| Black Panther Party |
Article Index for Black Panther |
Website Links For Black Panther Party |
Information AboutBlack Panther Party |
The Black Panther Party (originally called the '''Black Panther Party for Self-Defense''') was an African American organization founded to promote Civil Rights and Self-defense . It was active within the United States in the late 1960 s into the 1970 s. Founded in Oakland, California , by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in October 1966 , the organization initially espoused a doctrine calling for armed resistance to societal oppression in the interest of African American justice, though its objectives 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. Jessica Christina Harris. Revolutionary Black Nationalism: The Black Panther Party." Journal of Negro History, Vol. 85, No. 3 (Summer, 2000), pp. 162-174 Ideological consensus within the party was difficult to achieve, and some members openly disagreed with the views of the leaders. 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."1 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 Of The 1960s .2 The Black Panthers ultimately condemned black nationalism as "black racism" and became more focused on Socialism without racial exclusivity.3 They instituted a variety of community programs to alleviate Poverty and illness among the communities it deemed most needful of aid. While the party retained its all-black membership, it recognized that different communities (those it 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 by 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 .4 The Black Panther Party collapsed in the early 1970s, after party membership had started to decline during Huey Newton's 1968 manslaughter trial. There have been a variety of allegations about the lengths to which law enforcement officials went in their 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)) FOUNDATIONS In 1965, Huey Newton was released from jail, and his friend from Oakland City College, Bobby Seale , had joined a black power group called the Revolutionary Action Movement , which had a chapter in Oakland and followed the writings of Robert F. Williams . Originally from North Carolina, Williams published a newsletter called ''The Crusader'' from China, where he fled to escape kidnapping charges. RAM was often seen as extremely violent; in 1965, three east coast RAM members were charged with conspiring to blow up the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell, and the Washington Monument. The Oakland chapter consisted mainly of students, and were not interested in this more extreme form of activism. Newton and Seale's attitude was more militant, and the pair left RAM searching for something more meaningful to them The connection between RAM and the founding of the BPP is discussed in Pearson 1994, page 76-77. Around this time, the pair were working at the North Oakland Neighborhood Anti-Poverty Center and they also served on the advisory board. In an effort to deal with police brutality, the advisory board obtained five thousand signatures in support of the city council setting up a police review board to review complaints of police brutality. Newton was also taking classes at the City College and at San Francisco Law School, and both were active in the North Oakland Center. Thus the pair had a large number of connections and friends with whom they talked up the new organizational they had in mind. They wrote their initial platform statement, the ten-point program, with the help of Huey's brother, Melvin, and decided on a uniform of blue shirts, black pants, black leather jackets, Black Berets, and openly displayed loaded shotguns In his studies, Newton had discovered a little known California law which made it permissible to carry a loaded rifle or shotgun as long as it was publicly displayed and pointed at no one. For more on this, see Pearson 1994, page 109. Theory With the death of Malcolm X in 1965 , the Black Panther Party saw as its purpose 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. Although it eventually saw the involvement of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leader, Stokely Carmichael , the party initially rejected the Integrationist stance of Martin Luther 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 Karl 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 so-called 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.” Marx’s conception of the lumpenproletariat was a group that stands on the very margins of the class system because they are not wholly integrated into the division of labor. They do not accept the idea of making their living by regular work. Thus, their position within society is not marked by the fact that they are unemployed but rather by the fact that they do not seek employment: :‘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 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 Though they may be swept up by a proletarian revolution and are entirely capable of “the most heroic deeds and the most exalted sacrifices”, they are equally capable of “the barest banditry and the foulest corruption”, and are much more likely to play the part of “a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.” ibid.; Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, pp.27-28 Essentially, they are a malleable populace that is generally tempted into service of sight, as opportunistic and exploitative as the finance aristocracy. “The finance aristocracy, in its mode of acquisition as well as in its pleasures, is nothing but the rebirth of the lumpenproletariat on the heights of bourgeois society”, Marx, Class Struggle in France, p.51 Just like the aristocracy, the lumpen live off society, rather than producing for it, existing as an entirely parasitic force. The Black Panthers’ basic interpretation 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 Kathleen Cleaver 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 Yet, the Panthers did not propose that the entire Black American population constituted a post-modern, race-based lumpenproletariate in and of itself. Instead, the Party's analysis suggested that there existed a significant "underclass" -- both urban and rural in locus -- within the masses of the oppressed whose removal from the primary means of production left that class particularly apt to engage subversive activities, both revolutionary and counterrevolutionary in potential effect. The Panthers included two distinct groups within the lumpen. Firstly the “industrial reserve army”, who could not find employment, 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.5 Nationalism, internationalism and "intercommunalism" 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",6 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, " {Link without Title} 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 ,under the leadership of Jose (Cha-Cha) Jimenez, who spent time in training sessions at Panther headquarters in Oakland, CA, and who with Preacherman of the white Appalachian Young Patriots joined with Fred Hampton in Chicago, and together formed the first Rainbow Coalition in 1969 . Other groups with whom the Panthers also worked included the predominantly white youth movements Students For A Democratic Society (SDS) and Youth International Party (Yippies); the Chicano Brown Berets ; the 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".[http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=354282] What Newton envisioned was the end of all "states", all nations, and rather a worldwide social framework of "interdependent socialist communities"; communalism rather than ''nation''alism. 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) [http://www.fsmitha.com] Though written before he joined the Black Panther Party, 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'') The Ten Point Program
ACTION Survival programs Inspired by Mao Zedong '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 Rehabilitation , and testing for Sickle-cell Disease , which was performed on more than 500,000 African Americans before it was recognized by the medical community as one that affected the black community very disproportionately. {Link without Title} Political activities The Party briefly merged with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee , headed by the fiery Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture). 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. They were a big influence on the White Panther Party, that was alleged to the Detroit/Ann Arbor rockband MC5 and their manager John Sinclair, writer of the book 'Guitar Army' that also consisted a 10-point program. Conflict with law enforcement One of the central aims of the BPP was to stop abuse perpetrated by local police departments. When the party was founded in , and was common with police departments in major cities across the country. In several southern cities such as Birmingham, Alabama , police forces openly worked with the White-supremacist Ku Klux Klan . Throughout the 1960s , Race Riot s broke out in impoverished African American communities subject to policing by disproportionately white police departments. The work and writings of Monroe, North Carolina NAACP chapter president and author of '' Negroes With Guns '', Robert F. Williams , also influenced the BPP's tactics. The BPP sought to oppose alleged 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 alleged 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). [http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2004/apantherinafrica/special_photo.html] 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.[http://www.odmp.org/officer.php?oid=4764 The Officer Down Memorial] Between Dr. Beny Primm , an African-American pioneer in the treatment of drug addiction with Methadone , reports Black Panther party activists once held him at bayonet point, "They thought I was part of the white man's way of enslaving black folk, and one of the ways they enslaved black folk was to put them on methadone." Methadone Has Survived Many Challenges The Ibogaine Story Conflict with COINTELPRO In August 1967 , the FBI instructed COINTELPRO to "neutralize" what the FBI called "Black Nationalist Hate Groups" and other dissident groups. In September of 1968 , FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the Black Panthers as "The greatest threat to the internal security of the country,"Stohl, Michael. ''The Politics of Terrorism'' CRC Press. Page 249 and by 1969, the Black Panthers were the primary target of COINTELPRO, and the target of 233 out of a total of 295 authorized " Black Nationalist " COINTELPRO actions. 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 . 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 Gentry, Curt, ''J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets''. W. W. Norton & Company (2001) page 622. 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 sent provocative letter to United Slaves in an attempt to create antagonism between US and the Panthers. {Link without Title} One of the most notorious of such actions involved a Press (March, 2000) p. 216 In May Black Panther trials of 1970 ; The trial ended with a hung jury, and the prosecution chose not to request another trial. WIDENING SUPPORT Awareness of the group continued to grow, especially after the arrest of Newton in Fall of 1967, and the May 2 1968 protest involving loaded shotguns at the California State Assembly. On February 17, 1968, a large rally was held for Huey in the Oakland Auditorium. The speakers included Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, and James Forman. It was after this event that the size of the group really took off. From about that time, the structure of the group became more defined as well. New members had to attend a six-week training program and political education classes (largely based in Mao's ''Little Red Book'') Pearson 1994, page 176. In 1968, the group shortened its name to the Black Panther Party and sought to focus more directly on political events. Members were no longer allowed to carry guns, and an influx of college students joined the group which consisted largely of "brothers off the block." This created some tension in the group, as some were more interested in supporting the Panther's social programs, while there were other members who were not as interested in changing their lifestyle from before they joined. This "street mentality" meant that for many Panthers, the group was little more than a type of gang Pearson 1994, page 175. Widespread support for the Panthers 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. Support also came from some celebrities in Hollywood , such as Jane Fonda . She supported Huey Newton and the Black Panthers in the early 1970s, stating "Revolution is an act of love; we are the children of revolution, born to be rebels. It runs in our blood." She called the Black Panthers "our Revolutionary Vanguard ", and said "we must support them with love, money, propaganda and risk." The Black Panthers attracted a wide variety of left-wing revolutionaries and political activists, including former Ramparts Magazine editor David Horowitz and left-wing lawyer Charles R. Garry who often acted as their counsel. CRITICISM Violence From the start, the Black Panther Party's focus on militancy came with a reputation for violence. That reputation was certainly augmented by the fact that they often carried loaded shotguns. Newton had discovered a little known California law which made it permissible to carry a loaded rifle or shotgun as long as it was publicly displayed and pointed at no one Pearson 1994, page 109. But much of the reputation came from particular events in which the Panthers were involved. In October of 1967, Oakland police officer John Frey was shot to death in an altercation with Newton during a traffic stop. In the stop, Newton and backup officer Herbert Heanes also suffered gunshot wounds. Although the result was later reversed, for three years after that Newton was imprisoned for involuntary manslaughter. This incident gained the party even wider recognition by the radical American left, and a "Free Huey" campaign ensuedPearson 1994, page 3. On May 2, 1967, the California State Assembly Committee on Criminal Procedure was scheduled to convene to discuss what was known as the "Mulford Act", which would ban public displays of loaded firearms. Cleaver and Newton put together a plan to send a group of about 30 Panthers led by Seale from Oakland to Sacramento to protest the bill. The group entered the assembly with their weapons, an event which led to widespread publicity, but also to the arrest of Seale and five others. The group plead guilty to misdemeanor charges of disrupting a legislative sessionPearson 1994, 129. After the group attracted wider attention with the arrest of Newton and the May 2 gun display, the group shortened its name to the Black Panther Party and sought to focus more directly on political events. Members were no longer allowed to carry guns, and an influx of college students joined the group which consisted largely of "brothers off the block." This created some tension in the group, as some were more interested in supporting the Panther's social programs, while there were other members who were not as interested in changing their lifestyle from before they joined. This "street mentality" meant that for many Panthers, the group was little more than a type of gang Pearson 1994, page 175. On April 6, 1968, Panther Bobby Hutton, who held the title Minister of Defense, was killed, and Cleaver was wounded in what both the Oakland police and the Black Panther Party have called an ambush by the other group. In the event, two policemen were shot A discussion of the event can be found in Epstein, Edward Jay. ''The Black Panthers and the Police: A Pattern of Genocide?'' The New Yorker, (February 13, 1971) page 4 (Accessed here June 8, 2007). This event and others furthered the Panther's reputation for violence and confrontation. The group was rivaled only by The Weathermen among large leftist organizations in this reputation. Hugh Pearson paraphrases writer Julius Lester, writing, "the Left appeared to view the Panthers as gladiators, cheering them on as they got themselves killedPearson 1994, 205. From the fall of 1967 through the end of 1969, nine police officers were killed and fifty-six were wounded in confrontations with the Panthers. The confrontations are believed to have resulted in ten Panther casualties, and an unknown number of injuries. And in 1969 alone, 348 Panthers were arrested for a variety of crimes Pearson 1994, page 206 discusses many of these events, including a partial list from the summer of 1968 through the end of 1969. Death of Betty van Patter When , 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 without Title} 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 without Title} 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. LEGACY The 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 . A '40-year reunion' of the Black Panther Party was held in Oakland, California in October 2006. Photos of the Black Panther Party, Oakland 2006 In January of ) New Black Panther Party See Also: New Black Panthers 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 without Title}
|
|
|