Bunchy Carter

Alprentice Carter — known from his youth as Bunchy, said to be for a bunch of greens — was born on the twelfth of October 1942 in Los Angeles, California. He came of age in the city's South Side, and in his teens was a leader among the Slauson street organization, where his gift for command earned him the name "Mayor of the Ghetto." A conviction for armed robbery sent him to Soledad prison for four years.

Prison remade him. There he encountered the Nation of Islam and the words of Malcolm X, and he emerged not as a man of the street but as a man of the movement — his loyalty turned toward the liberation of his people. In early 1968 he founded the Southern California chapter of the Black Panther Party and served as its Deputy Minister of Defense, drawing former gang members into disciplined political work.

Under his leadership the chapter grew swiftly, at its height by scores of members a week. He helped stand up the Free Breakfast for Children Program and organized against police violence in the community. In 1968 he entered UCLA through a High Potential Program, carrying his organizing into the university's Black Student Union.

On the seventeenth of January 1969, during a Black Student Union meeting at Campbell Hall on the UCLA campus, Bunchy Carter and fellow Panther John Huggins were shot and killed amid a conflict with members of the rival Organization Us. He was twenty-six years old. May his name be spoken with honor, and his young life remembered for the dignity he gave to his people.