The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was, from approximately 1968 to 1980, the preeminent organization of the Black Freedom movement. Despite this it is nearly erased from most telling of the history of that time period, caricatured as an armed group of “reverse racist” fanatics to be feared by white America. The Black Panther Party was in reality a revolutionary community organization devoted to the empowerment of black and oppressed people in the United States and throughout the world. Since the Party's disbandment in 1980, no other organization or movement has yet emerged to carry on the revolutionary struggle. The Black Panther Party represented at the time a revolutionary vanguard not only of black communities, but (like the Communist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World before it) of the entire American proletariat.
Though the Panthers stand as the latest episode in a legacy of revolutionary resistance to white supremacist colonization and slavery dating back to the slave revolts given a face by the iconic Nat Turner and including the legacies of Douglass, Tubman, Garvey, Parsons, and DuBois; the Panthers by their own admission were the result of a black generation brought alive by one towering figure in particular: Malcolm X. Though they espoused themselves a part of the then-dominant left tradition of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, it was the speeches and writings of Malcolm that were required reading for Party members and it was for him that the Panthers called themselves “the heirs of Malcolm.” The Panthers in essence represented a more Marxist version of Black Nationalism. Given the history of each of these as the two dominant paradigms of post-slavery black liberation in the US (as embodied by Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association on the one hand and the IWW, DuBois, Parsons, and the CPUSA on the other), the dynamic results of their synthesis should be unsurprising.
Though the Panthers espoused an unwaveringly revolutionary vision and were often most characterized in the press by their firearms, the most crucial practice to the success of the Party was that of widespread community service operations. Most notable among these was the Free Breakfast for Children program, but a number of programs were run by the Party including Free Health Clinics (particularly vis-a-vis sickle cell anemia), Free Clothing exchanges, Free Busing to Prisons, and Free Legal Aid, in a addition to numerous community schools and literacy and political education programs for both children and adults. Though not every Chapter offered every program, committed community service was a universal tenant of Party work. These aided tremendously in the rise of the Panthers in that they lent them a credibility that had eluded other political groups. Community service demonstrated, perhaps most importantly, that the Panthers' first allegiance was first and foremost to the reality of conditions in the community and not to some outside ideological agenda.
Far from diverting all the Party's energy into dead-end reformism or paternalistic charity, such a demonstration of on-the-ground commitment combined with explicitly revolutionary politics served not only to raise radical consciousness but also to greatly increase the membership and community support (that is to say, the operating capacity) of the Black Panther Party. Minister of Defense Huey Newton made the distinction that these programs actually were not revolutionary. They were “survival programs pending revolution... they do not change social conditions, but they are life-saving vehicles until conditions change.” He further stressed the particular significance of this approach to the black struggle: “The masses of Black people have always been deeply entrenched and involved in the basic necessities of life. They have not had time to abstract their situation.”
To aid in the task of reaching such a community with the politics of revolution was the Black Panther Party's 10-Point Program. The Program was printed prominently in every edition of the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, was widely distributed in leaflet form, and was memorized by every Panther-in-Training. Each point is accompanied by a brief elaboration, but the ten demands are:
- We want freedom. We want the 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 capitalist 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 the 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 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. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.
Former Panther and current political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal writes that “while central to the Party, [the 10-Point Program] was not the ideology of the Party; it was more of an organizing tool. It was a way of getting folks to think about change, and it proposed solutions to problems faced by Black folks across the nation.”
Point 6 came to take on greater significance within the Party as its internationalist consciousness grew with the escalation of American war in Vietnam. Like SNCC before it, the Black Panther Party had from its founding openly opposed the draft as well as the war. Over time, and as national liberation movements around the world began fighting to overthrow the old colonial governments, the Panthers began to see their struggles as one and the same. Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver wrote a piece for the Black Panther newspaper called “To My Black Brother in Vietnam” encouraging black soldiers to see the vietnamese as their “Brothers and Sisters who are fighting for their freedom” and to “Either quit the army, now, or start destroying it from the inside.... Stop killing the Vietnamese people. You need to start killing the racist pigs who are over there with you giving you orders.... Sabotage supplies and equipment, or turn them over to the Vietnamese people.” Beyond this, the Panthers proposed a “Pilots for Panthers” program where the NLF could turn over American POWs in exchange for incarcerated Panthers. Huey Newton once offered to send Black Panther volunteers to fight against the United States in Vietnam. Viet Cong Deputy Commander Nguyen Thi Dinh commented: “With profound gratitude, we take notice for your enthusiastic proposal; when necessary, we shall call for your volunteers to assist us.”
One of the most blatant misconceptions about the Panthers was that this was a highly sexist and misogynist organization. While the Party was, to be sure, a product of the patriarchal society in which it arose, it was far less so than nearly any other left or revolutionary organization of the time. Like many other organizations in the Black Freedom movement, the majority of Black Panthers were women: 60% within a year of the Party's founding according to Chairman Bobby Seale. Additionally, and though it reads as arcane, the 7th of the Party's 8 Points of Attention (“Do not take liberties with women.”) helped forge an internal culture of some parity. Harlem Panther Afeni Shakur (Tupac's mother) recalled how her first encounter with the Panthers drove her to join: “It was the first time in my life that I ever met men who didn't abuse women. As simple as that. It had nothing to do with anything about political movements. It was just that never in my life had I met men who didn't abuse women, and who loved women because they were women and because they were people.” Again this is not to deny the existence of machismo among Panther men. Tarika Lewis, the first woman to join the BPP back when it only existed in Oakland, remarked that “When the guys came up to me and said 'I ain't gonna do what you tell me to do 'cause you a sister,' I invited 'em to come on out to the weapons range and I could outshoot 'em.” Other prominent Panther women included Communications Secretary Kathleen Cleaver who was the first woman to sit on the Central Committee and Elaine Brown who from 1974-77 served as Chairwoman of the Black Panther Party.
The Black Panther Party was aptly referred to by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as the"greatest threat to the internal security of the country." The FBI's Counter Intelligence Program (more commonly referred to as COINTELPro) set out to curtail the influence of the left in general, but especially to crush the BPP with all vicious force and deceit. Through mass use of informants, infiltrators, and assassinations Hoover weakened the Party. But it took more than just targeting the Panthers. A 1969 edition of The Black Panther read “The Black Panther Party cannot be suppressed by the establishment and its racist pigs because the Party exists by the will of the people....” Sure enough, COINTELPro came to the conclusion that in order to neutralize the Panthers they had to neutralize the black community generally. This was the same time that crack cocaine emerged. This did irreparable damage to the Panthers' efforts; membership and cadre dwindled and then fizzled. In 1980, the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service was officially discontinued.
There have been a few attempts to (mis)use the BPP's legacy in contemporary politics. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition PUSH appropriates the name of the Rainbow Coalition organized by martyred BPP Illinois State Chairman Fred Hampton. The Rainbow Coalition was a non-aggression pact between Chicago gangs facilitated by the Panthers and the Young Lords. Jesse Jackson's mock-up shares nothing but the name. The “New Black Panther Party” is a front for the Nation of Islam and has been widely denounced by former Panthers and even sued for use of the name by the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation.
What has stuck of the Panthers has been in the form of struggle against the prison-industrial complex. Though they never meant to, the Panthers were forced by state repression to deal with the prison system on a nearly constant basis. There are still many many BPP and Black Liberation Army members in prison today, not the least of whom is Mumia Abu-Jamal. Martyrs like George and Jonathan Jackson pioneered theories of prison resistance. Angela Davis, though never a Party member, was often associated with the Panthers and is one of the world's foremost advocates of what she calls Abolition Democracy.
“The main function of the party is to awaken the people and to teach them
the strategic method of resisting the power structure.” - Huey Newton
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