The Black Panther Party was founded in Oakland, California by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton on October 15, 1966. Black Panther Party membership reached a peak of 10,000 by early 1969, acquiring 90% support from Black people in major cities in America. The organization is well known for advocating self-defense against police brutality. The Panthers also organized dozens of community programs such as free breakfast for children, health clinics and shoes for children. The Black Panther Party advocated self-defense of the black community against the racist murder and brutality of the Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond and San Francisco Police through armed patrols of police activities. The purpose of the armed patrols was to capture the imagination of the people for broader community electoral purposes as Huey and I observe the police making arrest of black people. The Black Panther Party also fought to establish greater peoples empowerment via community control politics, through mass organizing of more than twenty different community based survival programs. Before Huey went to jail in 1967, there were only about seventy-five Black Panther party members and two chapters, Los Angeles and Oakland, California. When Huey came out in 1971, there were over forty-five chapters and five thousand dedicated and politically educated Black Panther party members. The statement has been made that the Black Panther Party experienced its most dramatic growth when Huey was in jail. What is often missed in this statement is Hueys importance as a revolutionary political prisoner, a symbol for Black America and oppressed people around the world. Whatever difficulties may have come Hueys way in later years, I think he will probably be best remembered as I captured him in Seize The Time. The Black Panther Partys effectiveness as an organizing vehicle lead it to grow quickly starting when I lead an armed delegation of Party members to the California state capitol building on May 2nd 1967 to read Executive Mandate No. 1: protesting the state legislatures passing of the Mulford Act, a new law that was designed to keep the Party from legally patrolling the police in the streets of Oakland CA. The Black Panther Party, was an All Power To All The People!” organization, whether youre black, white, blue, green, yellow, or polka dot. We believed in black unity, but only as a catalyst to help humanize the world. The Black Panther Party worked for self-determination and social justice for all people. The Black Panther Party was one of the first organizations in U.S. history to militantly struggle for ethnic minority and working class emancipation - a party whose political electoral agenda was the revolutionary establishment of real economic, social, and political equality across gender and color lines, aligning itself with other people of color organizations including Cesar Chavezs Farm Workers Movement, AIM (American Indian Movement), The Asian Red Guard [I Wor kuen] {Righteous Harmonious Fist}, The Young Lords, The Peace & Freedom Party, the SDS and the Young Patriots. On August 22, 1989, my friend and old comrade Huey was shot dead. Huey had not fallen victim to the many police guns and bullets nor the prison death houses we both had faced. Huey, had been killed by a young drug dealer. I am troubled by the question that if Huey P. Newton, who struggled against all odds in the sixties and seventies, could get caught up in the vicious cycle of community self-destruction, then when & were will this destruction end? All Power To All The People! Bobby Seale bobbyseale/ ======= #blackpanthers #blackhistory #blackpantherparty #bobbyseale #seizethetime ===
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 04:51:23 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015