The movement encouraged African Americans to vote, Mr Seale explains, by demonstrating through its community programmes that they weren't forgotten or a lost cause.
The most successful and extensive of these programmes was Free Breakfast for Children, initially run out of an Oakland church before spreading nationally.
Other free services included clothing distribution, classes on politics and economics, free medical clinics, lessons on self-defence and first aid, transportation to prisons for family members of inmates, an emergency-response ambulance programme, drug and alcohol rehabilitation and testing for sickle-cell disease. Black Panther Party members were involved in numerous fatal clashes with police, including Newton who went on trial for the killing of Officer John Frey in His conviction was eventually overturned by an appeals court.
Government oppression initially contributed to the party's growth, with killings and arrests of Panthers increasing its support among African Americans and those on the broad political left, both of whom valued the Panthers opposition to de facto segregation and the military draft.
Black Panther Party membership reached a peak in , with offices in 68 cities and thousands of members. But as the 70s progressed, the movement was increasingly riven by infighting, government infiltration and controversy.
In , Huey Newton went into exile in Cuba to avoid charges of killing a year-old prostitute his eventual trial ended in a hung jury.
Public support waned as mainstream media becoming increasingly hostile toward the party. By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. A troop ship lands on Wakanda in Black Panther. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. John Jennings Afrofuturism, to me, is looking to the past, trying to examine it, and try to deal with an unresolved task around race and identity in this country, in the diaspora.
Mothership Connection, the Parliament album produced by George Clinton, included Afrofuturist ideas and artwork. John Jennings The future for black people in America was supposed to be connected to only three spaces: one, the hold of a slave ship; two, the plantation; and three, the grave. The notion of a black future in our country is still a radical political idea.
Cyborg was introduced by DC Comics in A scene from Get Out, which uses Afrofuturist horror themes. Next Up In Conversations. Delivered Fridays. Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email.
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Sign up for the newsletter Sign up for The Weeds Get our essential policy newsletter delivered Fridays. We fight capitalism with basic socialism. And we do not fight imperialism with more imperialism. We fight imperialism with proletarian internationalism. This was the guiding philosophy of the Black Panthers. But critical to their development was the knowledge that it was not enough to have the right theories, that this must be translated into a concrete set of demands that people can relate to and a clear course of action to achieve those demands.
And so the first task of Seale and Newton was to sit down and write a program for the Panthers. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black community. We believe that Black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny. We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities.
The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make. We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.
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 present-day society.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else. We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us.
We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary. We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality.
The second amendment to the constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self-defense. We believe that all Black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
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 believe that the courts should follow the United States constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The Fourteenth Amendment of the US constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group.
A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the Black community from which the Black defendant came.
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. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter such principles, and organizing its powers in such a form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. As soon as the program was written, they printed 1, copies and went out onto the streets to distribute them. Seale, Newton and their first member, Bobby Hutton put their months paychecks together to rent an old shop front as a base for operations.
Weekly meetings and political education classes were held to spread the word, and so the first chapter of the Panthers was formed. The party began to grow not only because an organization of that character with a clearly worked out program was needed at that time but because they based themselves in the community, working with the people, for the people.
They had an office, they had the ten point platform and program — now was time to put that program into action. The documentary is an essential tool for the classroom and gives high school teachers an incomparable visual companion to teaching the Panthers.
Like any documentary, the film has some oversights that teachers should be aware of. And in its attempt to tell the national story of the Panthers, it sometimes skips over important local organizing efforts.
In all of the roles, we tried to emphasize why people joined the Black Panther Party. For example, the role of Kathleen Cleaver begins:. As a young Black woman growing up in Alabama in the s, you wanted to challenge injustice.
You decided to move to San Francisco and join the Panthers. We also tried to highlight the repression the Panthers faced along with some of the lesser known but important stories of Panther community organizing. You spent two years in prison while the trial proceeded. You organized prisoners to fight for better living conditions and at one point took control of the jail from the prison guards. You demanded and received bail hearings for every prisoner. Hundreds of prisoners were released as a result of the new hearings.
One of the most overlooked aspects of the Panthers we tried to highlight was their role in the struggle for anti-racist education. Lastly, we tried to include criticisms of the Panthers in the roles — not just from the police and conservative politicians, but from Black Panthers themselves.
Whether it is the sexism some female Panthers experienced, or the ideological debate that caused an eventual split in the party, we wanted to provide students with tools to critically assess this complex history.
To start the activity, we distribute roles to students and ask them to read them several times, underline important information, and list out three or four crucial facts on the back of the role.
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