Fight for Their Rights

The debate over racism and the rights of the black people – or Afro-American descendents – would not have walked the path it did in history so far if the Black Panther Party had not existed. They appeared in the end of the 60’s and claimed to fight for the rights of the black community and against oppression, although their goals changed all along the run and some animosity arose even from within the group to contribute to its collapse – not to mention the prejudice they suffered from the society in general.
The Black Panther Party, undoubtedly, fought for better life conditions to the black people and wanted to be heard by the American authorities. So they formed a well-organized group that conducted their protests and actions within the law – at least at the beginning. They had the right to carry guns since it was guaranteed by a Californian law that a citizen carried a gun as long as it was publicly displayed and never pointed at any person. At the same time, they were involved in violent acts against the police that ended up injuring both policemen and members of the party.
Although the Black Panther Party was on the side of the black community, it suffered prejudice from their own community. Some people did not believe what they did or what they wanted to fight for. It did not help to make their movement strong enough to be accredited by the American authorities as a serious group.
An important point to be mentioned is that the Black Panthers Party did not discriminate against white people, as we can see from a film about the movement called “Panther”, by Mario van Peebles.

The Ten Point Program

The group created a document where they demanded land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and exemption from military service for African-American men, among other demands, as follows:
1. We want power to determine the destiny of our black and oppressed communities' education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.
2. We want completely free health care for all black and oppressed people.
3. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people, other people of color, and all oppressed people inside the United States.
4. We want an immediate end to all wars of aggression.
5. We want full employment for our people.
6. We want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our Black Community.
7. We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings.
8. We want decent education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society.
9. We want freedom for all black and oppressed people now held in U. S. Federal, state, county, city and military prisons and jails. We want trials by a jury of peers for all persons charged with so-called crimes under the laws of this country.
10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people's community control of modern technology.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party#The_Ten_Point_Program)

Bobby Seale explains the Ten Point Program. From the documentary Black Panthers (1968)

From the beginning...

The Black Panther originated in Oakland, California (USA), and was active from the mid-1960’s to the mid-1970’s. It was created by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton and was originally called Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. It reached international fame due to their deep involvement in the Black Power movement, in American politics and in the defense of the African American community from police brutality.

... to the end

Some internal conflicts on how to conduct the activities of the Party led to a split. While some members focused more on services for the community, others still defended a strategy of confrontation. Increasing legal costs and internal disputes also contributed to its decline.

Black Panther coloring book?

Subtitle: "Black Panthers protect black children"

The above image was extracted from the series of cartoons called "The Black Panther Coloring Book". It was presented by Cointelpro, an FBI program to neutralize what the FBI called "black nationalist hate groups", to denounce the supposed violence of the Black Panther Party.

Subtitle: "Brothers and sisters deal with the white store owner that robs black people"

It's hard to discover the real origin of these cartoons. Some say they were made by radicals within the movement; others claim that they were created by the Cointelpro to incriminate the party (it's known that the FBI used various illegal actions to try to stain the Black Panther's image).

For us, it's hard to discover proofs of who made them, and maybe where never go in order to discover it. We can only think of what tactics each side made to talk about their "opponent". Panthers members did call the police officers "pigs" in a very provocative way, what was used against their own image, as it would be if the source of these cartoons were from the FBI.

The image of a group can be very distorted by a speech. It doesn't exist in an objective way, it depends on the point of view, who is talking about that group. The Panthers talking about the police force or the police force talking about the Panthers.

More images and source: http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/search/label/From%20the%20Black%20Panther%20Coloring%20Book

The documentary

The film "Black Panthers" (1968) is a documentary that looks to the rally to free the party's leader Huey P. Newton, accused of murdering a police officer. Bobby Seale, Stokely Carmichael, and H. Rap Brown are included as speakers at the rally. There’s also a short interview with Newton, in prison.

The first part of the documentary at Youtube:

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Intimacy

Bobby Seale and his son Malik Nkrumahy Stagolee playing drums.

Source: http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/2009/07/city-oakland-3.html

The New Black Panthers Party

The New Black Panther Party (NBPP) was founded in Dallas, Texas, in 1989. Despite its name, this party isn’t an official successor of the original Black Panther Party (BPP). It has some equal and different aspects in relation to the original party, which we’ll try to make distinction here.
The movement is based on a Ten Point Program, as the BPP was, but these points have some distinctions to the original movement that reveals the movement's philosophy.

http://www.newblackpanther.com/platform.html

Some of the points are very much similar to the BPP’s Ten Point Program, but in others a more radical speech against white people is observed. In the 10th program, one of the most radicals, they defend that there is no possibility of cohabiting between black and white people (“History has proven that the white man is absolutely disagreeable to get along with in peace (…) We believe that his very nature will not allow for true sharing, fairness, equity and justice.”) and defends the creation of “a separate state or territory of our own” (for the party or the black people?).

The New Black Panther Party at the National Geographic Channel

The New Black Panthers are identified as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League, by the Southern Poverty Law Center and even by the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, which defends that the Black Panthers Party wasn’t a hate group.


“As guardian of the true history of the Black Panther Party, the [Dr. Huey P. Newton] Foundation, which includes former leading members of the Party, denounces this group's exploitation of the Party's name and history. Failing to find its own legitimacy in the black community, this band would graft the Party's name upon itself, which we condemn... [T]hey denigrate the Party's name by promoting concepts absolutely counter to the revolutionary principles on which the Party was founded... The Black Panthers were never a group of angry young militants full of fury toward the 'white establishment.' The Party operated on love for black people, not hatred of white people.”

http://www.blackpanther.org/newsalert.htm

Their arguments are seen to be more emotional then rational, in the Ten Point Program and in their speeches, the belief is that because of the oppression that black people suffered during the history, and in the American history specifically, a non-moderated reaction is needed to establish better life conditions to the black community and, in a future, separate white from black people in different territories. This belief is taken as truth, there is no developing of dialogues between white and black, or between the government and the black poor communities. They don’t defend trying to understand the other (not NBPP member) and his beliefs. Without dialogue, the only way to make a discourse be heard is by force.