The Black Panther Party: Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale; Lessons in Social Activism

The Black Panther Party: Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale; Lessons in Social Activism

By Fahim A. Knight-El



The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California. One must understand that Newton and Seale was influenced by the fiery Black Nationalist spokesman Minister Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam who after his defection from the Black Muslim movement his ideological and philosophical views shifted more toward self-defense by any means necessary (Reference: Bobby Seale; Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton). There were mass protest and demonstrations taking place throughout America and simultaneously the civil rights movement was in full swing in the 1960s—boycotts, picket lines, sit-ins and the fight for full public accommodation was being led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ,who headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). But it would be four students in 1960 from North Carolina Agriculture and Technical State University in Greensboro, North Carolina that integrated Woolworths Department store (who demonstrated civil disobedience). H. Rap Brown (Jamil Al-Amin) in his book titled, Die Nigger Die and Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) in his book titled, Black Power both former chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and honorary Black Panther Party members who explored the radical side of the civil rights movement in their approach to social justice. Carmichael often stated ‘ready for the revolution’ and H. Rap Brown coined the phrase ‘burn baby burn,’ which was the anthem for the rebellions that took place in the late 1960s almost in every major city across America.    

It would be racist police unlawful conduct and police brutality that led the Black Panther Party on the west coast coming into existence. Huey P. Newton felt that black people had the right to protect and defend themselves in their community against racist police attacks. The Black Panther Party under the leadership of Seale and Newton taught the Party members and the black community the importance of knowing their legal rights, in particular the Miranda Rights and the Second Amendment Right to the United States Constitution (the right to arm themselves) (Reference: Hugh Pearson; "The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America"). 

The Black Panther Party started free breakfast programs, free health clinics and free education and schooling programs throughout the black community—they were extremely proactive in every phase of the political, economic and social struggles in Los Angeles, and Oakland which led to the establishment of Black Panther Party chapters throughout black America. Yet, their Black Power and paramilitary position of arm struggle drew the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover and the U. S. counterintelligence program known as Cointelpro. 

Hoover based on a disinformation and propaganda campaign characterized the Black Panther Party as a threat to the United States national security interest and they would suffer the long arm of U.S. Government dirty tricks and scrutiny. I do not think their​ arm resistance movement was rooted in treason or sedition nor were their political objectives geared towards overthrowing the United States Government as Hoover maintained. It was more about educating blacks of their constitutional rights as private citizens and knowing the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution as it related to due process and equal protection under the law. They were truly black patriots who understood the Bill of Rights and stood behind the Second Amendment the right to bear arms (white militia groups have always had the same rights since the inception of the United States as a democracy and Republic). But to understand the difference one must read Robert Williams the former NAACP president of Monroe, North Carolina who authored a book titled, Negroes with Guns.

J. Edgar Hoover worked to systematically dismantle the Panther Party under the FBI counterintelligence program known as Cointelpro. Hoover stated he feared any black leader who could unify and electrify the black masses (and what he feared most was the rise of a black Messiah)—he initially thought that it was Elijah Muhammad, Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokley Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, etc.). This led to him infiltrating the Black Panther Party and other progressive black organizations by sending agent provocateurs and government snitches to cause internal conflict. The

U.S. judicial system unjustly prosecuted the Black Panther Party leadership and members in which some of them are still in prison some 40-50 years later as I write this article, defamed and character assassinated, others were assassinated and murdered by the government and some went underground in order to protect their lives and shield their identity. Hoover and the U.S. government went on a vicious campaign to destroy the Black Panther Party by killing off its leadership and most of all destroying the image of black people having the right to defend themselves. Hoover and the United States Government worked to neutralized and destabilized the organization and its leadership. Many of Black Panther leadership as I stated above were killed in arm confrontations with the police. For example, two popular Black Panther Party leaders of the Chicago chapter in 1969 Fred Hampton and Mark Clark was gunned down and murdered as they slept in their home. Other Black Panther members were falsely accused and were sentenced to long-term prison sentences such as the Panther 21 in which many of them have been in prison for over 40 years wrongfully convicted on trump up charges. 

Geronimo Ji-Jaga Pratt who after serving over 25 years was pardon and exonerated for crimes he did not commit. Also, George Jackson and the Soledad Brothers were victims of government complicity he was murdered by San Quentin prison guards on August 21, 1971 (Reference: "Blood in My Eye"). Perhaps one of the most well known Black Panther was Mutlia Shakur who still remains in prison since the 1970s and Mumia Abu Jamal, a member of the Philadelphia chapter of Black Panther Party for Self-Defense who has been on death row since the early 1980s (Reference: Mumia Abu Jamal; "Live From Death Row"). Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown) was a recent victim of the United States Government continued objectives from the 1960s to punish our black freedom fighters and black revolutionaries—the government pursuant to the new rules of law under the initiatives of Homeland Security, anti-terrorism laws and the U.S. Patriot Act in which President Donald J. Trump’s domestic and foreign policy personifies extreme reactionary fascism in which the United States has moved toward since his election to office in 2016. Let me briefly mention Assata Shukur who was not an official member of the Black Panther Party, but a member of the Black Liberation Army and the Panthers shared political views. Shakur was falsely accused of killing a New Jersey State Trooper in 1976 on the New Jersey Turnpike and was convicted of murder. She was sentenced to life in federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia where she escaped and sought political asylum in Cuba under Fidel Castro (Reference: Assata Shukur; "Assata").

Thus, conducting this research, I was taking back by Eldridge Cleaver's (minister of information) critical analysis of the United States jurisprudence system, in particular his open letter to then Governor Ronald Reagan in his book titled, “Soul on Ice” and his opposition to the police state. Cleaver's letter is equalvent to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" relative to the question of moral and ethical principles. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense started as a Black Nationalist organization but from an ideological perspective the Panther vacillated between Black Nationalism and Scientific Socialism (Communism)--they later would embrace the philosophy of Mao Se Tung (the Red Book) and Karl Marx (Das Capitol) in which they believed that the black struggle had to be fought from both a class and race analysis.

The Black Panther Party main objectives were laid out and disseminated in the their "Ten Point Plan"  

                                       What We Want Now!

We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.

1). We want full employment for our people.

2). We want an end to the robbery by the white men of our Black Community. (later changed to "we want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our black and oppressed communities.")

3). We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

4). We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society.

5). We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.

6). We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.

7). We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people.

8). We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

9). 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.

10). We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.

                              What We Believe:

1). We believe that Black People will not be free until we are able to determine our own destiny.

2). 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 business men will not give full employment, 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.

3). 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 100 years ago as redistribution 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 are now aiding the Jews in Israel for genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered 6,000,000 Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50,000,000 Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

4). 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 a decent housing for its people.

5). We believe in an educational system that will give 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.

6). 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.

7). 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 of the Constitution of the United States gives us the right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self-defense.

8). 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.

9). We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that Black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peers. A peer is a persons 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 have been, and are being tried by all-white-juries that have no understanding of “the average reasoning man” of the Black community.

10). When in the course of human events, it become necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, and 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 or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its power 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 shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accused. 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, and their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards of their future security.

Some have accused the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense as being sexist and misogynist and male dominated organization, but I think women had always played a prominent role within the Black Panther Party Movement from doing vital behind the scene work relative to community organizing and being support staff for the   organization on various levels. When Huey P. Newton went to prison, the Central Committee elected Elaine Brown as chairman of the Party and it was under her work an leadership that the Free Huey campaign and movement gain a broad range of support across America and throughout the world. Also, the likes of Angela Davis who was out front and was challenging the white status quo by organizing college students and leading mass political rallies and demonstrations against police brutality and what she deemed as the police state. Eldridge Cleaver's wife Kathleen Cleaver was also highly visible as one of leading female voices in Black Panther Party movement. Yet, this analysis is in no way meant to suggest or imply that there wasn't continue internally struggles between the role women would play in this male dominated Black Power organization. Women for the most part held traditional roles as educators for children, nurses assistants, food preparers for the free breakfast program, etc. (Reference: Elaine Brown; "A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story").     

I think the Black Power movement gave rise in the 1960s and 1970s the need of black studies programs on mainly predominantly white universities and college campus in which students could acquire majors and minor degrees. African Americans were seeking to rediscover the history and culture of African people in which intellectual interest in black history and the African experience begin to expand. The quest for self-determination created new academic and educational challenges to a system that was structured and built on Eurocentric and white supremacy ideology. But Berkeley and the University of California system, in particular begin to create black Studies programs and hired black professors, moreover, this practice spread throughout academia (and in 2018 black studies programs are under assault). It was political agitation in 1960s that brought the necessity of Black Studies programs and it begin gaining philosophical credibility and legitimacy amongst scholars and intellectuals outside of the African-American race (Reference: Mualana Karenga; "Introduction to Black Studies").

Lastly, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in the 1960s and 1970s was actually confronting some of the same political, economic and social issues, we are presently confronting in 2018. For example, the issue of police brutality and the murder of innocent black men by white racist law enforcement and often these killings are deemed justifiable homicides. The judicial system and the criminal justice system still allow sentencing disparities and black men are discriminated in the legal courts of the United States of America. The lack of financial capital and resources in the so-called black community creates poverty and disillusionment due to wealth disparities (the economic and social impetus that foster the working poor), which gives way to the prison industrial complex and mass incarceration. The Black Panther Party sought to address these issues on a community level by taking ownership of the black community. The government deemed them a threat to the U.S. internal national security because they dared to exercise their Second Amendment Right to the United States Constitution. The fight for social justice has been a continued fight for African Americans since the first slave ship arrived to America in 1555. The Panthers represented the epitome of black-manhood and black-womanhood.

Fahim A. Knight-El Chief Researcher for KEEPING IT REAL THINK TANK located in Durham, NC; our mission is to inform African Americans and all people of goodwill, of the pending dangers that lie ahead; as well as decode the symbolism and reinterpreted the hidden meanings behind those who operate as invisible forces, but covertly rules the world. We are of the belief that an enlightened world will be better prepared to throw off the shackles of ignorance and not be willing participants for the slaughter. Our MOTTO is speaking truth to power. Fahim A. Knight-El can be reached at fahimknight@yahoo.com.