Donald L. Cox
Donald Lee Cox | |
---|---|
Born | Appleton City, Missouri, United States | April 16, 1936
Died | February 19, 2011 | (aged 74)
Nationality | American |
Other names | DC |
Occupation | Political organizer |
Organization | Black Panther Party |
Known for | Field Marshal of the Black Panther Party, 1967–71 |
Spouse | Barbara Easley-Cox |
Donald Lee Cox (April 16, 1936 – February 19, 2011), known as Field Marshal DC, was an early member of the leadership of the
Biography
Cox grew up in Appleton City in rural western Missouri. His grandfather, Joseph A. Cox, had been born into slavery in 1845 and had been freed around the time of Emancipation Proclamation. Joseph Cox married Maria Müller, a white immigrant to the area originally from German-speaking Switzerland. The pair were wed in Kansas as interracial marriages were still illegal in the state of Missouri at the time. Don Cox's partial mixed ancestry would influence his views on race later in life.[2]
Cox moved to
Cox joined the
Cox became a national organizer and spokesperson for the group, which was involved in multiple legal cases and a target of the
Up to this point, Cox had been mainly based in his adopted home town of San Francisco but in the aftermath of the Panther 21 trial he moved to New York City in order to try and rebuild the party there, as well as provide some leadership for the East Coast-based chapters of the party.[11] During this period when he was based on the East Coast, Cox was accused along with several others of conspiracy to murder a Panther who was an informant in Baltimore named Eugene Anderson. Cox fled the United States to avoid trial, living first in Algeria (where Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver had already set up a base for exiled Panthers following their own escape from the US) and later in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of southern France. Cox did not return to the United States, although he married an American from Philadelphia, Barbara Easley.
Cox resigned from the Black Panther Party in mid-1971. Amongst other things, the reasons he cited for leaving the party in his autobiography were his disappointment and frustrations with the main leaders of the party:
He died in exile in Camps-sur-l'Agly, France in February 2011.[1] His daughter, Kimberly Cox-Marshall, had his autobiography published posthumously in 2019.[15]
Works
- Cox, D. (2019) Just Another Nigger: My Life in the Black Panther Party Heyday Books.
References
- ^ a b c d e Weber, Bruce (13 March 2011). "D.L. Cox, a Leader of Radicals During 1960s, Dies at 74". The New York Times. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
- ISBN 978-1597144599.
- ^ Bukhari, S. (1992). Interview with Donald Cox, former Field Marshall, Black Panther Party. Crossroad, [online] (Vol. 12, Issue 3). Available at: http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/dc/pdf/CR12_No3.pdf [Accessed 20 Mar. 2019].
- ^ Cox (2019), p. 23
- ^ Boyd, Herb (30 August 2018). "The intrepid Donald Cox, a Black Panther field marshal". amsterdamnews.com. Retrieved 17 March 2019.
- ^ "An Interview with Donald Cox, former Field Marshal, Black Panther Party". Itsabouttimebpp.com. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
- ^ Bukhari, S. (1992), Page 3
- ISBN 0-8247-7814-6. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
- ^ a b "Radical Chic". Hope for America: Performers, Politics and Pop Culture. Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 25 July 2012. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
- ^ "Leonard Bernstein: A political life". The Economist. May 28, 2009. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
- ^ Cox (2019) p. 101, 102, 103
- ^ Cox (2019) p. 87, 88, 90, 96, 97
- ^ Bukhari, Safiya (31 March 1992). "An Interview with Donald Cox, former Field Marshall, Black Panther Party". itsabouttimebpp.com. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
And I've never known to this day where it came from, but the first thing that came out for us to study was "The Foundations of Leninism", by Josef Stalin. And as far as I'm concerned, that was the beginning of the end, because that was the book that was used to turn the emphasis from the struggle to the party. Instead of the struggle for the liberation of Black people becoming the most important thing, it was the party that became the most important thing. Then the democratic centralism, and all that Marxist-Leninist paraphernalia that most of the organizations calling themselves communist was based on. But the so-called central committee, and I'm gonna tell the truth, was David Hilliard at that time.
- ^ Cox, Don (13 February 2019). "An Insider's Take on How the Black Panther Party Was Hurt by Its Own Ideals". Time.com. Time. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
- ^ Raskin, Jonah (19 February 2019). "Don Cox's Caustic Memoir of the Black Panthers". beyondchron.org. Retrieved 11 June 2019.