gay man, a Native American woman, and two African Americans (Duren and Mamie Moore).
↑ Duren, 1985, p. 18. Betty Scott's killing was first reported in the Sunday edition of the Oakland Tribune, September 21, 1975, under the sensationalized, all-caps headline: “WOMAN SPEEDER SLAIN – PULLED GUN ON COP.” Subsequent reports of the incident in the Los Angeles Free Press (December 2–9, 1975) and The Black Panther newspaper (December 27, 1975 and January 31, 1976) shifted the balance of the story to questionable police behavior and evidence in the case, and the demand by the Duren family for a public probe into the events of Scott’s untimely death.
DeSantis, John. The New Untouchables. Chicago: The Noble Press, Inc. 1994.
Donner, Frank. Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in Urban America. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990.
Duren, Joyce. My Bout with Lupus. Duren Enterprises, 1985.
Duren, Joyce. Profiles in Black. New York: CORE Publications, 1976.
Escobar, Edward. “The Dialectics of Repression,” in The Journal of American History, March 1993.
Hunt, Raymond G., and Magenau, John M. Power and the Police Chief. Newbury Park, California; SAGE Publications, 1993.
Jerger, Burr. “CHP Shoots Black Activist.” Los Angeles Free Press. October 3–9, 1975, p.9.
Oakland Tribune. “Woman Shot: Pulled Gun on CHP.” September 21, 1975, p.1.
Sharma, Neelam, and Duren, Kwaku, eds. The Black Panther International News Service. Vols. 4, 5, 6, and 7.
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