The Black Panthers

[grove street]

The Black Panthers were a radical human rights activist group of the 1970's. Influenced by the radical teachings on human rights of Malcom X and the political philosophies of Marxisim/Communisim they set out and acheived many of their objectives.

They dramatically reduced crime and police brutality in their communities by controlling and protecting their communities themselves.

They reduced the drug problem within their communites by warning people of the dangers of drugs and provided community based rehabilitation centres.

Dissatisfied with the education their children were getting compared to the education that children in more white middle and upper class children were getting. They took it upon themselves to improve the education of their communites.

To help with the problem of poverty within their communities they set up soup kitchens to feed the community and provided free breakfasts for school children.

The American government were frightened of the fast growing Black Panthers and set out to destroy them by labing them a terrorist organisation even though they never commited a terrorist attack. The Black Panthers were eventually destroyed by the U.S government and many of it's members were arrested and thrown in jail for so called conspiracies to plan and commit terrorist attacks.

The destruction of the Black Panthers lead to a dramatic increase of drugs, violence and crime within African American communites. Many people argue that the American government propaganded against and destroyed the Black Panthers because they were afraid of a socialist/communist uprising of blacks and people of poor minoroties within America.

[bolshevik butcher]

I am a huge admiere of the Panthers and think that it is tesetement to their achievments how much the American media has tried to forget about them. But wouldnt this be better palced in history?

[Janus]

Yes, there is no doubt that the Balck Panthers did help the African-American community and helped prevent police brutality against blacks. However, the whole movement kind of sizzled off later due to factional infighting which isn't surprising in any type of hierarchical organization. This was perhaps the major problem and the FBI was able to exploit it to great effect.

[rebelworker]

A film people MUST see on the Black Panthers is:

All Power to the People: The Black Panthers and Beyond.

I have done alot of research on the Panthers and this is probably the single best thing to check out.

The problem is its hard to get ahold of.

Anyone in the montreal area can contact me to borrow a copy, other than that you have to buy it online... But its worth every penny

I have to do some shit now but Ill try and write more about them later.

[bayano]

every left movement, esp in the usa, has faced tremendous sectarianism, so the black panthers are not different in this regard. and most sectarianism has always been created by state repression/infiltration.

i think that historical groups should be seen as how they fit into their historical time period, how they and their strategy would fare today, and their legacy. i think most would agree that the Black Panthers at their best are needed today, and they fit in quite wonderfully in their time period as well.

nevertheless, most of the legacy of the radicalism of the 1960s/1970s and before in the usa has been effectively dismantled by capitalism and its state. on the one hand, they influenced a vast array of groups' creations: young lords, brown berets, american indian movement, red guards, young patriots, blackstone rangers, and the list goes on. they also put in motion programs that were coopted by the bourgeois state, which has been to the betterment of the population at large but to the detriment of resistance groups.

as for their impact on their own community, the Black community, it has waned so much in most ways. there are many committed and powerful Black radicals today that were heavily influenced by them, but there is no unity.

just some thoughts

[Black Dagger]

However, the whole movement kind of sizzled off later due to factional infighting which isn't surprising in any type of hierarchical organization.

This is an exaggeration, particularly in the case of the BPP - who was subjected to perhaps the most intense assault ever conducted by the US govt. against a revolutionary organisation, COINTELPRO. Distributing inflammatory fake 'Black Panther' propaganda to euro-americans (http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/coloring.html), sending inflammatory letters to panthers- posing as other members of the organisation- accusing them of treachery etc - ie. fostering in-fighting in the organisation, propagating lies to sour relations between the BBP and other black groups such as the United Slaves, harrassing BPP members- calling their houses and hanging up, frame-ups, imprisonment (see: Geronimo Pratt), assasination (see: Fred Hampton) - the goal was to kill the BPP dead, is it any wonder that the organisation slowly disintegrated?



This was perhaps the major problem and the FBI was able to exploit it to great effect.

These were divisions that were in many instances created and fostered by the FBI through the COINTELPRO.

Stuff on COINTELPRO:

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/cointel.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

There's lots of stuff out there...

[poetofrageX]

another thing that led to the black panthers unfortunate downfall was the fact that they were far ahead of their time. they were pretty much shunned by a lot of contemporary black liberation groups, most notably the United Slaves and the Nation of Islam, who were preaching the reactionary idea of race war, while the BPP was preparing the black masses for class war. the FBI exploited this division by turning those reactionary black organizations against the panthers, to the point that there were shootouts between Maluna Karenga's United Slaves and the Black Panthers. the only other black revolutionary group i can think of that shared the Marxist vision of the BPP is the Black Liberation Army, and they actually acused the BPP of being revisionist(totally untrue!) And we all know what happned to the BLA's founder, Eldridge Cleaver, who became a Republican and actually supported Ronald Regan!

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

the only other black revolutionary group i can think of that shared the vision of the BPP is the Black Liberation Army, which I'm pretty sure was an offshoot of the BPP.

It was actually a break from the BPP.

[poetofrageX]

yeah, i know, i meant that, but ended up typing offshoot for some reason, itz late, and i'm hella tired

[Janus]

This is an exaggeration, particularly in the case of the BPP - who was subjected to perhaps the most intense assault ever conducted by the US govt. against a revolutionary organisation, COINTELPRO. Distributing inflammatory fake 'Black Panther' propaganda to euro-americans
I definitely see your point in that the federal government was very much to blame for the collapse of the organization. However, I was simply pointing out that the hierachical structure of the Black Panthers is what allowed the government to focus on the leaders or the head of the organization.

[!Injustice!]

the Blanck Panthers were stopped because they were gaining and obtaining something exatly what malcolm x was doing they were gainin the best thing in life which intelligence...when the intelligence of injustice and about what you can do to change your life is in your hands the goverment or major companies will do anything to keep us subservient which that is why there are revolutions....when the intelligence was spread the goverment will not hesitate to bring down the source of where they are getting thier intelligence from, the black panthers was that source of intelligence.....when the lower class or the working class gains intelligence they start resisting oppression they pass and gain more knowledge and slowy(if the revolution was bloodless).........tell me watcha think bout my opinion

[Ol' Dirty]

With all of these ignorant little teens running around yelling "Yo, Nigga", a derivative of the most offensive term regarding the black "race", ethnic relations still have a long way to go.

[1984]

There was another movie about them, "Panther".

One of the things I was pissed most about the end of the BPP was the drug traffic introduced with the government's support in order to surpress the movement.

Where could I find detailed information on this?

[bolshevik butcher]

Can't give you detailed information but it's cetainly true that the cocaine trade was used by the feds to kill them off.

I think another hting about hte BPP was how involved they were with their communities. They didn tjust go around shouting revolution.

[godfather of soul]

I agree about the importance of the panthers, however my biggest critique comes from the gender dynamics within the organization.

The Panthers, as has been pointed out in the is thread, suffered tremendously from hierachy and exclusivity in leadership. This was most acutely felt in terms of the role of women in the organization. Women faced tremendous barriers towards advancement and when one reads Cleaver's Soul on Ice, the reasons why become quite obvious. As ahead of their time as they were, they were also a product of their times and so patriarchal that they self-limited their own scope. White women had just beun to stick up for themselves in large numbers by the time the Panthers came onto the scene, so that means that black women were even further behind in aggitating for their own liberation. By excluding the voices of women they limited their systemic critique to the things that impacted black men first and black women second. It is ironic that being so heavily influenced by mao, that they never loudly advocated for the total liberation of women, especially black women, from the bonds of patriarchy.

IMO they are part of the reason why black women have never had their own feminist movement. Yes, black women have been a part of all of these wonderful groups and movements, but they have never had their own independent struggle, which to me shows just how ingrained patriarchy and paternalism is in the black community. Despite the fact that black women are the dominant economic and often times familial forces in black communities, they have yet to fully realize their own power. Will this change, hopefully, but if new revolutionary groups of color are to learn one example from the Panthers, I would hope it would be to challenge sexism, enourage and develop female leadership and to dilute leadership overall so that the structure of the organization is not so easily toppled by infighting and governmental intrusion.

oh, and the move called "Panther" is a disgrace to the organization. It is a poorly made film one who distorts the message of the group and ultimately ends with a "let's help fight the War on Drugs" message. Truly ironic seeing as how that particular war has decimated the very community the Panthers so desperately sought to protect.

[Hampton]

Cleaver's Soul On Ice is not a reflection on the Panthers as he wrote that before he was in the group. While I would agree that men played a larger role in the group because in fact of some chauvinism, but women like Elaine Brown, who was at one time the head of the Panthers, Angela Davis, Kathleen Cleaver, Afeni Shakur in New York, and Assata Shakur, who was called the heart of the Black Liberation Army, and countless other women who helped the everyday runnings of the group.

But that chauvinism can be related to the whole Black Power and a large portion of the Civil Rights Movement. Women like Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker were not the norm of what people thought of when they think of the South in the 60's, although they should because they have had to fight on two fronts for a long time, one for their acceptance into the white women's movement and for recognition in the civil rights movement.