Stuff You Should Know Black Panthers
On Monday April 1, 1967, "George Dowell and several neighbors from N Richmond, California . . . heard x gunshots. Old later on five:00 a.m., George came upon his older blood brother Denzil Dowell lying in the street, shot in the back and head. Police from the canton sheriff's department were there, but no ambulance had been chosen. . . . [The] sheriff's office reported that deputy sheriffs Mel Brunkhorst and Kenneth Gibson had arrived at the scene at 4:fifty a.m. on a tip from an unidentified caller about a break-in in progress. They claimed that when they arrived, Denzil Dowell and another man ran from the back of a liquor store and refused to stop when ordered to halt. Brunkhorst fired i blast from a shotgun, hitting Dowell and killing him. . . .
For the Dowells, the official caption did not add upwardly, and community members helped the family investigate. . . . There was no sign of entry, forced or otherwise, at Bill's Liquors, the store that Dowell had allegedly been robbing. Further, the police had reported that Dowell had not simply run but as well jumped two fences to get away before being shot downwards. But Dowell had a bad hip, a limp, and the family claimed that he could non run, let alone leap fences. . . . A dr. who worked on the case told the family that judging from the manner the bullets had entered Dowell's body, Dowell had been shot with his hands raised. . . . Mrs. Dowell publicly announced, 'I believe the police murdered my son.' . . . A white jury took little fourth dimension deciding that the killing of unarmed Dowell was 'justifiable homicide' because the police officers on the scene had suspected that he was in the act of committing a felony. Outraged, the Black community demanded justice."
—Joshua Blossom and Waldo Eastward. Martin, Jr. Blackness confronting Empire: The History and Politics of the Blackness Panther Political party
Helping Northward Richmond's Black community demand justice for the killing of Denzil Dowell was one of the first major organizing campaigns of the Blackness Panther Political party, and the get-go result of The Black Panther newspaper, which at its elevation effectually 1970 had a circulation of 140,000 copies per week, asked, "WHY WAS DENZIL DOWELL KILLED?" Anyone reading the story of Dowell today can't aid merely depict parallels to the unarmed Black men and women regularly murdered past constabulary. The disparity between the police force's story and the victim's family'due south, the police harassment Dowell endured before his murder, the jury letting Dowell's killer off without penalty, even the reports that Dowell had his easily raised while he was gunned down, eerily repeat the constabulary killings today that have led to the explosion of the movement for Blackness lives.
However when nosotros learn about the early years of the Panthers, the organizing they did in Richmond — conducting their own investigation into Dowell's death, confronting constabulary who harassed Dowell's family, helping mothers in the community organize confronting abuse at the local school, organizing armed street rallies in which hundreds filled out applications to join the Party — is about ever absent. Born just over 50 years ago, the history of the Blackness Panther Party holds vital lessons for today'southward movement to confront racism and police force violence — yet textbooks either misrepresent or minimize the significance of the Panthers. Armed with a revolutionary socialist ideology, they fought in Black communities across the nation for giving the poor admission to decent housing, wellness care, instruction, and much more. And as the Panthers grew, so did the issues they organized around.
This local organizing that the Panthers engaged in has been largely erased, even so it is precisely what won them such widespread support. By 1970, a Market Dynamics/ABC poll institute that Blackness people judged the Panthers to be the arrangement "most probable" to increase the effectiveness of the Blackness liberation struggle, and 2-thirds showed admiration for the political party. Coming in the midst of an all-out assault on the Panthers from the white printing and law enforcement — including FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's claim that the Panthers were "the greatest threat to the internal security of the land" — this support was remarkable.
The Textbook Version of the BPP
A few of the major textbooks don't even mention the Black Panthers, while most spend just a sentence or two on the system. Even the small number that practice devote a few paragraphs to the Party requite little context for their actions and profoundly distort their ideology.
Textbooks often associate the Panthers with violence and racial separatism. For instance, according to Teachers' Curriculum Institute's History Alive! The United States Through Modern Times, "Blackness Ability groups formed that embraced militant strategies and the utilise of violence. Organizations such as the Black Panthers rejected all things white and talked of edifice a carve up black nation." While ignoring that the Panthers believed in using violence only in self-defense, this passage also attempts to divide the Panthers from "nonviolent" civil rights groups. The Panthers didn't develop out of thin air but evolved from their relationships with other ceremonious rights organizations, especially the Pupil Irenic Coordinating Commission (SNCC). The proper noun and symbol of the Panthers were adopted from the Lowndes County Freedom System (LCFO), an independent political organization SNCC helped organize in Alabama, which was also called the "Black Panther Party." Furthermore, SNCC centrolineal with the Panthers in 1968 and although the alliance lasted only v months, information technology was a crucial time for the growth of the Panthers.
The passage from History Live! also incorrectly paints the Panthers as anti-white, erasing their important work edifice multiracial coalitions. Most famously, Chicago Panther leader Fred Hampton organized the Rainbow Coalition that included the Puerto Rican Young Lords and the Immature Patriots — a group of poor, Southern, white migrants. The Black Panthers helped the Patriots prepare up their ain community service programs. In California, the Panthers fabricated an important alliance with the mostly white Peace and Freedom Party, which in 1968 ran Eldridge Cleaver for President in an attempt to provide an antiwar, anti-racist alternative to the Autonomous Party. An editorial in The Black Panther explained: "The increasing isolation of the black radical movement from the white radical movement was a dangerous thing, playing into the power structure'south game of divide and conquer."
Other textbooks also erase the socialist character of the Blackness Panther Party. Holt McDougal's The Americans reads, "Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded a political party known equally the Blackness Panthers to fight constabulary brutality in the ghetto." While the textbook later on acknowledges other things the Panthers advocated, by reducing the reason for their founding to fighting police brutality, The Americans profoundly diminishes the important ideological basis of the party. More conspicuously than whatsoever other national civil rights organization, the Panthers linked the fight against racism with the fight confronting capitalism. As Panther Huey Newton explained, "Nosotros realize that this country became very rich upon slavery and that slavery is capitalism in the extreme. Nosotros accept two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. Nosotros must destroy both." The Panthers understood that Black people could not achieve socialism on their own and their work building multiracial anti-capitalist coalitions flowed from that analysis. In fact, the Panthers adult an didactics requirement for joining the party that consisted of reading 10 books relating to Black liberation and socialism.
Several textbooks likewise blame the Panthers for the terminate of the Civil Rights Motility, while simultaneously ignoring or downplaying the role the FBI played in destroying the political party. In a later department in The Americans, the authors write, "Public support for the Civil Rights Motion declined because some whites were frightened by the urban riots and the Black Panthers." What textbooks like this neglect to mention is the reject in public support was a event of the counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) of the FBI. According to scholar Ward Churchill:
The Black Panther Party was savaged past a campaign of political repression, which in terms of its sheer viciousness has few parallels in American history. Coordinated by the Federal Agency of Investigation . . . and enlisting dozens of local police departments effectually the country, the assault left at least xxx Panthers dead, scores of others imprisoned afterwards dubious convictions, and hundreds more suffering permanent concrete or psychological damage. Simultaneously, the party was infiltrated at every level by agents provocateurs, all of them harnessed to the task of disrupting its internal functioning. Completing the packet was a torrent of "disinformation" planted in the media to ignominy the Panthers before the public, both personally and organizationally, thus isolating them from potential support.
With minimal and problematic coverage in the history textbooks, there is petty curriculum for teachers hoping to provide students with the crucial history of the Blackness Panther Political party. This is why we were excited last year to hear that PBS began distributing Stanley Nelson's new documentary Blackness Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution. The documentary is an essential tool for the classroom and gives loftier school teachers an incomparable visual companion to education the Panthers. Like any documentary, the film has some oversights that teachers should be enlightened of. Although information technology discusses the Panthers' x-Point Platform, it doesn't do a keen job of explaining the Panthers' Marxist ideology. It besides doesn't provide plenty historical context for the Panthers' activities, making information technology difficult for students to fully sympathise both the rise and fall of the Party. And in its attempt to tell the national story of the Panthers, it sometimes skips over important local organizing efforts. Simply chunked into sections and coupled with readings that help flesh out the documentary'southward omissions, it is a crucial add-on to any social justice instructor'due south tool breast.
Teaching the Panthers Through Role Play
To innovate the picture and to try to give students a fuller flick of the political party's history, we developed a mixer activity in which each student takes on a office of someone who was in, or continued to, the Blackness Panthers. Students are given a role with a thumbnail sketch of that person's biography along with details that help illuminate aspects of the party. In all of the roles, we tried to emphasize why people joined the Blackness Panther Party. For example, the office of Kathleen Cleaver begins:
Equally a young Black woman growing up in Alabama in the 1950s, you wanted to challenge injustice. You were inspired by powerful women leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Commission (SNCC). . . . These women were creating a social revolution in the Deep South and all worked with SNCC. . . . In 1966, you went to organize in SNCC's New York office and then to Atlanta, Georgia. You had joined SNCC at the time it took up the slogan "Black Power," and y'all saw the Black Panther Party as taking the positions SNCC was headed toward. . . . You decided to move to San Francisco and join the Panthers.
Amid the other roles is Ruby Dowell, Denzil Dowell's sister who joined the political party after the organizing the Panthers did in Richmond.
We also tried to highlight the repression the Panthers faced along with some of the lesser known but important stories of Panther community organizing. The role for Lumumba Shakur, founder of the New York Black Panther Party affiliate, explains how the entire New York Panther leadership was arrested on flimsy show. Role of the office'due south description:
You spent two years in prison while the trial proceeded. You organized prisoners to fight for improve living weather and at 1 point took command 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.
Students also encounter Panther allies like William "Preacherman" Fesperman of the Young Patriots, Madonna Thunder Hawk of the American Indian Movement, Gloria Arellanes of the Brown Berets, and Jose "Cha-Cha" Jimenez of the Young Lords. They also run across Panther "enemies" like FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Los Angeles Police Officer Pat McKinley.
1 of the most overlooked aspects of the Panthers we tried to highlight was their function in the struggle for anti-racist educational activity. Historian Donna Murch details how the Panthers had their origins in "agitation for Black Studies courses and debates virtually the 'relevance' of instruction," and describes the membership of Panthers as "equanimous largely of Southern migrants under 25, including many students recruited from local loftier schools and customs colleges…" The Panthers were originally formed out of a written report group at Oakland's Merritt community college. The Panthers' conventionalities in the need for an education beyond what was beingness taught in the schoolhouse organization led them to develop a network of liberation schools for youth.
In the mixer, the function of Ericka Huggins highlights the Panthers' flagship liberation school in Oakland. Other roles highlight the Panthers' fight for ethnic studies and their free breakfast program that fed hundreds of hungry children earlier school and was eventually adopted by the U.Due south. education system — 1 of the party'south most meaningful and lasting reforms.
Lastly, we tried to include criticisms of the Panthers in the roles — not just from the constabulary and conservative politicians, but from Blackness Panthers themselves. Frequently students can glorify the Blackness Panther Party, especially students of color who are regularly harassed past police and are justifiably impressed with the Panthers' bold defiance against what they called "the hog power structure." But the Black Panther Party existed as a national organization for simply a short catamenia, and while a large responsibility for their destruction should be put on the FBI and police efforts to destroy the party, it's also important for students to ask whether the Panthers could take done annihilation differently. Whether information technology is the sexism some female Panthers experienced, or the ideological fence that acquired an eventual split in the party, we wanted to provide students with tools to critically appraise this complex history.
To starting time the activity, nosotros distribute roles to students and ask them to read them several times, underline important data, and list out three or four crucial facts on the back of the office. Students are often blown abroad by the stories presented. "My grapheme's a badass!" 1 student exclaimed after reading almost Bobby Seale's acts of defiance in the courtroom when he was put on trial after participating in the 1968 antiwar demonstration at the Democratic National Convention.
When students end reading, we give out eight questions that guide them as they circulate around the room, coming together others and finding a dissimilar person to answer each of the questions. For example, "Find someone who has an opinion on the role of women in the Blackness Panther Party. Who is this person and what is their opinion?" Nosotros encourage students to take their time — the point of the mixer is not to race through and get all the answers to the questions, but to learn from the diverse stories in the room to go a fuller motion-picture show of the Black Panther Party. Equally teachers, we participate in the mixer equally well. Information technology's helpful to have a role with a more complex critique that might be difficult for students to explain, like Stokely Carmichael or Luke Tripp of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement. Students are oftentimes eager to larn the stories in the room and a buzz fills the air every bit they grab i another and share their roles.
At the end of class — with at least twenty minutes left, we enquire students to head back to their seats and silently write on four questions:
- What were some of the things you learned about the Black Panthers that you didn't know before the mixer?
- Whose story did you find near interesting or surprising?
- What did you recall of the critiques of the Black Panthers you encountered?
- What would you like to know more than nigh?
We've always been impressed by the rich give-and-take these four questions produce. Students are often surprised to larn the story of Richard Aoki. "I thought they'd only permit Black people into their group, merely Aoki was Japanese American," Maya wrote. For many students this is the first fourth dimension they learn near Latinx or Asian American radicals. Aliyah exclaimed, "It was cool to acquire near Gloria [Arellanes] and Cha-Cha Jimenez. I didn't know that Mexicans and Puerto Ricans were fighting in the aforementioned ways equally the Panthers." "Yeah, my mom told me about the Brownish Berets," Ayanna stated, "but I didn't know that they were connected to the Panthers."
Students are often shocked at the level of violence the Panthers faced at the hands of the FBI. "It was sad to hear the story of Lil' Bobby Hutton," Brandon wrote. "He was trying to help his people and was shot more than 12 times with his hands upwards. He was merely sixteen!" David added, "I found it interesting the way the FBI ready the BPP. It's clear the government did non desire them to succeed." More than specifically, James noticed, "The FBI sent imitation letters to the Oakland and New York Panthers to create tensions between them. I didn't realize the FBI was so involved in breaking them up."
We've establish that students tin can often be impressively articulate when evaluating the critiques they come in contact with during the mixer. Keisha wrote, "I thought Luke Tripp's ideas fabricated sense when thinking almost how to fight capitalism. He founded the Dodge Revolutionary Matrimony Movement in Detroit and was focused on helping working-course Blacks. He thought the confrontations with police would just get Panthers thrown in jail and that they should focus on organizing strikes." Melanie disagreed, "I really think the confrontations with police were important because it showed people the Panthers weren't scared." Madison grappled with the differing views of sexism in the party that she encountered: "It was interesting that Roberta Alexander called out sexism in the BPP and thought they didn't requite women equal rights. Other Panther women I met disagreed. People still have sexist attitudes toward women and women don't have equal rights and so that was interesting to think most." Other students defended the Panthers confronting critiques from the correct and left. "[California State Assemblyman] Donald Mulford said that he wanted to protect lodge from Black people with guns. But I experience like society needs to be protected from white people with guns," declared JT. "I really like Stokely Carmichael," Gregory began, "but I disagree with his critique of the Panthers for making alliances with white people. I get where he's coming from, but you can't fight racism with racism." Without realizing it, Gregory'south words echoed Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton's.
We promise the mixer nosotros wrote, Stanley Nelson's new documentary, Wayne Au'southward lesson on the Panthers' ten-Betoken Program, and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca'south lesson on COINTELPRO, can be starting points for educators who promise to arm a new generation with the story of the Panthers. Equally the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Blackness Panther Party passes past, these lessons should be only a few of many to come that help teachers and students explore this rich — and too often ignored Ñ history.
Resource: Click here for the Black Panther Party mixer.
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Source: https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/what-we-don-t-learn-about-the-black-panther-party-but-should/
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