Michael D. McCarty

## Early Life

Michael D. McCarty was born in Chicago, Illinois on September 7th, 1950. He was born on the South Side of Chicago but moved to the West Side. In the interview, McCarty recalls his childhood saying, "And we always had books and my mother used to say if you can read you can do anything. And the other thing interestingly enough that she instilled in me is the idea that if you saw something wrong, you had an obligation to do something, something about it or let somebody know who could.". We also learn that he lived with his mom, dad, two older brothers, and an older sister. He also spoke about his school life as a kid, saying, "My mother was from Barbados and so I went to St. Finbarr Elementary School, St. Ignatius College Prep on the all on the West Side of Chicago. I was going to be a physicist. I was a — I loved math and science and that was my dream was to be a physicist and to be an astronaut. I became a revolutionary. Just a little bit of a detour. But all behind that idea of my mom. You see something wrong you should do something about it.”.

He also talks about how he grew up knowing about the civil rights movement. Not only was he well-read, but he also experienced what it was like to be a black man during that time. He says, "Cicero was one of those sundown areas. If you were black, don’t have your butt in Cicero after sundown. You would be hurt, you could be killed.", before recalling two stories where he had been harassed in Cicero as a young child. A sundown town is an all-white area that excludes non-whites, usually with violence. He also tells a story that when he was a teenager, he was beaten by a gang at a party and when he tried to get a white police officer to help, the policeman didn't do anything. He recalls this story by saying, "He’s supposed to help me. And I tell him where to go and he goes, pulls up in front of the building, and tells me to get out of the car and go into the building and find my friend. Meanwhile, the remnants of the gang are sitting outside the building. They see me. They get up and they’re coming to the police car to extract me and finish what they started. I said, “Look, arrest me, take me away from here,” so he took me to the local police station, which was only a block or two away, as I recall. So I'm thinking, this is an aberration. So I go into the police station and I never even get a chance to say anything. Now I'm really swelling up. And the cops, all white, start laughing when I walk in."

McCarty also started a Youth Wing of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) In his school, "Me and my buddy Tyler, we started a black student organization at St. Ignatius, because St. Ignatius is like a very prestigious college prep, 95 percent white, on Roosevelt Road, in the black community, right across from some projects, but there was no dynamic, there was no interaction." With this group, he planned a walkout due to the fact that they denied their request to offer a black history class. Unfortunately, he was kicked out of his school because of the walkout. After being kicked out, he decided to join the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party.

## His Involvement In The Black Panther Party

Upon joining the Black Panther Party, McCarty taught a political education class. McCarty also occasionally spoke in speeches, "There were times when Fred would send me in his place to a debate or to give a speech, which was more than a notion, because Fred was a phenomenal, phenomenal speaker and leader. So those were some of the tasks that I became involved in when I was in the party.". When asked about who the "Fred" he kept mentioning was, McCarty explained that it was Fred Hampton. McCarty then went on to admire Hampton and recalled many stories about Hampton.

In the interview, he was asked about COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO is a syllabic abbreviation for Counter Intelligence Program, created by the FBI to surveil, infiltrate, and disrupt political organizations like the Black Panther Party. He talks about how they would purposely drop misinformation once they learned that the government was onto them. He then talked about how the Black Panther Party responded, "So that’s the kind of thing. And here we didn’t know, like I said again, we knew but we didn’t know, but our approach was, we are going to keep doing positive stuff. We are going to keep serving the people and helping the people, thus the breakfast program, the free medical clinics, which J. Edgar Hoover said that the most dangerous thing we did was the Breakfast for Children program, because the government wasn’t feeding any children at that particular point in time. In fact, the subsequent programs that came were essentially the government saying, okay, we, we can’t have these Panthers showing us out. We’re going to feed them.".

McCarty also talks about the stereotypes that the Black Panther Party faced, "But there are so many stereotypes about the party. Just a few weeks ago, right after Ali, within a day or so after Ali passing away, these, on a sports program this guy was saying, “Yeah, Ali was in the nation of Islam and yeah, they were an anti-white organization,” and the other guy said, “Yeah, like the Black Panther Party,” huh.". He also talks about women in the Black Panther Party. Many people don't know that the Black Panther Party was very accepting of women and had many women in power. For example, Kathleen Cleaver, who McCarty references in his interview. McCarty states, "The idea being that freedom is for everybody, and if anybody is oppressed, there is no freedom. So you can’t oppress women and claim to be for freedom."

McCarty also admits to have stayed the night at Fred Hampton's house the night of the assassination, "So after the rally a bunch of us came to Fred’s apartment, me being one of them. And we came and we ate and we talked, we discussed, probably argued and what have you and I remember falling asleep on the couch. About 2:00 a.m. I woke up. Left to go to my parents’ home. Taking a bus. So left about 2:00 a.m. Got home. Got home, hardly laid down in bed. Got the phone call. There’d been a raid. Fred had been murdered.". Not too long after, McCarty and his wife left the Black Panther Party.

## Life After the Party

The first thing McCarty mentions about life outside of the Black Panther Party was, "Later, my wife and I left the party in 1970 and in December of 1970 I was working for the Post Office and I’m sitting at my station and my supervisor comes up and says, 'Mac, you got to go to the ninth floor,' and that was like, the ninth floor, dadadadadum. Nothing good happens on the ninth floor. Two FBI agents, they wanted me to rejoin the party and be an informer. And I told them what they could do with that idea and they told me, 'We can make your life very difficult. Either you’ll work for us or you won’t work,' I wasn’t working for them.". He then goes on to describe how he was harassed daily by the FBI. To fight the harassment, he joined the Army. In 1992, he turned to storytelling where he would travel to elementary and middle schools during Black History Month to educate students.

## Resources

Michael D. McCarty Interview Transcript

The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party

Film about the Life of Michael D. McCarty

COINTELPRO FBI Records

Michael D. McCarty Personal Webpage