The Black Panther Party

1
The Black Panther Party
2
Original Members

• The six original members, Nov. 1966
• Top left to right Elbert Howard, Huey Newton,
  Sherman Forte, Bobby Seale
• Bottom Reggie Forte, and Little Bobby Hutton

3
Origins The Founding

• Started October 1966 in Oakland, California
• Founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale
• Initially called The Black Panther Party for
  Self-Defense
• One of the first organizations in U.S. history to
  militantly struggle for ethnic minority and
  working class emancipation.

4
Origins Historical Context

• They believed that blacks were obliged to wage
  fierce survival struggles in the U.S.
• Organizations such as the NAACP and UNIA were
  created to promote civil rights and independence
  for blacks.
• There were also efforts by former slave Booker T.
  Washington to establish a separate socioeconomic
  scheme for blacks.
• Americas response to all such efforts was
  violent and repressive and unyielding.

5
Historical Context

• Some relief came in 1954 when the Supreme Court
  ruled, in the case of Brown v. Board of
  Education, that separate was not equal for blacks
  in America (at least with respect to public
  education).
• Even after Brown blacks struggled to integrate
  and become full partisans in American society.
• In 1955 numerous boycotts and sit ins were being
  held in Montgomery, Alabama.
• These acts in favor for civil rights began to
  further challenge white America as a whole no
  longer could they over look the growing voices of
  discontent.

6
Historical Content

• Finally, in 1964, the U.S. Congress passed a
  civil rights act that outlawed racial segregation
  in public facilities, but it came too late.
• Images of nonviolent blacks and other civil
  rights workers and demonstrators being beaten and
  water hosed by police, spat on and jailed for
  protesting social injustices were seen across the
  nation.
• Young urban blacks rejected the idea of
  nonviolence.

7
Goals and ideals

• The partys agenda was the revolutionary
  establishment of real economic, social and
  political equality across gender and color lines.
• Black Panther Theory The practices of the late
  Malcolm X were deeply rooted in the theoretical
  foundations of the Black Panther Party.
• Followed Malcolms belief of international
  working class unity across the spectrum of color
  and gender and united with various minority and
  white revolutionary groups.

8
The Ten Point Plan

• We want freedom. We want power to determine the
  destiny of our black and oppressed communities.
• We want full employment for our people.
• We want an end to the robbery by the capitalists
  of our black and oppressed communities.
• We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of
  human beings.
• 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.

9
The Ten Point Plan

• We want completely free health care for all black
  and oppressed people.
• We want an immediate end to police brutality and
  murder of black people, other people of color,
  all oppressed people inside the United States.
• We want an immediate to all wars of aggression.
• We want freedom for all black and oppressed
  people now held in the U.S. federal, state,
  county, city and military prisons and jails. We
  want trials by a jury of peers for all persons
  charged with so-called crimes under the laws of
  the country.
• We want land, bread, housing, education,
  clothing, justice, peace and peoples community
  control of modern technology.

10
International Reaches

• The effects of the Black Panthers have rippled
  across many countries, however briefly.
• International groups have included the Black
  Panther Movement and the White Panthers of the
  United Kingdom, the Black Panther Party of
  Israel, the Black Beret Cadre of Bermuda, the
  Dalit Panthers of India, and the Black Panther
  Party of Australia.
• Clemons Jones (2001) concluded that the
  ideology of the Panthers, underlined by a
  commitment to self-determination and the
  elimination of all forms of discrimination, found
  resonance with oppressed people around the world.

11
Other subgroups

• Black Panther coalition and support groups began
  to spring up internationally in Japan, China,
  France, England, Germany, Sweden, Mozambique,
  South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uruguay and Israel.
• There was a rapid proliferation of other, like
  minded organizations.
• Chicanos or Mexican Americans in South California
  formed the Brown Berets.
• Whites in Chicago formed the White Patriot Party.

12
Other subgroups cont.

• Chinese in the San Francisco Bay Area formed the
  Red Guard.
• Puerto Ricans in New York created the Young
  Lords.
• A group of so called senior citizens organized
  the Gray Panthers to address human and civil
  rights abuses of the elderly in society.

13
Survival programs

• There came to more than 35 programs in the 1960s
  that were referred to as Survival Programs and
  were operated by Party members under the slogan
  survival pending revolution.
• Free Breakfast for Children Program, which spread
  from being operated at one small Catholic church
  to every major city in America where there was a
  Party chapter.
• Thousands upon thousands of poor and hungry
  children were fed free breakfasts every day by
  the Party under this program.

14
Survival programs cont.

• Other survival programs that existed were
• Free Clinics
• Grocery Giveaways
• The manufacture and distribution of free shoes
• Senior transport and service programs,
• Free busing to prisons and prisoner support and
  legal aid programs, among others.

15
Political activities

• Fought for and obtained funds to build 300 new,
  replacement housing units for poor people
  displaced by a local freeway.
• They entered into a working partnership with
  certain developers to build up the dilapidated
  downtown city center in order to provide 10,000
  new jobs for Oaklands poor and unemployed.

16
Political activities cont.

• At that same time, a permanent primary school was
  instituted, which was highly lauded by the
  California legislature, among others.
• The Party briefly merged with the Student
  Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, headed by the
  fiery Stokely Carmichael.
• In 1967, the party organized a march on the
  California state capitol to protest the state's
  attempt to outlaw carrying loaded weapons in
  public.
• In order to prove a point, participants in the
  march carried rifles.

17
Demise of the panthers

• The Panthers were no longer a progressive
  political organization calling for an end to a
  racist, class-based society, but thugs with the
  capacity to incite incredible damage.
• While part of the organization was already
  participating in local government and social
  services, another group was in constant conflict
  with the police.
• For some of the Party's supporters, the
  separation between political action, criminal
  activity, social services, access to power, and
  grass-roots identity became confusing and
  contradictory as the Panther's political momentum
  was bogged down in the criminal justice system.

18
Demise of the panthers cont.

• A significant split in the Black Panther Party
  occurred over disagreements within the Panther
  leadership about how to confront these
  challenges.
• By the beginning of the 1980s, attacks on the
  party and internal degradation and divisions,
  caused the party to fall apart.
• Many remaining Panthers were hunted down and
  killed in the following years, imprisoned on
  trumped charges, or forced to flee the United
  States.

19
Where are they now?

• Black Panthers gathered for their 35th
  Anniversary on April 18, 2002, which discussed
  preserving civil liberties, women in the
  struggle, police brutality, the prison industrial
  complex and a session led by Bobby Seale on
  grassroots organizing in a high-tech society.
• Although the Black Panthers Party are no longer
  active, one of the six members Bobby Seale
  continues to speak on racism, abusive
  exploitation, and violence against women and
  children.

20
References

• The Black Panther Party. Retrieved January 20,
  2006 from www.blackpanther.org
• Burroughs, Todd Steven. 2002. Black Panthers
  Gather for 35th Anniversary. Crisis (The New)
  10912.
• Columbia Encyclopedia. 1994. Black Panthers.
• Fraley, Todd and Elli Lester-Roushanzamir. 2004.
  Revolutionary Leader or Deviant Thug? A
  Comparative Analysis of the Chicago Tribune and
  Chicago Daily Defenders Reporting on the Death
  of Fred Hampton. The Howard Journal of
  Communications 15147-167.
• Lothian, Kathy. 2005. "Seizing the Time
  Australian Aborigines and the Influence of the
  Black Panther Party, 1967-1972. Journal of
  Black Studies 35179-200.
• Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The Black
  Panther Party. Retrieved February 27, 2006 from
  http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party.