It sowed paranoia, distrust and violence within the party. Panthers were aggressively surveilled by the FBI, and the agency’s infamous and illegal COINTELPRO effort included infiltration and intimidation of Panthers groups across the country.
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Also among its 65 programs were pioneering sickle cell disease testing research, free food and clothing distribution, transportation service for families visiting incarcerated loved ones, and escorts for seniors who needed assistance getting to a supermarket or a pharmacy. and abroad where it had chapters, opened offices, provided free health care clinics to residents and free breakfast programs for schoolchildren, and published Black Panther newspapers. Largely due to its “Survival Programs,” the party was embraced in nearly 70 communities across the U.S.
But those words also meant nutrition, health care and political education for the Black community, said Erika Huggins, who was the first woman to lead a chapter of the Panther Party. The party eventually dropped “for Self Defense” from its name. In interviews, former Panther members acknowledged that the party’s very name drove perceptions that it only operated by force and intimidation. And there were the Panther formations, marches and patrols, meant as a show of discipline and strength.
The party became famous in its early years for its men and women in matching black berets and black leather jackets, sometimes accessorized by long-barrel shotguns.
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Among their demands: Freedom to determine the destiny of the Black community, economic empowerment through full employment and wealth redistribution, an educational system inclusive of the Black experience, and an end to brutality and fatal encounters between Black people and police. Together, they wrote the party’s Ten Point Program, laying out the party’s beliefs. Newton was the party’s minister for defense and Seale was the party chairman. “You’re hearing more about the Black Panther Party, and Huey’s contributions to (Black) liberation as a thought leader, than you’ve ever heard before,” she said.Īfter meeting at a community college in Oakland, Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in October 1966. Among her goals: recognition of Panther sites by the U.S. She said the bronze bust is just a start of a larger effort to see the Black Power movement take its place in history with other, less confrontational actors of the civil rights movement.
Newton Foundation in Oakland, is among those who want to retell the Panthers story for a new generation. Some of the party’s biggest accomplishments, like its community service programs, helped transform public education and health care.įredrika Newton, who co-founded the Dr.
Yet over its 15 years of operation, the party and its politics were a training ground and an inspiration for a generation of Black, Latino, Asian, Native American and white people who hold public office or public platforms today. The Black Panther Party has been seen as an organization that sought war with police, a group doomed by infighting, infiltration and corruption among its leaders. Much of the party’s story has often been overshadowed by its association with violence. “You have the detractors who only see (the Panthers) as a militia, and then you have the folks who are actually happy for that because the times required it,” said Robyn Spencer, an associate professor of history at Lehman College in New York City. The Panthers, they say, were a harbinger of today’s identity politics, helped shape progressivism, and have served as grandfathers and grandmothers to the Black Lives Matter movement. WHYY thanks our sponsors - become a WHYY sponsorĪnd it would be wrong to suggest that the Panthers are enjoying a resurgence, or even a moment the party disbanded almost 40 years ago.īut it is also true that in 2021, some activists and historians are taking another look at the legacy of the Panthers through a less-freighted lens.
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