American Exiles in East Africa

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 March 2019

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Pete O’Neal was a street hustler and small-time pimp who gave up crime to struggle against oppression, founding the Kansas City chapter of the Black Panther Party. Charlotte Hill was a high-school student who gave up a college scholarship to join the Panthers and do community service. Their love affair seemed like a charmed one. But the Black Panthers became targets of intimidation and disruption by the F.B.I. and other law enforcement, and a climate of paranoia set in. After Pete was convicted on a firearms charge that he considered trumped up, he jumped bail, and he and Charlotte fled the United State with false passports. Since 1970, Pete has never been able to return. Living in Africa, they began to think about how to resume the work they had commenced as Black Panthers. As well documented as the nineteen-sixties were, the staff writer Jelani Cobb notes, the story of radicals forced into exile is hardly known. The producer KalaLea reported from Tanzania, with additional reporting by Andrea Tudhope in Kansas City. (Part 1 of a two-part story.) Tshidi Matale, Kiva, and L. D. Brown of Grey Reverend contributed music for this story.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:10.2	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Gianlani Cobb, a staff writer with The New Yorker.
0:16.1	Today we're going to tell the story of two remarkable people, Pete O'Neill and Charlotte Hill O'Neill, who have been living in exile for nearly 50 years.
0:24.6	I met Charlotte when I was a student at Howard University. She gave a talk to me and a group of other student activists about the development work she and Pete had been doing for many years in East Africa.
0:35.6	In a time of American history that's been covered a lot and mythologized, maybe even romanticized,
0:42.3	the story of 1960s radicals who went into exile is still barely known.
0:47.3	So Charlotte and Pete O'Neill's story really intersects with a big movement in American history.
0:53.3	And the struggle that drove them out of the United
0:55.3	States as political activists against oppression has never really ended. For several years, Charlotte
1:02.4	has been urging her elderly father to come live with her and Pete in Tanzania. At the age of 91,
1:08.9	he finally accepted their invitation. Charlotte returned to the United States to throw her father a farewell party.
1:15.6	It's food outside, it's food in the kitchen, it's placing bowls and spoons and fuchs.
1:22.6	How's you doing?
1:24.6	I've been hanging in there. How are you doing?
1:26.6	By doing it better, it would scare me.
1:29.3	You're looking well.
1:30.3	You're looking well.
1:31.3	Our producer, Kalalia, has been reporting the story of Charlotte and Petal Neal for much of the last year.
1:38.3	So the Fair World Party was on Saturday, the 16th of June.
1:42.3	Not officially summer, but it was already 94 degrees in Kansas
1:46.4	City that day. And despite the heat, people keep coming in. No one wanted to miss the opportunity
1:53.4	to say goodbye to Charlotte's father, Mr. Hill. Well, just about everybody in here is blood family.
	...

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