The Miseducation of America: Exploring Power, Supremacy and the Black Panther Party

If you were to separately interview ten people--whether those ten people are all Black, all White or a mix of different racial backgrounds--no one would probably give you the same answer if you asked about the Black Panther Party.  In the year of the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party founded in Oakland, California, we all know by now that Beyoncé particularly honored the women of the Party in the Pepsi Super Bowl 50 Halftime Show...and that absolutely sent so many people in America in a tizzy.  Groups have threatened to protest at the NFL Headquarters, boycotts of the 20-time Grammy-award winning artist have materialized in the form of a Facebook page and several public officials have denounced her performance.  It comes as no surprise that FOX News would air two of the opposing opinions such as that of Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani:

I thought it was really outrageous that she used it as a platform to attack police officers who are the people who protect her and protect us, and keep us alive.  And what we should be doing in the African-American community, and all communities, is build up respect for police officers.  And focus on the fact that when something does go wrong, OK, we'll work on that.  But the vast majority of police officers risk their lives to keep us safe.

It's interesting that Giuliani did two things with his dense commentary: 1) automatically attribute the imagery of the Black Panther Party to attacking police officers, essentially channeling his White privilege as well as his inner Ronald Reagan; and 2) be so defensive considering that he and the New York Police Department were at the center of the highly-controversial Amadou Diallo shooting in 1999.  However, the most disappointing comment came from Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who happens to be Black: 

Beyonce in those Black Panther-type uniforms, would that be acceptable if a band, a white band came out in hoods and white sheets in the same sort of fashion?  We would be appalled and outraged.  The Black Panthers are a subversive hate group in America.

Okay, so they carried around guns and weren't afraid of the police.  Neither were the militia at the Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, but I didn't hear Clarke's opinion on that or the distinction "subversive hate group" being tossed around then.  Since it's abundantly clear that these are the only images that so many misinformed people choose to look at when viewing the Black Panther Party through the narrowest scope possible, let's try to set the record straight about the Black Panther Party's importance in Black history as well as American history...

ANOTHER PANTHER LURKING IN THE MIDST.  In listening to the February 9th episode of The Roland Martin Show, I was reminded that the Black Panther Party actually began as a political party; however, I did not know that it originated in Alabama in 1965.  Under the direction of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) activist Stokely Carmichael, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) was a response to the complete disenfranchisement of Blacks from the voting process in a county where they comprised about 80 percent of the total population.  Since over 50 percent of the Black population lived below the poverty line and it was clear that the White officials being elected were not helping out the majority of their constituency, the LCFO not only wanted more Black people to be registered voters, but they also wanted to vote for their own candidates.  As expected in most parts of the South during the 1960s, their efforts were met with resistance from the White establishment as Black sharecroppers were evicted, known LCFO members were refused in White-owned stores and restaurants and several riots ensued where only Black protesters were shot at by the police.  Despite the struggles that included getting several LCFO candidates on the 1966 ballot but no successful elections, the LCFO continued to fight for political rights and equality under the mantra of "Black power" and with the black panther as their symbol.

It never takes very long for something to spread like wildfire, and the word of this original Black Panther Party expanded across the country, including as far as Oakland.  As schoolmates at Merritt College who were fed up with the "failures" of the Civil Rights Movement, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale were looking for a new direction to help the Black community gain access and power.  Taking many of their cues from the "by any means necessary" mantra popularized by Malcolm X and the "Black power" platform led by Carmichael once he departed from the traditional strategy of the Civil Rights Movement, Newton and Seale worked with several organizations such as the Afro-American Organization, the Soul Students Advisory Council and the Revolutionary Action Movement before forming their own more revolutionary, anti-imperialist organization.  Newton and Seale got wind of the LCFO's movement and asked for permission to use the their logo upon starting what was originally known as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.  Although the small-scale success of the more traditional LCFO would be largely overshadowed by this newer and more militant Black Panther Party, they both operated from the platform of educating, empowering and protecting the most disadvantaged in the Black community when the establishment refused to lend a helping hand.  Without the original Black Panther Party in Alabama, what we recognize as the more iconic and influential Black Panther Party may not have been.

WHO'S THE MAN WITH THE MASTERPLAN?  Anyone who owns a copy of Dr. Dre's classic 1992 album, The Chronic, and has listened to it ad nauseam knows the rest of that lyric.  A partially vitriolic rant against police harassment and brutality right around the time of the Rodney King beating, I'm sure the latter part of that lyric is how most of White America viewed the Black Panther Party.  However, bearing arms wasn't just to look cool or be "gangsta"; it was a matter of protection.  Tensions were rising between the Black community and a predominantly White police force (that was only 2.4 percent Black in 1966) that engaged in numerous cases of unregulated malfeasance.  The police force was so corrupt that they even recruited officers from the South to work in the poorer neighborhoods where minorities resided.  So when the Panthers formed in 1966, one of the first things that they did was use their Constitutional right to bear arms by patrolling Black neighborhoods to police the people who were actually getting paid to enforce the laws.  In an interview following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Black Panther Party Chairman Huey Newton explained the need to take up arms:

Our brother Martin Luther King exhausted a means of nonviolence with his life being taken by some racist.  What is being done to us is what we hate, and what happened to Martin Luther King is what we hate.  You dern right we respect nonviolence, but to sit and watch ourselves be slaughtered like our brother, we must defend ourselves.  As Malcolm X said, "By any means necessary."

Police brutality being just as unchecked as it was rampant was just an extension of local, state and federal governments that didn't prioritize "serving" and "protecting" the forgotten sections of its population.  Thus, if the police weren't going to do their jobs, then the Black Panthers were more than willing to step in and be the first line of defense against anyone or anything designed to hurt members of the Black community.  The Party's implementation of self-defense by the gun not only helped to take away some of the fear factor regarding the police--with whom the Party insisted that they didn't want a shoot-out--but it bolstered a sense of security for the Black community and made them feel like they finally had someone on their side protecting their interests.

The irony of it all is that in a time when gun control laws are being discussed and restructured, the National Rifle Association (NRA)--who has been at odds with President Barack Obama so much that it threatened impeachment at one point--was behind putting stricter gun laws in place in the 1960s.  Why was that?  You guessed it: the rise of the Black Panther Party.  When the Panthers led an armed march upon the California State Capitol in 1967 in protest of a bill repealing a law that allowed citizens to carry loaded firearms, it only solidified what many in the California bureaucracy feared.  One of the main people leading the charge was none other than Governor Ronald Reagan (R), who said that he saw "no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons" and that firearms were a "ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will".  Gov. Reagan would later sign the bill into law and it became known as the Mulford Act, a law clearly designed to diffuse the power of the Black Panthers as they patrolled Oakland neighborhoods and engaged in "copwatching".  However, if the government wasn't doing enough to protect all of its citizens from unwarranted police harassment and brutality, then how could the Mulford Act be considered as something that "would work no hardship on the honest citizen"?  What was more "ridiculous"--citizens carrying guns to defend themselves against the police or the police aggressively harassing defenseless citizens for no reason other than their skin color or ethnic background?  Were the Republicans, the NRA and the police supposed to be the "people of good will", or was it the weapon-less citizens enduring the senseless brutality who were supposed to take the same nonviolent approach that didn't seem to get them much farther than taking up arms?  As much as I'm not a hardcore proponent of potentially violent measures, I still call BS.  

If anyone knows anything about basic political theory, then you'll know that one of the biggest components is protection of individual rights and property.  The NRA has traditionally been predominantly White men hailing mainly from the conservative South, the Midwest and the Southwest--which are, of course, some of the most racist sections of the United States.  Hence, of course White America was afraid of a bunch of Black people walking the streets with guns; between slavery, Jim Crow and the countless acts of violence and murder against Blacks during the Civil Rights Movement, there was an overarching fear that the big payback was coming down on them fast and furious.  It was okay when members of the Ku Klux Klan or other Confederate-flag-toting White men driving pickups had their shotguns in tow--often headhunting Black people--but not so much when "street thugs" like the Black Panthers were doing the same.  I guess it makes them no never mind that the Panthers were actually more of the textbook definition of "a well-regulated militia" than many of their White counterparts who were similarly "organized".  It has always been perfectly fine when the lack of gun control leads to intraracial violence, which very rarely garners any reform; it only seems to be when guns have turned or are threatening to turn on White America--especially when the hands near the triggers are darker than theirs--that the policymakers, usually Republicans, begin spinning their wheels frantically.  Maybe if rap was as popular in 1967 as it was 25 years later and the lyrics were adjusted to reflect more of a militant mindset, then the Black Panthers would've boldly told mainstream America that the man with a master plan--a plan that only involves protecting the livelihood and the interests of his fellow brothers and sisters against "the man"--is "a n***a witta motherf*****g gun".

BLACK POWER, WHITE SUPREMACY AND HOW THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY CAN NEVER BE CATEGORIZED WITH THE KU KLUX KLAN.  On the aforementioned episode of The Roland Martin Show, a caller from D.C. echoed the same sentiments that Sheriff Clarke made on FOX News, suggesting that Beyonce's honoring of the Black Panther Party at the Super Bowl was neither the right place and time nor was it much different than a country or rock band supporting the Ku Klux Klan.  He proceeded to stick his foot even further in his mouth by saying that he Googled the phrase "Black power", which somehow connected it with "Black supremacy" in one of his search results.  However, a frustrated Roland Martin challenged him and his entire audience to listen to Stokely Carmichael's "Black Power" speech given at the University of California at Berkeley in 1966 since Carmichael (later known as Kwame Toure) is credited for defining the term.  Although this powerful speech itself broadly defines the term and highlights so many of the problems that are still prevalent 50 years later, Carmichael gave a more concise definition in his 1968 book, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation:

It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community.  It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations.

In a country where we were recognized as 5/5ths human only 100 years prior to Carmichael's "Black Power" speech and denied the ability to educate ourselves throughout slavery, what Carmichael laid out with his speech and definition was more than necessary.  However, this may have been the most poignant moment of his speech:

White people associate Black Power with violence because of their inability to deal with blackness.  If we had said "Negro power" nobody would get scared.  Everybody would support it.  If we said power for colored people, everybody'd be for it, but it is the word "black" that bothers people in this country, and that's their problem, not mine.  That's the lie that says anything black is bad.

So therein lies the problem and calls upon the age-old Andrew Smith quote: "People fear what they don't understand and hate what they can't conquer."  When people hear the term "Black power" or see images, paraphernalia or attire associated with it, it is automatically assumed that America is going to somehow turn into one gigantic Southampton Insurrection.  It's not and has never been that serious.

Before exploring the differences between the Black Panther Party and the Ku Klux Klan, let's just temporarily remove race from the equation and just deal with how power speaks vs. how supremacy speaks.  Power says, "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."  Supremacy says, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is my birthright, the birthrights of those who look like me and ours alone."  Power says, "In a leadership role, I have the authority to distribute power to whomever I choose, and I choose those who bring different skill sets to the table regardless of how they look, walk or talk."  Supremacy says, "In a leadership role, I am the only one capable of distributing power to whomever I choose, and I choose only those who look, walk and talk like me because we are the only ones who are responsible, capable and intelligent enough to handle powerful positions."  Power says, "I encourage everyone to strive to be where I am and I will provide them with all of the necessary training, tutelage and moral support to get there."  Supremacy says, "I only encourage a certain race, class or gender to be where I am because they are the only people privileged enough to be in this position, and I am not above discouraging anyone who doesn't fit that criteria."  In short, power is about ability and freedom while supremacy is about entitlement and oppression.

Now let's set the record straight about the Black Panther Party.  Yes, it is abundantly clear by now that they were primarily formed to be as a community self-defense group against police brutality.  However, the Black Panthers comprised a Ten-Point Program upon their inception in 1966 that included wanting the power to determine the Black community's destiny, full employment for the community, reparations, decent and humane housing, honest education, the exemption of Black men from military service, an end to police brutality, the release of incarcerated Black men who have not received fair trials, fair trials for Black people with a jury of their peers, and essentials like land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.  Operating from the "Black power" platform, the Black Panther Party took many measures into their own hands by ensuring that children had full stomachs in preparation for their school days, people in the community had free health and dental care, and free clothing and food were available to those in need.  If helping their own community wasn't enough, Fred Hampton delivered his final speech in 1969 at the Olivet Church in Chicago titled "Power Anywhere Where There's People" in which he expanded the message to speak to a bigger "infection" in America:

We got to face some facts.  That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too.  We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water.  We say you don't fight racism with racism.  We say you fight racism with solidarity.  We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.

So this goes back to my point about power.  Although the Black Panther Party's platform was geared toward empowering the Black community, they also wanted basic rights, liberties and equality for all people who were struggling on the same level as the most disenfranchised and destitute of Black people.  They were allies with and influenced other groups like the Chicano Revolutionary Party and the Brown Berets, whose primary objectives were to protect the Latino community from police brutality; and Weather Underground, whose organization arose in opposition to the Vietnam War and U.S. imperialism and in strong support of the Black power movement.  Nothing in Hampton's rhetoric suggested complete and total separatism from every other race or that only Black people are the ones struggling and deserving of compensation.  Thus, suggesting that the Black Panther Party was a subversive hate group rooted in supremacy is not only wildly asinine, but grossly inaccurate; they were largely about unity for all, especially for those who have been oppressed.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the Ku Klan Klan, which was first established in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1866 about 100 years before the Black Panther Party.  In as much fairness as I can muster, the KKK didn't sound like the worst organization ever conceived in human history.  From a document titled "Organization and Principles of Ku Klux Klan, 1868", the KKK made the following declaration under the "Character and Objects of the Order" section:

This is an institution of chivalry, humanity, mercy, and patriotism; embodying in its genius and its principles all that is chivalric in conduct, noble in sentiment, generous in manhood and patriotic in purpose...

If you went by this language alone and some of the "peculiar objects" that followed, then you wouldn't think that the KKK was all bad, right?  It might even be safe to assume that they could've initiated a free breakfast program or provided health care to those in their community who needed it most, huh?  However, Questions 5 and 6 in the "Question To Be Asked Candidates" section are the most curious of all: "Are you opposed to Negro equality both social and political?  Are you in favor of a white man's government in this country?"  Now why would an organization whose character is supposed to "protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless" concern itself with Negro equality or white men ruling the American government?  The answer is simple: their platform has always been one of supremacy.  Between discouraging Black people from registering to vote, attacking successful Black businessmen and dismantling Black trade unions and other protection groups, the KKK wanted to take away any form of power from Black people and restore complete and total rule to White Southerners.  If that meant cross burnings on lawns, armed burglary, inhumane torture, lynchings and firebombing homes and churches,  then that's what they felt was necessary to protect the liberties of their brotherhood, preserve the "integrity" of the South and keep the status quo.  Oh, but their hatred wasn't just reserved for Black people as they were also opposed to Jews, Roman Catholics, socialists, communists and all "foreigners".  Hmmmm...now contrasting that with the solidarity message in Fred Hampton's speech, remind me again how the Black Panther Party and the KKK are anywhere near similar?!?!  Heck, just do a Google search of the Black Panther Party and the Ku Klux Klan and while you will find no images of the Panthers killing police officers or White people, you will find several pictures of Black people being lynched and even set on fire at the hands of the KKK.  End of discussion...

STANDING WITH EVERY GOOD BROTHER ARE HIS SISTERS.  It's extremely easy to associate the Black Panther Party with its legendary members (or "infamous" depending on your point-of-view) like Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Fred Hampton, Eldridge Cleaver and Geronimo Pratt.  However, we now touch upon a huge part of the reason why Beyoncé went in her controversial direction for her Super Bowl halftime performance.  Often the forgotten soldiers in the Party, the women within the organization comprised 70 percent of the membership at one point;  however, men still held most of the leadership positions, exposing one of the biggest issues within the Party as well as most major organizations of this magnitude.  Beyoncé's stylist Marni Senofonte said this about the singer's intent: 

It was important to her to honor the beauty of strong Black women and celebrate the unity that fuels their power.  One of the best examples of that is the image of the female Black Panther.  The women of the Black Panther Party created a sisterhood and worked right alongside their men fighting police brutality and creating community social programs.

So who are some of these women with whom America seems not to be familiar, but yet of whom they're so afraid?  Well, one notable two-year Party member was ten-time Grammy-award-winning, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame singer Chaka Khan, who came to the party in 1967 via fellow Chicago native Fred Hampton.  One of her greatest accomplishments as a member was being involved in the Party's Free Breakfast for Children Program--an initiative with roots in Oakland that spread to cities like Khan's hometown and fed over 10,000 inner city kids every day before school.  Kathleen Neal Cleaver had even more of a pivotal role as she held positions of communications secretary, spokesperson and press secretary; became the first female member of the Party's decision making body; and organized the national campaign to free Huey Newton when he was jailed.  Although her husband and former Party leader John Huggins was killed in 1969 during a UCLA gun battle and feud with the US Organization--a feud instigated by the FBI via a series of forged letters--Ericka Huggins was one of the few women in the Party along with Cleaver who became a leader in the Los Angeles and New Haven, Connecticut, chapters of the Party.  Huggins also became writer and editor for the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service in 1971; served as Director of the Oakland Community School (founded by the Black Panther Party) from 1973 to 1981 and developed an innovative curriculum that would be the precursor for the charter school system; and became both the first woman and Black person to be appointed to the Alameda County Board of Education in 1976.

Among one of the most significant figures in the sustained success of the Party during the 1970s is Elaine Brown, who was the only woman to chair the Party when Huey Newton fled to Cuba in 1974 in the face of murder charges.  Before this tenure, she went from cleaning guns and selling Party newspapers to helping the Party set up the Free Breakfast for Children Program in Los Angeles, the Free Busing to Prisons Program and the Free Legal Aid Program while also succeeding Eldridge Cleaver as the Party's Minister of Information.  While Chairwoman, she assisted in getting Lionel Wilson elected as Oakland's first Black mayor and in developing the Party's Liberation School, which set a standard among model schools in the state of California.  In A Taste of Power, Brown described her experience:

A woman in the Black Power movement was considered, at best, irrelevant.  A woman asserting herself was a pariah.  If a Black woman assumed a role of leadership, she was said to be eroding Black manhood, to be hindering the progress of the Black race.  She was an enemy of the Black people...I knew I had to muster something mighty to manage the Black Panther Party.

Although she would eventually leave the Party in the midst of sexism and patriarchy, Brown's story outlines the experiences of Black women far and wide, including Beyoncé.  Beyoncé never had to be a member of the Black Power movement or the Black Panther Party to understand the struggle of being a Black woman in America because she has dealt with the same criticism that women like Brown have endured for years, decades, scores and centuries.  With threats of boycotts and bans, Beyoncé has not only become a "pariah" to so many in White America because she asserted her Blackness, but even more disappointing, among many in her own community.  Maybe that's why it was necessary for Beyoncé to honor "strong Black women" like those of the Black Panther Party: to manifest the importance of a woman's role in society as well as any successful revolution.  Without the contributions of women like Khan, Cleaver, Huggins and Brown, then the Black Panther Party, just like any other pivotal movement in Black history, would've fizzled out much sooner.  Even broader than just the Black Panther Party or the Black community, these, like many of the successes within the Party as a whole, are accomplishments that have greatly benefited American social reform.  If honoring a legacy like that scares America so much, then our country has a greater problem at hand.

Was the Black Panther Party devoid of shortcomings and scandals that led to its demise?  No, but not too many successful or effective organizations are because they are led by well-intentioned, but flawed humans.  Were the approaches of the Party too militant to be sustained over a longer period of time?  Let Huey Newton tell it, perhaps they were:

But we soon discovered that weapons and uniform set us apart from the community.  We were looked upon as an ad hoc military group, acting outside the community fabric and too radical to be part of it.  Perhaps some of our tactics at the time were extreme; perhaps we placed too much emphasis on military action.

No matter how "extreme" they may have been, America should not be allowed to engage in revisionist history when it comes to the Black Panther Party or the Black power movement.  Unless you were being severely beaten or dying at the hands of the very people who are getting paid to serve and protect you, then you are not at liberty to insinuate that the Black Panthers were "street thugs" or anti-police just because they're pro-Black--which is not much different from the Black Lives Matter National Network.  Unless the government failed at ensuring that the poorest people in your community had adequate access to health care, food, clothing, shelter and education, then you have no just cause to refer to the Panthers as a "subversive hate group" when they endured a labor of love to take care of their people.  If this country wasn't so hell bent on denying power to some of its most systematically oppressed people, then there would have neither been the need for the Black Panther Party nor be the need for an artist like Beyoncé to send a friendly reminder to 112 million Americans that Black power not only still exists, but it's still necessary and isn't going anywhere.  It's a reminder that Black power doesn't mean that we want to burn this nation to the ground or that we're going to beat up a bunch of White folks in haste; it simply means that we want the freedom and the opportunity to thrive and succeed on our own terms without interference or hindrance.  In the illustrious words of Len Chandler that inspired the Black Panther Party's slogan, "Move on over or we'll move on over you for the movement's moving on..."