A ‘60s Revival We Don’t Need: Black Panthers : They never were martyrs for social justice, but murderous thugs who brutalized their own.

One of Forrest Gump’s memorable lines, “I’m sorry I can’t stay for your Black Panther party,” reminds us of the political gang that was the darling of the New Left during the 1960s. Tom Hayden called them “America’s Viet Cong” and many who were not radicals thought of them as a brave contingent in the struggle for social justice.

Like Woodstock and other ‘60s episodes, the Panthers are now the subject of many revivalist efforts. PBS has aired the documentary “Passing It On.” A Mario Van Peebles film is scheduled for release next year.

But unlike the Woodstock revival, there is nothing innocent about the efforts to breathe new life into the Panther corpse. In a dozen cities, including New York, Detroit, Dallas, Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles and Oakland--there are Panther “militias” in formation. In at least two, their leaders have already made extortionist threats against local government and the broader public:

* In Milwaukee, talk-show host and former city councilman Michael McGee has threatened to “recruit blacks around the country to cut phone lines, burn tires on freeways and attack other institutions unless the government creates jobs, improves education and housing and takes other steps against urban poverty by Jan. 1, 1995.”

* In Indianapolis, a disciple of McGee who calls himself Mmoja Ajabu also has given the city government until Jan. 1 to meet a list of demands--including a “significant” reduction in the infant mortality rate--or face bloodshed. “We believe that revolution is the solution,” Ajabu says. “If the people don’t want us to wage it, they better make some policy changes.” Ajabu’s “soldiers” wear black fatigues, black berets and T-shirts with the words “Freedom or death. It’s not a choice.”

The threat of violence by these political extortionists is real. Recently, Ajabu gave an inflammatory speech to a Panther chapter in Wedowee, Ala. Afterward, an arsonist destroyed a high school. Ajabu claimed not to know who set the fire, but added: “Apparently, somebody down there understood what I was saying.”

The question is whether long-suffering Americans are going to tolerate this kind of gangsterism the second time around. For behind this Panther revival lies a remarkable and dangerous lapse in historical memory about who the original Panthers were. Without this amnesia, the legend would not have attracted young blacks to the new Panther standard.

The ‘60s Panthers were an organized street gang with political hustle. As Hugh Pearson’s recent book, “The Shadow of the Panther,” documents, the Panthers under Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale extorted the ghetto, brutalized their own members and regularly committed rape, arson, robbery and murder. In 1969, Panthers reportedly committed 348 felonies, including all of the above. A 1978 article by New Left reporter Kate Coleman in the magazine New Times documented several of these Panther crimes, most of them committed against inner-city blacks. The legendary figure of 31 Panthers “assassinated” by police--used by ‘60s radicals to shield the Panthers from investigation--was shown as early as 1970 to be a fabrication. In fact, almost all had died in the course of criminal activities, in conflicts with other black militants or in shootouts with law enforcement that they themselves provoked.

In the years since, many have wanted to bury this reality and perpetuate the Panther myth of an embattled group of martyrs fighting for social justice. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream has even made Bobby Seale one of its poster boys for the ‘90s. They want the public to forget the dark side of the Panther legacy and to remember only the idealistic slogans that these criminals used to camouflage their agendas.

I have personal reason to remember the dark side of the history, however, because my friend, Betty Van Patter, the mother of three children, was brutally murdered while working for the Black Panther Party almost 20 years ago. I and a few other journalists have since waged an uphill battle to bring the true story of the Panthers’ role in this murder to light and to keep it in the public eye.

As the Panther revivalists step into the political arena and threaten new violence to further their cause, the public must remember the Panther reality and not be fooled again.