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The Quest for Worldwide Liberation

Black Panther Party

Lectures on Liberation (by Angela Davis)
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Unrest caused by racial injustice reached fever pitch in 1960’s America. What laws for equality were passed through civil rights measures did not fully heal racial divisions, and continued antagonizing of African Americans by law enforcement only increased tensions. According to authors Bloom and Martin in Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, the Black Panther Party (BPP) rose up where they felt the Civil Rights Movement fell short, sparked by the question, “how would black people in America win not only formal citizenship rights, but actual economic and political power?” (p. 12)

In 1966, the BPP was formed by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale as a armed defense against police officers. After studying California gun laws, they bought copies of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book and sold it at triple the value until they had enough to buy two shotguns. Thereafter they organized armed citizen patrols to follow and monitor incidents of police brutality. What began as basic self-defense and empowerment grew into a platform for social programs to fight all forms of injustice, some of the most successful being the Free Breakfast for Children and community health clinics.

The BPP made clear their agenda in a 10-point program (read within From Resistance to Revolution, p. 209). Among the points were freedom, power over their own futures, employment, decent housing, education, restitution for slavery, the right to not have to fight for a country that did not defend their rights as African Americans, and an end to police brutality and murder of Black people. While the problems they addressed were local to America, they saw themselves within a wider scope. In an essay on self-defense, Newton wrote, “The Black people in America are the only people who can free the world, loosen the yoke of colonialism and destroy the war machine. As long as the wheels of the imperialistic war machine are turning there is no country that can defeat this monster of the West.” (Essays from the Minister of Defense Huey Newton, p. 3).

The BPP saw many intellectuals pass through its doors. Angela Davis, a BPP activist, tackled another spoke in their philosophical wheel:

Is freedom an internal experience? Or, on the other hand, is freedom only the liberty to move, to act in a way one chooses? … Black people have exposed, by their very existence, the inadequacies not only of the practice of freedom, but of its very theoretical formulation. Because, if the theory of freedom remains isolated from the practice of freedom or rather is contradicted in reality, then this means that something must be wrong with the concept. (Lectures on Liberation, p. 3)

Illinois chapter leader Fred Hampton sought solidarity across racial and national lines, seeking class action against capitalism and imperialism:

I believe that I was born not to die in a car wreck; I don't believe I'm going to die slipping on a piece of ice … I believe that I'm going to be able to die high off the people. I believe that I will be able to die as a revolutionary in the international revolutionary proletarian struggle.

Hampton was killed in a police and FBI house raid as a part of COINTELPRO operations.

For more reading on the Black Panther Party, check out In the Spirit of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark: Carry on the Tradition of Resistance, Staggerlee: A Conversation with Black Panther Bobby Seale, and Huey Newton Talks to the Movement.

By Thad Higa