Black Panther Party

1
Black Panther Party
the nature of a panther is that if you push
that black panther into a corner, he will try to
go left to get out of your way. And if you keep
him there, then he's going to try to go right to
get out of your way. And if you keep oppressing
him and pushing him into that corner, sooner or
later that panther's going to come out of that
corner to try to wipe out whoever's oppressing it
in the corner -Seale recalling Newtons
explanation of the Black Panther symbol
2
Beginnings

• Historical context
• a. Urban riots in Los Angeles, Detroit,
  Chicago, and Harlem
• b. Protests against the Vietnam War
• Upset about unemployment, poor housing
  conditions, poor health care, police brutality,
  etc.

3
Beginnings

• Founded in 1966 by
• a. Huey Newton
• b. Bobby Seale
• Took the symbol (black panther) from Carmichaels
  Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama

4
Ideology

• Adopted Malcolm Xs belief in armed self-defense
• Established organizations within the community to
  remedy problems
• Ten-Point Program (see handout)

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State Capitol MarchMay 1967

• Protested Mulford Act (Panther Bill)-would
  repeal the law allowing citizens to carry loaded
  weapons as long as they were openly displayed
• Brought national attention to party
• Chapters organized across the country

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Huey Newton(1942-1989)Founder

• Born in Louisiana
• Family eventually moved to Oakland, CA
• Several skirmishes with the law (Free Huey)
• Received Ph.D. in social philosophy at UC-Santa
  Cruz in 1980
• Murdered in Oakland, CA on August 22, 1989

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Free Huey

• Oct. 1967 Stopped by Oakland police
• Dec. 1967 Black Panthers unite to support
  Newton
• Sept. 1968 Found guilty of voluntary
  manslaughter
• Aug. 1970 After numerous appeals, charges are
  dropped and Newton is set free

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And I say, well hey, existence is violent I
exist, therefore I am violent in that way.And I
think it's hypocritical to try to pretend
otherwise. I think it's hypocriticaljust like
it's hypocritical when these vegetarians try to
tell you they're not harming anything. A carrot
screams also.So we reject violence but we make
a distinction between the violence of the
oppressor and the self-defense of the people. We
think that the people have a right and an
obligation to defend themselves by any means
necessary, just like Malcolm X said.And you
know something? Sometimes if you want to get rid
of the gun, you have to pick the gun up. -From
A Huey P. Newton Story directed by Spike Lee and
written/performed by Roger Guenveur Smith
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We had seen Watts rise up the previous year. We
had seen how the police attacked the Watts
community after causing the trouble in the first
place. We had seen Martin Luther King come to
Watts in an effort to calm the people, and we had
seen his philosophy of nonviolence rejected.
Black people had been taught nonviolence it was
deep in us. What good, however, was nonviolence
when the police were determined to rule by force?
We had seen all this, and we recognized that the
rising consciousness of Black people was almost
at the point of explosion. Out of this need
sprang the Black Panther Party. Bobby Seale and
I finally had no choice but to form an
organization that would involve the lower-class
brothers. -Huey Newton on the formation of the
Black Panther Party
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David HilliardChief of Staff

• One of the first members of the party
• Took over when Newton was in jail (1967-1970)
• 1969 Imprisoned for carrying loaded gun in
  public place (violated Mulford Act of 1967)
• 1993 Established the Huey P. Newton Foundation
  with Fredrika Newton (Hueys wife)

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Bobby Seale(1936-present)Co-founder Chairman

• Born in Texas
• Served in the U.S. Air Force but was discharged
  for bad conduct
• Met Newton while attending Merritt College in
  Oakland, CA
• Arrested multiple times

12
Why should we fight in the war any more? This
country's government does not recognize our
constitutional democratic human rightsIf we were
supposed to be 12 percent of the population, why
was 28 to 29 percent of those dying in the front
lines black Americans? Why? And then our rights
are not being recognized by this government?
Screw you! You know. Down with the pig power
structure! -Bobby Seale on the Vietnam War
13
Eldridge Cleaver(1935-1998)Minister of
Information

• Born in Arkansas
• Joined Black Panthers in 1967

• Wrote Soul on Ice and Soul on Fire
• Ran into trouble with the law and fled with his
  wife to escape charges

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Eldridge CleaverTransformation

• Returned to U.S. in 1975 a changed man
• Renounced the party
• Became a born-again Christian
• Ran unsuccessfully for senator of CA (had run for
  President in 1968 under the Peace and Freedom
  Party)

15
I think it was a success in terms of the goals
that it espoused. That was to break down the
color barrier in public accommodations access to
the institutions and things like that. But the
big failure of the civil rights movement was that
it did not have an economic plank because while
we got access to schools and to Hot Dog Stands
and all that, the burning issue right now is
economic freedom and economic justice and
economic democracy. The NAACP didn't touch that.
They had no plan for that. When Martin Luther
King was turning towards the economic arena in
Nashville supporting the strike of the garbage
man, he was murdered. I applaud my country for
the changes that we have undertaken in these
areas of civil rights. But where the big problem
still remains is with the economic
system. -Eldridge Cleaver on the success of the
Civil Rights Movement
16
Stokely Carmichael(1941-1998)Honorary Prime
Minister

• NAG and SNCC leader
• Joined Black Panthers in 1967
• Against Newtons belief in working with white
  allies and consequently left the party

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Other Prominent Members
Fred Hampton
H. Rap Brown
George Jackson
Bobby Hutton
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Other Prominent Members
Fredrika Newton
Kathleen Cleaver
Angela Davis
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Survival Programs

• Established more than 60 programs to strengthen
  their communities
• "All of our survival programs are free. We
  have never charged the community a dime to
  receive the things they need from any of our
  programs and we will not do so. We will not get
  caught up in a lot of embarrassing question or
  paperwork that alienate the people. If they have
  a need we will serve their needs and attempt to
  get them to understand the true reasons why they
  are in need in such an incredibly rich land."
• -Huey Newton

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Food ProgramsCollected donations of food and
supplies from local merchants and provided hot
meals for children and food giveaways to entire
families
21
Liberation Schools"Another Black Panther
Party program is the Liberation Schools...
They're held in churches and the community
centers. We see the Liberation Schools as a
supplement to the existing institutions, which
still teach racism to children, both white and
black.-Bobby Seale
22
Free Clothing
Black Panther Party members went out and asked
businessmen to donate sets of clothes, for school
children on up to teenagers. We tried to get
brand new clothing, because black people are
tired of hand-me-downs. -Bobby Seale
23
Health Clinics
"She Sheeba Haven recruited people to train her
in how to run the clinic. Dr. Tolbert Small was
the clinic's physician, but Haven served as its
first office manager. Party members were sent to
the clinic as their work assignment. Haven
developed a reputation for being somewhat of a
staff sergeant. She demanded cleanliness, and
sterile procedures. -Hugh Parson
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Other Accomplishments

• Brought attention to poor prison conditions
• Protested against police brutality
• Increased voter registration
• Inspired other groups to form
• a. Brown Berets
• b. Red Guard
• c. Young Lords
• d. Gray Panthers

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J. Edgar Hoover(1895-1972)Director of FBI and
COINTELPRO

• Born in Washington, D.C.
• Studied law at George Washington University
• Director of the FBI for 48 years

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• The Black Panther Party, without question,
  represents the greatest threat to internal
  security of the country."
• -J. Edgar Hoover (declared that 1969 would be
  the last year of the partys existence)

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COINTELPRO

• Stood for Counter-Intelligence Program
• Purpose was to "expose, disrupt, misdirect,
  discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities
  of the Black nationalists" (according to FBI
  documents)
• Informants in the party
• Assassinations of party leaders and members

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• There had been every kind of assault imaginable
  on the Party's social programs and destruction of
  Party property. From police raiders who smashed
  breakfast programs eggs on the floors of
  churches they invaded to those who crushed Party
  free clinic supplies underfoot to those who
  caused the destruction of batches of the Party's
  newspapers. In addition, intimidation and other
  such tactics were being employed to undermine the
  Party's support, to break the spirit and
  commitment of Party supporters and family
  members.
• -From http//www.blackpanther.org

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Decline of the PartyLate 1970s

• Disintegration of the original leadership
• Many members imprisoned, killed, or expelled
  during 1968-1972
• Internal stress within the leadership
• Substance abuse
• FBI and COINTELPROs efforts to destroy the party

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• "Huey and Big Bob finally arrived, disheveled
  and unseemly. I realized then that Huey had
  returned to cocaine. He and Ericka Huggins and
  I stood on the capitol steps in the late
  afternoon. Congressman Tom Bates handed him our
  official proclamation certificate. Huey's body
  shivered. His eyes bulged, and he could hardly
  accept the parchment for wiping his nose and
  sniffing. Ericka and I acknowledged our
  embarrassment with a glance."
• -Elaine Brown on Huey Newtons drug use

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Decline of the Party

• Elaine Brown became the new party leader
• Obtained funds to build 300 new housing units
• Project to rebuild downtown provided 10,000 new
  jobs
• Party died out by the end of the 1970s

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Sources

• http//www.blackpanther.org/
• http//www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/
• http//sunsite.berkeley.edu/calheritage/panthers/i
  ndex.html
• http//www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAnewtonH.ht
  m