Black Panther William Lee Brent Dies

Dies At 75 In Communist Cuba, Where He Spent 47 Years In Exile

(AP)  William Lee Brent, a Black Panther who hijacked a passenger jet to communist Cuba in 1969 and spent 37 years in exile, has died on the island, his sister said. He was 75.

Brent died Nov. 4 from bronchial pneumonia, Elouise Rawlins said in a telephone interview from her home in Oakland, Calif.

Rawlins said she learned of her brother's death through telephone calls and messages from friends and acquaintances, but has not received official word from the U.S. or Cuban governments.

Rawlins said she had not seen her brother since he used a handgun to hijack TWA Flight 154 from San Francisco to Havana on June 17, 1969, but said they stayed in contact through e-mails and telephone calls.

"We didn't even know he was ill," Rawlins said. "I don't know about the burial or anything — just that he passed away."

The telephone rang unanswered Friday at Brent's Havana home, which he shared with his wife, travel writer Jane McManus, until her death last year. They had met and married in Cuba.

Brent lived a relatively isolated life during his nearly four decades in Cuba, spending much of his time in his later years listening to his beloved jazz music collection in his apartment.

In a 1996 interview with The Associated Press, he said he missed the United States and the American black community. But he was unwilling to return home to face certain life imprisonment for aircraft piracy and kidnapping, and had resigned himself to never seeing his country again.

"I miss my people, the struggle, the body language," Brent told the AP. "The black community in Cuba is very different."

Still, he said he had no regrets about hijacking the plane. "I was a soldier in the war for black liberation," he said.

A decade ago, Times Books published his memoirs, "Long Time Gone," which told of his coming of age on Oakland's streets and of joining the Black Panthers when he was 37, rising to become a bodyguard for leader Eldridge Cleaver.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in October 1966 in Oakland, by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton. They called for an end to police brutality in the black community, and carried guns as they patrolled the city documenting police behavior.

In his book, Brent chronicled a July 1968 police shootout in which two police officers were critically wounded. Cleaver ordered him kicked out of the revolutionary group.

To avoid trial the following year, Brent used a .38-caliber handgun to hijack the plane to Cuba, where he believed he would be treated sympathetically as a militant black leftist. None of the 76 people aboard the Boeing 707 was harmed.

He also told of stepping off the plane in Cuba to be immediately hustled away by Cuban police.

Although never formally convicted, he spent 22 months in an immigration jail while Cuban authorities tried to figure out what to do with him. Eventually they let him stay to live out his exile.

Brent earned a Spanish literature degree from the University of Havana and taught English at junior and senior high schools, but he never became a Cuban citizen.

"I am an American, an African-American, a black man," he said in the 1996 interview with the AP. "And my fight was always in the United States."

[bob_burd]

msnatalie sounds like the type who cried racism when Tookie Williams got his well deserved needle. (Oh, but wait, he wrote a kids' book....how barbaric to execute him!)

All's well that ends well. They're both dead.

Selah

[bwright923]

msnatalie,
critisizing one criminal is not defending others. Some of the things that African Americans went through are truly horrific. However, it does not justify what this criminal did. America has come this far not because of thugs like this man but because of men of peace like MLK showing people the way through peaceful means. This man endangered a whole plane of people to save his own skin. He wasn't making a dramatic statement through his actions he was avoiding the law after killing a policeman. He turned his back on the community and country he loved so much to save himself which in the process could have killed many more.

[dtmtoday]

The problem is that none but the most extreme cases of white "thugery" are ever recorded in the history books. History is written by the victors, not the oppressed. That's why so many believe the black panthers were nothing but thugs. And for those who would like to say that black people have it good compared to people elsewhere in the world, I'll be the first to agree, yes I am priviledged comparatively, but in my own country, I still don't have complete equal rights and until I do, people like this man will continue to exist.

[msnatalie]

What I dont understand is that everybody here keeps calling him a Thug, well what do you think President Bush is. DUH!! He has done more to people than the Black Panthers could have EVER done. The Panthers looked out for the black community when all the white people were too busy killing us, hanging us from trees, etc. U want to talk about thugs, lets talk about the KKK, the "white power" groups. But no one wants to mention those. anytime a black person or persons does something to protect their community, they are called thugs. I suggest all those who got negative things to say, go back and pick up a history book, because for the last hundreds of years, the only thugs that have been around are white people.

[olebd]

He would have REALLY enjoyed the body language and hanging out with all the modern day gansta rappers. Same type of anger and anti-social attitude.

[dtmtoday]

"The black panters are a bunch of thugs who have not done a beneficial thing for society."
-Janem4

...except provide hot meals everyday for innercity children before they left for school, create schools with certified teachers for children in neighborhoods where the schools were subpar and defend the lives of black people in cities where the percentages of blacks shot by police exceeded the number of whites citizens shot by black citizens. The media (and your own fear of a minority demanding their equal rights by force) would lead you to believe that all the black panthers did was carry around guns and shoot at will. If you were abused mentally and physically, denied a decent education and housing, spit at, not allowed at lunch counters, raped, lynched and otherwise made to feel less than human, and the government refused to either acknowledge or help you, besides throwing meager crumbs not suitable for survival, I'd like to see you sit back and do nothing. Then you can express your comments about what a "thug" is. Until then, you haven't proven yourself educated enough to speak a word on this topic.
p.s. it's "panthers" not "panters"

[dtmtoday]

"The black panters are a bunch of thugs who have not done a beneficial thing for society."
-Janem4

...except provide hot meals everyday for innercity children before they left for school, create schools with certified teachers for children in neighborhoods where the schools were subpar and defend the lives of black people in cities where the percentages of blacks shot by police exceeded the number of whites citizens shot by black citizens. The media (and your own fear of a minority demanding their equal rights by force) would lead you to believe that all the black panthers did was carry around guns and shoot at will. If you were abused mentally and physically, denied a decent education and housing, spit at, not allowed at lunch counters, raped, lynched and otherwise made to feel less than human, and the government refused to either acknowledge or help you, besides throwing meager crumbs not suitable for survival, I'd like to see you sit back and do nothing. Then you can express your comments about what a "thug" is. Until then, you haven't proven yourself educated enough to speak a word on this topic.
p.s. it's "panthers" not "panters"

[dtmtoday]

"The black panters are a bunch of thugs who have not done a beneficial thing for society."
-Janem4

...except provide hot meals everyday for innercity children before they left for school, create schools with certified teachers for children in neighborhoods where the schools were subpar and defend the lives of black people in cities where the percentages of blacks shot by police exceeded the number of whites citizens shot by black citizens. The media (and your own fear of a minority demanding their equal rights by force) would lead you to believe that all the black panthers did was carry around guns and shoot at will. If you were abused mentally and physically, denied a decent education and housing, spit at, not allowed at lunch counters, raped, lynched and otherwise made to feel less than human, and the government refused to either acknowledge or help you, besides throwing meager crumbs not suitable for survival, I'd like to see you sit back and do nothing. Then you can express your comments about what a "thug" is. Until then, you haven't proven yourself educated enough to speak a word on this topic.
p.s. it's "panthers" not "panters"

[cryonbrian]

You people act like you really know American History. Some of your biggest thugs and terrorist have been voted to the highest offices in government by American people! FACT!

[jdb43-2009]

So What! A fugitive and terrorist dies. He was no hero, he was a petty thugwho got more out of life than he deserved.