Donald Lee Cox (April 16, 1936 – February 19, 2011), known as Field Marshal DC, was an early member of the leadership of the African American revolutionary leftist organization the Black Panther Party, joining the group in 1967. Cox was titled the Field Marshal of the group during the years he actively participated in its leadership, due to his familiarity with and writing about guns. Biography Cox grew up in Appleton City in rural western Missouri. His grandfather, Joseph A. Cox, had been born into slavery in 1845 and had been freed around the time of Emancipation Proclamation. Joseph Cox married Maria Müller, a white immigrant to the area originally from German-speaking Switzerland. The pair were wed in Kansas as interracial marriages were still illegal in the state of Missouri at the time. Don Cox's partial mixed ancestry would influence his views on race later in life. Cox moved to San Francisco in 1953 at age 17. He became interested in political action by following the events of the Civil Rights Movement during the next several years. Cox was deeply disturbed by events such as the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, in which 4 little black girls were killed and a further 22 people injured in an act of White Supremacist terrorism carried out by the Ku Klux Klan. He was also influenced by the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois and Herbert Aptheker, introduced to him by a white communist friend, Mark Hanson. He became affiliated with the Congress of Racial Equality, and in 1964 and 1965 he was involved in the series of protests directed against the Bank of America, San Francisco hotels, rental agencies and the automobile industry, who were discriminating against African-Americans. Cox joined the Oakland, California-based Black Panthers in 1967 in response to a civilian-shooting-by-police incident in the Hunters Point section of San Francisco a year earlier. Along with Eldridge Cleaver, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale and others, Cox was a member of the "central committee" of the Panthers. Initially Cox did not have a formal title within the Black Panther group, but his role was understood to relate to the usage of firearms. Cox had been taught to use firearms and hunt during his upbringing in Missouri, and as such was able to train other fellow members in proper usage of a weapon. Cox was also far more aware than fellow members of the