Respect the Black Panther Party.
Happy Sunday! As I've watched conversations on the Michigan domestic terrorism plot, and the armed groups showing up at protests, I'm reminded of how different the narrative of the Black Panther Party was in the 1960s. Olivia joins us today to share her perspective on how race influences how our country responds to movements for liberation, and its impact on the perception of the BPP.
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TAKE ACTION
Watch the PBS documentary The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution for a more robust picture.
Write letters to incarcerated Black Panthers and donate directly to them. Find ways to support Black Panther Party members still serving time in prison.
Demand diversity in the curriculum for history courses with a more comprehensive look at Black history.
GET EDUCATED
By Olivia Harden (she/her)
I went to a predominantly white high school, and one thing I’ve noticed is that Black history is typically represented in the background. The Civil Rights Movement was condensed into one chapter in my American history textbook, only including the names of “peaceful” leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. In fact, in 2015, statistics showed that “1 to 2 lessons or 8–9 percent of total class time is devoted to Black history in U.S. history classrooms” (SocialStudies.org). But these narratives tend to leave out important parts of history like the Black Panther Party (BPP).
The BPP, no doubt, has a complicated and violent history. The story of its growth includes shootouts with police officers, political imprisonment, and insidious government surveillance (San Francisco Chronicle). But the United States government vilified the organization from its conception, informing the narrative that we have today. As our world attunes itself to addressing police brutality and murders, the history of the organization’s ideology and its legacy can inform current cries for change and revolution.
In 1966, Matthew Johnson, an unarmed Black teenager, was shot down by a police officer – sparking outrage in the same way George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s killings have this year (History). That October, Huey Newton, and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in Oakland, CA (History). They used the advantage of the Second Amendment and the open-carry law in California at the time to patrol the police, watching from a safe distance while carrying rifles to intimidate officers into following the law. In response to this, Ronald Regan and the statehouse passed the Mulford Act in 1967, prohibiting the open carry of loaded firearms (History).
This image tends to define the BPP – Black militants with huge afros, black leather jackets, and berets carrying huge rifles and other guns openly in the street. But what more people need to know is that the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was created to be an organization in service to the Black community. They made a Ten-Point Program to stop racism and protect and liberate Black Americans (BLM Syllabus). The Ten-Point Program denounces capitalism and demands things like guaranteed employment, housing, expansive education, healthcare, and the end of police brutality. Many of these asks are the same calls-to-action that activists are fighting for today.
The Black Panther Party also created many of its own social programs. A big hit was the free breakfast program for Black children (History). Studies have shown that kids who eat breakfast are generally healthier and do better in schools (No Kid Hungry). The Panthers would feed children before school for free. At its peak, it reached thousands of children daily. Other programs included free clinics, sickle cell anemia research, and free ambulance services (Insider).
Parallels exist between the present-day Black Lives Matter movement and the Black Panther movement’s goal of liberation. The treatment of the Black Lives Matter movement in the media and by the government is tightly intertwined too. At the time, J. Edgar Hoover used the FBI's COINTELPRO to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and otherwise neutralize using tactics like tapping party members phones and infiltration" (fbi.gov). Present-day, police forces track activists’ movements, both online (CNN) and by using facial recognition technology (The Verge). Ninety-three percent of protests were peaceful this summer, but violent ones received more media attention (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project). A question that continues to pop up for me – should the state have a monopoly on violence? I challenge you to ask yourself, are buildings more important than Black lives?
Race often informs the way the United States responds to an issue. For example, the NRA supported the Mulford Act decision in 1967 (History). But today, the organization is adamant for loose restrictions related to gun ownership, despite the rise of school shootings and gun-related violence across the U.S. (Forbes). The organization’s actions indicate how society views which citizens are allowed to wield power and protest in modern-day times.
Point 5 of the BPP’s Ten-Point Plan is as follows:
“WE WANT DECENT EDUCATION FOR OUR PEOPLE THAT EXPOSES THE TRUE NATURE OF THIS DECADENT AMERICAN SOCIETY. WE WANT EDUCATION THAT TEACHES US OUR TRUE HISTORY AND OUR ROLE IN THE PRESENT-DAY SOCIETY. We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of the self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in society and in the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.”
Education about Black people in American history is not just for Black people. It’s crucial for all of us. A comprehensive approach is key to moving forward towards a just future.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The Black Panther Party does have a violent past, but its goals laid out a plan to support and uplift Black people.
The Black Panther Party for Self Defense’s complex past can inform our future.
The U.S. must be held accountable for its racist past.
RELATED ISSUES
9/11/2020 | Protect Black women.
7/26/2020 | Pay attention to the Portland protests.
10/1/2020 | Vote Trump out of office.
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