Black Panther Party
Encyclopedia : B : BL : BLA : Black Panther Party
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The Black Panther Party (originally called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was a controversial African American civil rights and self-defense organization active within the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. Founded by Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and Richard Aoki in October 1966, the organization initially espoused a doctrine of armed resistance to societal oppression in the interest of African American justice, though its aims and philosophy changed radically throughout the party's existence. While the organization's leaders passionately espoused socialist doctrine, the party's black nationalist reputation attracted an ideologically diverse membership base, such that ideological consensus within the party was difficult to derive, and differing perspectives within the party base often clashed conspicuously with those of its leadership.
The group was founded on the principles of its Ten-Point Program, a document that called for "Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace", as well as exemption from military service that would utilize African Americans to "fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the White racist government of America."
While firmly grounded in black nationalism, and begun as an organization that accepted African American membership exclusively, the party reconsidered itself as it grew to national prominence and became an iconic representative of the counterculture revolutions of the 1960s. The Black Panthers ultimately condemned black nationalism as "black racism", and became more focused on socialism without exclusivity, instituting a variety of community programs to alleviate poverty and illness among the communities they deemed most needful of aid, or most neglected by the American government. While the Party retained its all-black membership, they recognized that different communities (those they deemed oppressed by the American government) needed to organize around their own set of issues and encouraged alliances with these organizations.
The group's political goals are often overshadowed by their confrontational and even militaristic tactics, and their suspicious regard of law enforcement agents, whom the Black Panthers perceived as a linchpin of oppression that could only be overcome by a willingness to take up armed self-defense.
The Black Panther Party fell apart in the early 1970s. There have been a variety of allegations as to the lengths to which law enforcement went in its attempts to discredit and destroy the organization, including allegations of assassination The Angela Y. Davis Reader on page 11 says "police, assisted by federal agents, had killed or assassinated over twenty black revolutionaries in the Black Panther Party." She cites on page 23 (citation # 26) Joanne Grant, Ward Churchill and Jim Van der Wall (see below), and Clayborne Carson. (Davis, Angela Yves. The Angela Y. Davis Reader Blackwell Publishers (1998)).
Theory
With the death of Malcolm X in 1965, the Black Panther Party was founded to further the African American civil rights movement and to fill what it perceived to be the void in leadership among the African American community. The party initially rejected the integrationist stance of King, and rejected compromise with the power structure.The Black Panthers focused their rhetoric on revolutionary class struggle, taking many ideas from Maoism. The party turned to the works of Marx, Lenin, and Mao to inform the manner in which it should organize, as a revolutionary cadre organization. In consciously working toward such a revolution, they considered themselves the vanguard party, “committed to organizing support for a socialist revolution.” “Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Black Panthers and their Legacy”. edited by Kathleen Cleaver, George N Katsiaficas. Routledge UK (2001) page 29
However, the party did not fully agree with Karl Marx's analysis of the lumpenproletariat. Marx felt that this class lacked the political consciousness required to lead a revolution. Newton, on the other hand, was inspired by his reading of post-colonial theorist Frantz Fanon and his belief that the lumpen was of utmost importance, saying about these "brothers off the block" that, “If you didn't relate to these cats, the power structure would organize these cats against you.”
- ‘The “dangerous class,” the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society.’ Karl Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, pp.27-28
- ‘the lumpenproletariat, which in all big towns forms a mass sharply differentiated from the industrial proletariat, a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds living on the crumbs of society, people without a definite trade, vagabonds, gens sans feu et sans aveu [men without hearth or home], varying according to the degree of civilization of the nation to which they belong, but never renouncing their lazzaroni character’. Karl Marx, Class Struggle in France, C.W., Vol. 10, p.62
The Black Panthers’ basic understanding of the Lumpenproletariat generally conforms to that of Marx. For Eldridge Cleaver, the Lumpenproletariat were those who had “no secure relationship or vested interest in the means of production and the institutions of a capitalist society.”Eldridge Cleaver, "On the Ideology of the Black Panther Party", Pamphlet, (San Francisco, Black Panther Party, June 1970), p.7 His wife echoed a similar sentiment, stating that the black Lumpenproletariat had absolutely no stake in industrial America: “They existed at the bottom level of society…outside the capitalist system that was the basis for the oppression of black people.”Kathleen Cleaver in Brown, A Taste of Power, p.135
The Panthers included two distinct groups within the Lumpen. Firstly the “Industrial Reserve army”, who could not find a job, being unskilled and unfit, displaced by mechanization and never invested with new skills, forced to rely on Welfare or receiving State Aid. They consisted of ‘the millions of black domestics and porters, nurses’ aides and maintenance men, laundresses and cooks, sharecroppers, unpropertied ghetto dwellers, welfare mothers’.Cleaver, On the Ideology of the Black Panther Party, p.7 The second group were the so-called “Criminal Element”, who had similarly been locked out of the economy, and consisted of the ‘gang members and the gangsters, the pimps and the prostitutes, the drug users and dealers, the common thieves and murderers’.
The “Criminal Element” quite evidently displayed the key characteristics of the Lumpen, the parasite, “existing off that which they rip off”. However, the “Industrial Reserve Army” poses something of a problem, since a large proportion of this group consists of the working poor (although their jobs are “irregular and usually low paid’ they are the working poor all the same). But Marx explicitly stated that the Lumpenproletariat formed “a mass sharply differentiated from the industrial proletariat.” However, the Panthers viewed the line that separated the proletariat and the lumpen as tenuous and fragile, and this resulted in a blending of the two classes. Indeed, some historians have argued that the Panthers “envisioned a lumpen more akin to a subproletariat class” that lacked the parasitical aspects of the traditional lumpen sector.
Nationalism, internationalism and \"intercommunalism\"
As it was chiefly a party of the black masses, the leadership of the Black Panthers were characterized by internal contradictions on the type and kind of black nationalism it wished to embrace.While Bobby Seale, in his book Seize the Time, described the foundation of the organization as being based on "black nationalism", he also described the evolution of the organization into an instrument adapting to counter what it perceived to be social oppression on an international scale. Whereas the Panthers had been founded as an institution interested in social justice for African Americans, Seale attempted to reform it to an institution for worldwide social justice, regardless of the nationality or ethnicity of the oppressed people. Internationalist mentality had strategic advantages in the alliances it could form in pursuing social change with similar like-minded organizations. Newton, Seale, and their supporters within the party eventually came to reject cultural nationalists as "black racists", and dubbed those nationalists' brand of cultural nationalism as narrow and bourgeois "pork-chop nationalism". Alluding to the black nationalist United Slaves and Maulana Karenga, Black Panther Fred Hampton said, "[P]olitical power does not flow from the sleeve of a dashiki; political power flows from the barrel of a gun." ("Political power flows from the barrel of a gun" is an early quote by Mao Zedong.)
Newton and Seale attempted to work in coalition with organizations representing oppressed communities in the United States (many of which took inspiration from the Black Panthers), as well as with other radical groups with whom they felt they had common interests. These included the Puerto Rican Young Lords of New York and the white Appalachian Young Patriots with whom the Panthers formed the first Rainbow Coalition in 1969. Other groups with whom the Panthers worked included the predominantly white youth movements Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and Youth International Party (Yippies); the Chicano Brown Berets; the pacifist California Peace and Freedom Party; and the post-Stonewall riot formed group, the Gay Liberation Front.
In Huey P. Newton's speech at Boston College 1970, speaking as the head of the Black Panther Party, he declared that the party would "disclaim internationalism and become intercommunalists".[link] What Newton envisioned was the end of all "states", all nations, and rather a worldwide social framework of "interdependent socialist communities"; communalism rather than nationalism. The Party recognized that all over the world there were "oppressed communities", and that these communities should be united across national boundaries where they found themselves to have a common oppressor.
However, Newton's approach toward combating all forms of oppression rather than simply anti-black oppression caused friction to form between him and Panthers such as Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver. Indicative of this was Carmichael's embrace of the slogan of "Black Power", in contrast to Newton and Seale's embrace of the slogan "Power to the People" which they believed was of a more internationalist and Marxist character. Frank E. Smith, The Sixties and Seventies from Berkeley to Woodstock (1998) [link]
Though written before he joined the Black Panther Party, Eldridge Cleaver's book Soul on Ice often promoted a sexist and homophobic perspective that people erroneously associated with the Panthers. In his book, Cleaver indicates that, at one point in his life, he viewed the rape of white women as "an insurrectionary act." Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice, p. 33 (1999) [link] He also attacked black author James Baldwin for his well-known homosexuality and relationships with white men. While a member of the Panthers, however, Cleaver explicitly attacked sexism declaring that women "have a duty and the right to do whatever they want to do in order to see to it that they are not relegated to an inferior position." Insisting that liberation must be broad, he explained that, "the women are our half. They're not our weaker half; they're not our stronger half. They are our other half."
While in exile in Algeria, Cleaver eventually demanded less emphasis on Panther community programs and more emphasis on guerrilla activity. These differences of opinion took their toll on Newton's control of the party, especially while he served a sentence in prison, and eventually these cracks grew into a full-blown split between a main, Western U.S.-based faction supporting Newton, and a breakaway, Eastern U.S.-based faction that supported Cleaver. (See Decay and disintegration below)
Action
Self-defense
One of the central aims of the BPP was to stop abuse perpetrated by local police departments. When the party was founded in 1966, only 16 of the 661 Oakland Police Department officers assigned to black neighborhoods were African American.The Black Panthers by Jessica McElrath, published as a part of [afroamhistory.about.com], accessed on December 17, 2005. This situation was not unique to Oakland, California. Several southern cities such as Birmingham, Alabama had police forces that openly worked with the white-supremacist Ku Klux Klan. Throughout the 1960s, race riots broke out in impoverished African American communities subject to policing by disproportionately white police departments.The BPP sought to oppose police brutality through neighborhood patrols (an approach since adopted by groups such as Copwatch). Police officers were frequently followed by armed Black Panthers who sought at times to aid African American victims of police brutality and perceived racial prejudice.
Both Panthers and police died as a result of violent confrontations. By 1970, 34 Panthers had died as a result of police raids, shoot-outs and internal conflict.from an interview with Kathleen Cleaver on May 7, 2002 published by the PBS program P.O.V. and being published in Introduction to Black Panther 1968: Photographs by Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones, (Greybull Press). [link] Various police organizations claim the Black Panthers were responsible for the deaths of at least 15 law enforcement officers and the injuries of dozens more.[link]
Between 1966-1972 when the party was most active, several departments hired significantly more African American police officers. Some of these black officers played prominent roles in shutting down the Panther's activities. In Chicago in 1969 for example, Panthers Mark Clark and Fred Hampton were both killed in a police raid by Sergeant James Davis, an African American police officer in the Chicago Police Department. In cities such as New York City, black police officers were used to infiltrate Panther meetings. By 1972, almost every major police department was fully integrated.
Survival programs
Inspired by Mao Tse-Tung's advice to revolutionaries in the The Little Red Book, Newton called on the Panthers to "serve the people" and to make "Survival programs" a priority within its branches. The most famous and successful of their programs was the Free Breakfast for Children Program, initially run out of a San Francisco church.
Other survival programs were free services such as clothing distribution, classes on politics and economics, free medical clinics, lessons on self-defense and first aid, transportation to upstate prisons for family members of inmates, an emergency-response ambulance program, drug and alcohol abuse rehabilitation, and testing for sickle-cell disease, which was performed on more than 500,000 African-Americans before it was recognized by medical establishments as one that affected the black community almost exclusively.[link]
Political activities
The Party briefly merged with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, headed by the fiery Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Toure).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. Participants in the march carried rifles.
In 1968 BPP Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver ran for Presidential office on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket.
COINTELPRO and conflict with law enforcement
In August 1967, the FBI instructed COINTELPRO to "neutralize" what the FBI called "Black Nationalist Hate Groups" and other dissident groups. By 1969, the Black Panthers were the primary target of COINTELPRO. The goals of the program were to prevent the unification of militant Black Nationalist groups and to weaken the power of their leaders in order to reduce that probability, as well as discredit the groups to reduce their support and growth. The initial targets included the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Nation of Islam. Leaders who were targeted included Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Maxwell Stanford and Elijah Muhammad.In September of 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the Black Panthers as "The greatest threat to the internal security of the country," and within the year the Black Panther Party had become the primary focus of COINTELPRO and the target of 233 out of a total of 295 authorized "Black Nationalist" COINTELPRO actions.
Although COINTELPRO was commissioned to prevent violence, many of the tactics of the FBI organization were intended to foster violence. The most telling example was the FBI's efforts to "Intensify the degree of animosity" between the Black Panthers and the Chicago gang, the Blackstone Rangers. These included sending an anonymous letter to the Ranger’s gang leader claiming that the Panthers were threatening his life, a letter with the stated intent to induce "reprisals" against Panther leadership. In Southern California similar actions were taken to exacerbate what was characterized as a "gang war" between the Black Panther Party and an organization called the United Slaves. Violent conflict between these two groups, including shootings and beatings, led to the deaths of at least four Black Panther Party members. FBI agents claimed credit for instigating some of the violence between the two groups.#redirect [[Template:Fact]]
It should be noted that James Adams, Deputy Associate Director of the FBI's Intelligence Division, claimed that COINTELPRO operations did not intend to foster violence nor to harm individual members of the organizations targeted. However the final report of Senate “Church Committee” which investigated the actions of COINTELPRO in 1975 and 1976 did not agree with Adams, and purported to demonstrate that the FBI “itself engaged in lawless tactics and responded to deep-seated social problems by fomenting violence and unrest.” The Senate "Church Committee" of 1975 and 1976 investigated COINTELPRO, and they discussed the FBI's actions with regards to the BPP quite a bit. COINTELPRO actions against the Black Panther Party are discussed in "Book III: Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans" of that report from pages 185-223 and can be found [here]. The information in this section is largely taken from the introduction of the section of that report called "The FBI's Covert Action Program to Destroy The Black Panther Party" (pages 186-189).
On January 17, 1969, Los Angeles Panther Captain Bunchy Carter and Deputy Minister John Huggins were killed in Campbell Hall on the UCLA campus, in a gun battle with members of United Slaves, a rival black nationalist group, stemming from a dispute over who would control UCLA's black studies program. Another shootout between the two groups on March 17 led to further injuries. It was alleged that the FBI had made contacts with US in an alliance against the Panthers. [link]
One of the most notorious of such actions involved a Chicago Police raid of the home of talented and charismatic Panther organizer Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969. The raid had been orchestrated by the police in conjunction with the FBI, and the FBI was complicit in many of the actions involved. The people inside the home had been drugged by an FBI informant, William O'Neal, and were all asleep at the time of the raid. Hampton was shot and killed, as was the guard, Mark Clark. The others in the home were then dragged into the street and beaten and subsequently charged with assault. These charges were later dropped. The FBI's involvement is mentioned in the afore discussed Church Committee Report on page 223. A fully description of the nights events can be found in Rod Bush, We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the American Century. New York University Press (March, 2000) p. 216
In May 1969, Alex Rackley, a twenty-four year old member of the New York chapter of the Black Panther party, was tortured and murdered because party members suspected him of being a police informant. A number of party members had taken part, and three party officers eventually admitted guilt. Edward Jay Epstein, The Black Panthers and the Police: A Pattern of Genocide?. New Yorker (February 13, 1971) [link] Party supporters alleged that George Sams, the man who identified Rackley as an informer and subsequently ordered his execution, was an agent provocateur in the employment of the FBI.
Political and legal support
Support for the Panthers became widespread and was characterized by the now famous raised fist salute at the 1968 Summer Olympics by two medalists during the playing of the American national anthem. After African-American athletes Tommie Smith (gold) and John Carlos (bronze) raised their black-gloved fists as a symbol of Black Power, the International Olympic Committee banned them from the Olympic Games for life.The Black Panthers attracted a wide variety of left-wing revolutionaries and political activists, including former Ramparts Magazine editor David Horowitz. When Betty van Patten was murdered in 1974, Horowitz (among others) was certain that Black Panther members were responsible for the killing of his friend. The incident led Horowitz to denounce the Panthers. Decades later, when Huey Newton was shot to death by a drug dealer, Horowitz characterized Newton as a killer himself.David Horowitz's claim about van Patten's death is often discussed on blogs, and is mentioned in an American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research book review of Horowitz's Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey called [All's Left in the World]. Horowitz's credibility as a critic of the left and especially of the Black Panther Party is called into question in Elaine Brown's The Condemnation of Little B: New Age Racism in America. Beacon Press (February 15, 2003) pg. 250-251. When a former colleague at Ramparts alleged that Horowitz himself was largely responsible for the death of van Patten, Horowitz alleged that "the Panthers had killed more than a dozen people in the course of conducting extortion, prostitution and drug rackets in the Oakland ghetto" and that the organization was committed "to doctrines that are false and to causes that are demonstrably wrongheaded and even evil."Horowitz, David. "Who Killed Betty Van Patter?" 13 December, 1999. Salon.com. [link]
Decay and disintegration
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 Panthers' political momentum was bogged down in the criminal justice system.A significant split in the BPP occurred over disagreements within the Panther leadership over how to confront these challenges. Some Panther leaders such as Huey Newton and David Hilliard favored a focus on community service coupled with self-defense while others, such as Eldridge Cleaver, embraced a more confrontational strategy. A schism was made inevitable when Cleaver publicly criticized the Party as adopting a "reformist" rather than "revolutionary" agenda and called for Hilliard's removal. Cleaver was expelled from the Central Committee but went on to lead a splinter group, the Black Liberation Army, which had previously existed as an underground paramilitary wing of the Party.Marxist Internet Archive: The Black Panther Party. [link]
The Party eventually fell apart due to rising legal costs and internal disputes exacerbated by COINTELPRO. Its final leader was Elaine Brown, a longtime Panther and the first and last woman to lead it where she addressed issues of sexism within the party and attempted to stave off its disintegration.
\"New Black Panther Party\"
In 1989, a group calling themselves the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) was formed in Dallas, TX. Ten years later, the NBPP became home to many former Nation of Islam members when the chairmanship was taken by Khalid Abdul Muhammad. Members of the original Black Panther Party have insisted that this party is illegitimate and have vociferously objected that there "is no new Black Panther Party"."There is No New Black Panther Party: An Open Letter from the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation" [link]
A new "National Alliance of Black Panthers" was formed on July 31, 2004, inspired by the grassroots activism of the original organization but not otherwise related. Its chairwoman is Shazza Nzingha.
Famous members
See also
Groups and trends
- Contemporary left groups and trends
- Brown Berets
- Gay Liberation Front
- Gray Panthers
- I Wor Kuen
- Nation of Islam
- New Communist Movement
- The Patriot Party
- Students for a Democratic Society
- United Slaves
- Symbionese Liberation Army
- Weather Underground
- White Panther Party
- Young Lords
Events
References
- Brown, Elaine, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story, Anchor Books 1993
- Lewis, John. (1998). Walking with the Wind. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0684810654, pg 353.
- Dooley, Brian. (1998). Black and Green: The Fight for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland and Black America. Pluto Press.
- Ogbar, Jeffrey O. G., (2004) Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
External links
Archives and former members
- [It's About Time: Black Panther Party Legacy & Alumni]
- *[BPP Ten Point Platform & Program from circa 1966]
- [UC Berkeley Social Activism Online Sound Recordings: The Black Panther Party]
- [The Black Panther Party's Struggle for Social Change]
- [The Bobby Seale Homepage]
- [The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation]
- [Marxists Internet Archive: The Black Panther Party]
- *[10-point program of the Black Panther Party]
- [Assata Speaks!]
- [Hartford Web Publishing collection of BPP documents]
- [Libcom.org/history: The Black Panther Party for Self Defence]
- [Maoist Internationalist Movement: Black Panther Newspaper Collection]
- ["Enslaved by Dogma"] Brief analysis of COINTELPRO launched against Black Panthers
- [Mark Clark Legacy]
Documentary links
- [Aaron Dixon speaks] Hour-long talk by co-founder of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party. Recorded February 11, 2006 by KUOW, first broadcast February 15, 2006. Recording is RealAudio.
- [Former Black Panther Members Assert That the Black Liberation Army Curbed Police Brutality, and Call On Youth to Take Their Place]March 21, 2001 broadcast on Democracy Now. Available via [streaming Real Audio]. Retrieved March 13, 2006.
- [All Power to the People] - a documentary about the Black Power movement in the US
- [The strange history of the Black Panthers in the Triad] By Jordan Green Yes! Weekly. Greensboro NC. Published April 11, 2006. Retrieved April 14, 2006.
- [Seattle Black Panther Party History and Memory Project]
Critical links
- Stern, Sol.[Ah, those Black Panthers! How Beautiful!] from City Journal, 27 May 2003. Retrieved March 13, 2006.
- [Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers], a book by Tom Wolfe describing the courting of the Black Panthers by New York's social elite. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1970.
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