The Black Panther Party
“Black people need some peace. White people need some peace. And we are going to have to fight. We’re going to have to struggle. We’re going to have to struggle relentlessly to bring about some peace, because the people that we’re asking for peace, they are a bunch of megalomaniac warmongers, and they don’t even understand what peace means.”
Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 36 of this newsletter! This week’s topic is The Black Panther Party. Writing this newsletter was a clear reminder of why I began writing in the first place, because knowing our history matters, especially when the truth is constantly denied to us through the American public education system. The brief, yet impactful legacy of the BPP is both inspiring and devastating. The assassination of Chairman Fred Hampton has brought me to tears on more than one occasion. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in October 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale and the first point of their Ten Point Platform and Program was “We want freedom.” In 1968, the FBI’s first director, J. Edgar Hoover called the Black Panthers, “One of the greatest threats to the nation’s internal security,” because they were angry, organized and defiant. COINTELPRO wanted the Black Panthers exterminated, disgraced and omitted from the history books — and largely succeeded. Today, we focus on the truth of their legacy. Let’s get into it.
Let’s Get Into It
Who Were The Black Panthers?
Founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP) was the era’s most influential militant Black power organization.
Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense with a slogan of “Power to the People.”
They were inspired by Malcom X and drew on Marxist ideology. The Civil Rights Movement seemed aimed at the Jim Crow South to Seale and Newton, and they wanted to create a movement in the North and the West.
While the Black Panthers were often portrayed as a gang, their leadership saw the organization as a political party whose goal was getting more African Americans elected to political office.
They wore leather jackets, black berets and walked in lock step formations.
They were a sophisticated political organization comprised of predominantly uneducated, young, poor, disenfranchised Black people who realized that through organization and discipline, they could use their talents and resources to make a real impact in their community.
They had a radical political agenda compared to non-violence advocates like Martin Luther King Jr (least we forget King was hated, a target of the FBI, assassinated and murdered).
While the Civil Rights Movement sought equality, the Black Power Movement assumed equality of person, and sought the opportunity to express that equality through pride.
Women made up about half of the Panther membership and often held leadership roles.
At its peak in 1968, the Black Panther Party had roughly 2,000 members.
The party enrolled the most members and had the most influence in the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia.
They worked with many non-Black folks and organizations, with Bobby Seale stating: “The biggest misconception is the FBI said that the Black Panthers hated all white folks. How could we hate white folks when we protested along with thousands of our white left radical and white liberal friends? We worked in coalition with each other, in coalition with the Asian community organizations and coalition with Native American community organizations, in coalition with Hispanic, Puerto Ricans and brown [people]. I had coalitions with 39 different organizational groups crossing all racial and organizational lines.”
The Ten Point Platform
We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.
We want full employment for our people.
We want an end to the robbery by the Capitalists of our Black Community.
We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
We want 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 want all Black men to be exempt from military service.
We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people.
We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.
We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Black Communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.
We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.
Why Were They Feared By White America?
The New York Times wrote an article claiming responsibility for their portrayal of The Black Panther Party, stating: “The media, like most of white America, was deeply frightened by their aggressive and assertive style of protest,” Professor Rhodes said. “And they were offended by it.”
The media called them “antiwhite” (though the Panthers frequently called on ALL Americans to fight for equality) and constantly focused on their guns and militant style.
When discussing clashes with police, the media focused on the altercation, not the critique of police brutality — something Black America continues to deal with to this day. What went largely unreported was the fact that these conflicts stemmed not just from the Panthers, but also from the federal government.
It was not until years later that the Senate’s Church Committee would show how pervasively the F.B.I. worked against the Panthers and how much it influenced press coverage. It encouraged urban police forces to confront Black Panthers; planted informants and agents provocateurs; and intimidated local community members who were sympathetic to the group. The Panther-police conflict that inevitably followed played directly into the narrative that had been established: that the party was a provocative, dangerous organization.
What Did The Black Panthers Do?
Although created as a response to police brutality, the Black Panther Party quickly expanded to advocate for other social reforms:
Local chapters of the Panthers, often led by women, focused attention on community “survival programs.”
A free breakfast program for 20,000 children each day as well as a free food program for families and the elderly.
They sponsored schools, legal aid offices, clothing distribution, local transportation, and health clinics and sickle-cell testing centers.
They created Freedom Schools in nine cities including the noteworthy Oakland Community School.
They practiced copwatching, observing and documenting police activity in Black communities. They often did this with loaded firearms because they advocated for armed self defense. The BPP rejected nonviolence as both a tactic and a philosophy, emphasizing instead the importance of physical survival to the continuing struggle for civil and human rights.
Prominent Members
How Were They Destroyed?
The Mulford Act of 1967 in California was a state-level initiative that prohibited the open carry of loaded firearms in public spaces as a direct response to the BPP. The Black Panther Party sparked fear among policymakers, who translated these anxieties into legislation designed to undermine this social activism. Because the BPP relied on strategies (like having firearms) that were not widely used by mainstream civil rights activists, the group faced new forms of legal repression. Policymakers successfully employed gun control legislation to undercut the BPP. By criminalizing the BPP’s use of weapons on California streets, the Mulford Act weakened the BPP and provided opportunities to show them breaking the law.
In 1969, COINTELPRO (a branch of the FBI aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations) targeted the Panthers for elimination — shown in various documents.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who deemed the Black Panther Party a threat to American security, launched a counterintelligence attack against the group, which included infiltrators and deadly raids. By the time the group was dismantled in the mid-1970s, 28 members were dead. 750 Panthers were imprisoned. Systematically, the local and federal authorities dismantled the organization.
Read FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s statement from May 15, 1969 calling “to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for.’
Today, American children learn a false and warped history of The Black Panther Party. Teachers’ Curriculum Institute’s textbook History Alive! The United States Through Modern Times states: “Black Power groups formed that embraced militant strategies and the use of violence. Organizations such as the Black Panthers rejected all things white and talked of building a separate black nation.” Holt McDougal’s textbook The Americans reads: “Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded a political party known as the Black Panthers to fight police brutality in the ghetto.” This same textbook then says, “Public support for the Civil Rights Movement declined because some whites were frightened by the urban riots and the Black Panthers.”
While there is so much more to unpack about The Black Panther Party and the legacies of some of its most prominent members, I hope this newsletter clarified a lot of omitted history. In a time when critical race theory is under attack, it becomes crystal clear how much has been warped by the media — from news channels to text books — and how much more we need the truth.
See ya next week!
