This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party. Founded by two college students from Oakland, Calif., Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the Panthers went on to become the most famous and controversial radical group that came out of the 1960s.
The Panthers were probably the most misunderstood political group of the era. Stories and images of the Panthers invariably focused on shootouts with the police and on political trials in which Panther leaders were defendants. Even though the Panther ideology was expressly anti-racist, they were portrayed by much of the media as a black nationalist hate group.
There is a side to the Panther story that has rarely been told – that of its rank and file. The Stanford historian Clayborne Carson put it this way:
“The irony of the Black Panthers is that the image is one of a black man and a gun. But the reality is that the majority of the rank and file at the end of the ’60s were women.”
The Panthers created a number of survival programs that addressed unmet needs in the black community. The best known of these programs was the Free Breakfast for Children program. Back in the day, Panther chapters across the country served about 20,000 meals a week in communities where black children were suffering from hunger and malnutrition.
The Panthers went to churches, small businesses and grocery stores to seek out food and cash donations to support the program. Additionally, some chapters of the party sponsored grocery giveaways. The program was a successful volunteer effort that inspired and became the blueprint for free breakfast and lunch programs that continue in schools throughout the country today.
With access to quality health care a major problem, the Panthers operated People’s Free Medical Clinics that provided basic health care. These neighborhood-based clinics had staffing from volunteer medical professionals. Among the services provided were screening for sickle cell anemia, well-baby exams, pediatric care and gynecological exams. Also, the clinics did first aid and testing for high blood pressure, lead poisoning, tuberculosis and diabetes.
With so many of their community members in jail, the Panthers ran a free busing-to-prison program to enable family members to visit their incarcerated relatives.
In their Oakland stronghold, the Panthers founded the Oakland Community School, which had a powerful positive effect in the broader Oakland community. The school operated from 1973 until 1982 and in 1977 it received an award from the California legislature for educational excellence.
We now know that the FBI and the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover targeted the Panthers through a counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO. Hoover was on record saying the Panthers were the No. 1 threat to national security. The FBI and local police did everything they could to destroy the Panthers. They used infiltration, dirty tricks, harassment via the legal system and illegal force.
Even in the absence of evidence, they repeatedly raided the homes of Panther leaders in an effort to neutralize members and put them behind bars. They forged correspondence and sent false anonymous letters to create fear and paranoia among the Panthers. Through what amounted to psychological warfare, they successfully split the Panthers into hostile factions and they caused rifts between the Panthers and other black nationalist groups.
In the 1970s, the Church Committee of Congress investigated COINTELPRO. Congress ultimately wrote a scathing denunciation of the FBI’s conduct, calling it contrary to the Panthers’ constitutional rights and civil liberties.
In this connection, I have to mention the case of Fred Hampton, a charismatic Panther leader from Chicago. In one of the most disgraceful moments in FBI history, the Chicago police, with FBI assistance, engineered the assassination of Hampton and his fellow Panther leader Mark Clark. They were shot and killed in bed. Hampton was 21-years-old at the time. A fuller account is presented in Jeffrey Haas’s book, The Assassination of Fred Hampton. The Hampton assassination is a case study in how law enforcement can go horribly wrong.
Any honest assessment of the Panthers must acknowledge the illegal and reprehensible conduct of the FBI and Hoover. At the same time, the Panthers also had a dark side. The best account I have seen is in Hugh Pearson’s little known book The Shadow of the Panther.
Pearson shows how the Panthers in the Bay Area degenerated into thuggery. The obsession with guns and violence was ultimately self-destructive. Huey Newton, who had initially been an inspirational leader, got lost in substance abuse.
The Panthers had many self-inflicted wounds. Pearson tells some shocking stories. He, with justification, concluded that the Panthers became more about defiant symbolism than about concrete achievements. It was not all repression that killed them. Like other radical groups of the era, the Panthers actively contributed to their own demise.
Like so many things about the 1960s, fairness requires full disclosure. The positives about the Panthers have never been adequately recognized.
When I was a college student living in Hartford, Conn., on Saturdays I used to sell The Other Voice, an underground newspaper of the period. I met and got to know Panther members who were selling the Black Panther newspaper downtown. I never personally saw the alleged anti-white attitude of which Panthers were accused. Panther members and I bonded over discussions of the best places to sell papers on the street. We often talked politics in a time well before the internet and social media.
People who are serious about progressive change in the 21st century should study and learn from the experience of the Black Panthers. That learning should include both the positive and negative lessons. The Panthers’ focus on guns scared away many people who might have otherwise been sympathetic. At the same time, the Panthers’ defiance and their speaking truth to power attracted masses of young people. Many former members still talk about the purpose and meaning they derived from their commitment. The Panther 10-point platform still resonates.
The Panthers inspired a generation to stand up and fight racial oppression, poverty and inequality at the local level. Long before Black Lives Matter, and in a much more hostile environment, the Panthers audaciously motivated and organized people to fight for their human rights.
(Jonathan P. Baird of Wilmot works at the Social Security Administration. His column reflects his own views and not those of his employer.)