The quarrel between black power advocates that ended in gunfire in a UCLA classroom had lasted only a few moments that sunny day.
But the controversy over who was responsible for the murder of two young men taking part in a discussion over leadership of a fledgling black studies program at the campus has simmered for nearly four decades.
On Thursday, aging leaders of the 1960s Black Panther Party returned to the site of the Jan. 17, 1969, shooting to urge groups to work together to finally achieve equality for all.
For the first time, an eyewitness to the shootings that killed two Black Panther members -- John J. Huggins, 23, and Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter, 26 -- described publicly what happened that day in Room 1201 of Campbell Hall, on the east side of the sprawling Westwood campus.
J. Daniel Johnson is now a 60-year-old family therapist in Santa Monica. He said he was standing a few steps away from Huggins and Carter when they were gunned down by another black man, 21-year-old Claude "Chuchessa" Hubert.
"There were about 13 to 15 people in the room. But very few people witnessed what went on. . . . I saw the shooting," Johnson told a crowd of several hundred outside Campbell Hall at a noontime rally Thursday marking the 39th anniversary of the slaying.
The shootings were followed by finger-pointing among those in various black nationalist and separatist groups that were jockeying for control of the black power movement. Johnson described the aftermath as full of "misinformation and false rumors" that needed to be dispelled.
A 21-year-old UCLA senior majoring in political science at the time, Johnson had chaired the meeting, which was called to discuss the creation "of a balanced advisory committee" and the selection of a director of the planned black studies program.
The session, held in what was then a small dining room, had ended and participants were starting to drift out when a man identified as Harold "Tuwala" Jones, 19, entered the room. Huggins confronted Jones about an encounter he'd had with another Black Panther member, Elaine Brown, Johnson said. At that point, gunman Hubert entered the fray.
"After a scuffle between John and Tuwala, Chuchessa shot John in the back. Then Bunchy tried to take cover behind a chair and Chuchessa shot through the chair and killed him instantly," Johnson said.
Huggins, who was armed, pulled his own gun out as he fell, mortally wounded. "John emptied his gun on reflex," Johnson said.
