Black Panther Party - Essay Example

Black Panther Party 08/25/09 - 09/28/09 The Black Panther Party (BPP), an association made up of primarily African Americans, was devoted to the advancement of the Civil Rights movement. Begun in the1960’s and active through the early 1970’s, remnants of the group still exist today. The Party’s genuine and creditable political ambitions are eclipsed in the historical perspective because of its anti-social means of furthering its agenda. Their well-founded suspicion of and lack of regard for those charged with enforcing the law along with their belief that these various law enforcement agencies were the incarnation of white oppression caused the BPP to believe that civil justice for the black community could be accomplished only through militant actions. It is not possible to comprehend the reason for the formation of the BPP or attempt to explain its violent tendencies without first examining the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s and the specific events leading up to its establishment. This discussion will give a brief synopsis of those historic events and the people that laid the foundation for the forming of the BPP; provide an overview of the party and then delve more deeply into the inner-workings of the organization. Malcolm X (Little) became a powerful speaker in the movement and became more important to the cause by his death than he was in life. As King had secured the character of the Southern black, Malcolm had become the messiah of city slums in the North, Midwest and West. The semi-militant organization he headed, the Nation, grew quickly under his leadership. Malcolm was most remembered for his passionate anti-white speeches. This was an idea that was emulated by other pro-autonomy organizations. He was the target of many death threats, one of which, in 1965, was successful. Soon after Malcolm’s death, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale began forming the Black Panthers (Hollaway). The South was the epicenter for the civil rights movement but racial problems had no regional boundaries. As blacks in the south were working to eradicate segregation, blacks in places such as Chicago, Detroit and Oakland were engaged in their own fight for equal treatment. By the mid-1960’s hostility between Oakland’s black community and the police, a long and ever escalating problem, had reached its apex. Because blacks, being seemingly constantly under an increasing intimidation by the police, Newton and Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in October 1966. The pair had been intensely influenced by the teachings of Malcolm X and structured the organization similar to the Black Muslim program except with no pretenses of religious practice. In contrast to Martin Luther King’s methods and teachings of nonviolent protest, the BPP claimed that they needed to equip themselves with weapons for use as self-defense against police brutality. Arming the group did provide the intended protection but, predictably, led to confrontations with the police that often times concluded with a bloody altercation. The Panthers also volunteered their time and efforts performing various activities that helped people in the community. The group made the rounds throughout neighborhoods in Oakland carrying arms, recorders, and various books so as to teach black history, counsel welfare recipients, and effectively protest rent evictions through the court system. The Panthers could be easily distinguished by their uniform dress of black jackets, pants and berets with blue shirts (Jones, 2000). In 1967, Eldridge Cleaver joined the Black Panther Party. At the time, Cleaver was working as a writer for Ramparts magazine and was the creator of Black House, a political organization in San Francisco. “Cleaver served as the Panthers’ minister of information. In this position he was in charge of the publication of the Black Panther newspaper. On April 25, 1967, the first issue of the paper was published and quickly gained readership. As many as fifty thousand papers were sold within the first three issues. The party began to grow and other chapter locations were opened throughout the United States” (McElrath). The BPP utilized propaganda and artwork to attract new disciples from California and later the nation. Members of the Black Panthers would appear on recruitment posters wearing their leather jackets and painted warrior-like faces. On the posters were messages of a strong tone meant to incite the feelings of oppression in young black men. Slogans such as ‘Die for Your People’ and ‘Power to the People’ were used as a ‘call to arms’ for the organization. The easily identifiable closed fist (The Fist of Glory) was the BPP’s most powerful symbol because it represented the pride, oppressed history and the coming equalization of the black community as a whole. This symbol was announced to the entire world during the 1968 Olympic Games by two black sprinters who raised their closed fist high as they stood on the winner’s podium while the National Anthem was being played in their honor (Ogbar, 2004). The BPP used art in a number of ways to become more broadly recognized. This and other forms of mass communication led to massive amounts of young black men willing and eager to join. The inflammatory rhetoric of the BPP, however, served to make the group appealing to angry, disenfranchised youths and also made the BPP an easy target for police persecutions and scrutinized by FBI surveillance. “Across the nation, police raids on Black Panther headquarters were frequent and bloody, and the ranks of the party were decimated by police bullets or imprisonment” (Hamilton, 1997). According to BPP leader Huey Newton, “We stand for the transformation of the decadent, reactionary, racist system that exists at these times. We don’t like the system.”1 The BPP insisted that they militarize and experienced numerous conflicts with law enforcement agencies. Newton justified the BPP’s defensive posture as “violence to ultimately resolve and beget violence” (Hamilton, 1997). Newton also vocally expressed that the BPP did not consider that the political process was a viable way to obtain equality because the “electoral politics is bankrupt and cannot solve the problems of poverty, racism, and oppression.” (Hamilton, 1997) The militant face of the BPP appeared early on in its formation. The organization began selling “Mao’s Red Book” to college students in 1968 so as to fund the purchase of guns (Quentin, Basgen, 1966). The Red Book became required reading of Party members. The government decided that because of its quick, vast growth, its radical orientation and in the interest of protecting the public, it had to organize a large-scale military and political campaign against the BPP. Several police agencies including the FBI were determined to annihilate the leadership of the BPP. “In a now well-documented campaign called COINTELPRO, or Counter Intelligence Program, the FBI orchestrated covert operations, personally overseen by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, to provoke conflicts between the Black Panthers and other organizations” (Rovira, 2006). The FBI engaged a system of provocateurs to infiltrate and disrupt the structure of the BPP’s leadership. Attacks at the homes of BPP leaders and party offices by law enforcement were commonplace. Scores of BPP leaders and members were summarily executed without benefit of due process. The leadership of the BPP had been shattered by the 1970’s. Huey Newton was sentenced to prison in Oakland, Fred Hampton was killed by the police and Eldridge Cleaver sought exile in Algeria. By this time, the BPP had dropped in numbers and had lost the support of mainstream black leaders who opposed the Party’s anti-social methods. The Panthers transformed from a violent organization to one that concentrated more on conventional political methods which included volunteering for community service in black neighborhoods. By the early part of the 1980’s, the BPP had, in effect, disbanded. (Hamilton, 1997). Many chapters of the BPP were dedicated to serving the community by peaceful methods such as a program that supplied poor school kids with a nutritious breakfast. However, Newton’s organization was dedicated to criminal activities. He created two teams of thugs, ‘The Squad,’ who acted as his bodyguard and terrorized the city by night. They extorted, beat-up or murdered on Newton’s orders. Newton’s crime wave was in full operation even when they appeared to be contributing to legitimate operations.  “Early on, Panthers were everywhere collecting for sickle-cell anemia, but Newton later admitted it was just a con.” (Coleman, 2003) The leaders of the BPP lived luxurious lifestyles while its lower echelon membership lived in cramped dorm-type rooms. Little of the massive amounts of money that poured into the organization filtered down to the rank and file. Admittedly, the BPP was severely flawed organizationally and made severe political and social mistakes. However, in the final analysis of the BPP, history may record that the efforts of the BPP and its highly publicized tactics showed that the black population would no longer tolerate inequality. This could have been the final component to the civil rights struggle that began in earnest in the decade prior by people such as Rosa Parks and continued by Martin Luther King and his contemporaries. References Coleman, Kate. (June 23, 2003). “The Panthers for Real.” Front Page Magazine. Hamilton, Charles V. (1997). “Black Panther Party.” The World Book Encyclopedia. Vol. 2, p. 390. Hollaway, Kevin. “The Legacy of Malcolm.” Documents for the Study of American History. September 28, 2009 from< http://www.ku.edu/carrie/docs/texts/malcolmx.html> Jones, Patrick D. (2000). “Black Panthers.” St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture. Sara Pendergast & Tom Pendergast (Eds.). Gale Group: St. James Press, Vol. 1, McElrath, Jessica. “The Black Panthers.” About African American History. Available September 28, 2009 from Ogbar, Jeffrey O. G. (2004). Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Quentin, David and Basgen, Brian (Trans.). (1966). “Quotations from Mao Tse Tung.” Peking: Peking Foreign Languages Press. Rovira, Carlos. (October 2006). “Remembering the Black Panthers: An Example of Revolutionary Defiance and Militancy.” Socialism and Liberation Magazine. Read More