By Aneesh Gogineni
In 1966, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, two students attending Merritt Community College in Oakland, founded what would be one of the most infamous organizations in US history, The Black Panthers. In fact, the FBI director at the time, J. Edgar Hoover regarded the Black Panthers’ breakfast program, not their guns, as the greatest threat to the nation’s internal security. Separating themselves from other black liberation groups at the time, the BPP was fighting the underlying evil that shapes and supplies racism — classism.
The Black Panthers were a Marxist group based on the ideology of revolutionary intercommunalism, a theory formed by Huey Newton that recharacterized imperialism and its relation to black subjugation. The theory rejected Western and neoliberal systemic issues in favor of Leninist style resistance to the neoliberal world order through means of a vanguard party to achieve socialist dictatorship of the proletariat. The Black Panthers were one of the largest domestic left-wing groups in the US that revolted against police brutality, systemic racism, racial capitalism, and worldwide imperialist efforts by the US empire. Running on what they called the Ten-Point Program, they believed in Black freedom and liberation at the same time as the abolition of capitalist systems of oppression and exploitation. At the height of the BPP, there were 68 chapters within the US from Chicago to Oakland to Louisiana. The BPP extended farther than just the United States as it had connections with similar organizations in Algeria, India, South Vietnam, and many other countries. Comprised of predominantly young, black members, very prominent activists were originally BPP members. Fred Hampton, Angela Davis, and Assata Shakur are a few of the activists that were either a part of the BPP or influenced heavily by its core beliefs.
The Black Panthers engaged in various modes of Black resistance. This included violent and peaceful means of resistance. Some of the violent methods included community protection and surveillance in which many Black Panthers armed themselves and patrolled black communities to prevent police brutality and anti-black crime. This resulted in lots of violence between the group and the cops as the cops were very brutal towards black people within black communities. On the other end of the stick, the party also engaged in peaceful, radical action. Some of this action included educating children with non-whitewashed history rather than public school learning. They also created community food programs that had free breakfast for children in school. In fact, this program founded by the BPP is what has led to free lunch and breakfast in nationwide public schools. Through these violent and peaceful programs, they were able to establish a radical commune predicated on fulfilling material needs for everyone in the community rather than profiting off of exploitation of workers and POC within the community.
As the Black Panthers became more prominent around the world, they ascended the FBI’s list of threats to the nation’s internal security. In 1956, COINTELPRO was an FBI operation founded to disrupt the activity of socialist entities such as the Communist Party of the USA or the Socialist Workers Party. As the Black Panther Party gained power, COINTELPRO placed them at the top of the list and sent agents to begin infiltration. In December 1969, the FBI shot and killed multiple leaders around the US. They staged police raids in neighborhoods in order to assassinate leaders. This resulted in the deaths of multiple black panthers including young leader Fred Hampton. However, the Black Panthers were able to remain intact throughout the 70’s and 80’s and continue to spread radical ideas. The demise of the Black Panthers can be attributed to dissolution of leadership as leaders either moved away from the party or were killed. In 1989, Huey Newton was killed and the party came to an official end.
The Black Panthers had a very large domestic and international reach. Multiple chapters throughout the nation replicated the communist praxis of the BPP with pioneers like Fred Hampton leading it in different areas. However, the reach of it extended farther than the US borders into the international spector. By establishing ties with other black liberation movements around the world, they were able to spread revolutionary intercommunalism and influence other areas of the world. An example of how strong their influence was can be seen in the Dalit Panther Party. In India, there is a hierarchal caste system based on what family one is born into. The Dalits were the lower caste that were constantly dehumanized, killed, subjugated and legally oppressed. Thus, the Dalit Panther Party was formed as a method of resistance and rejecting the caste system. Mentioned in the BPP magazines, the Dalit Panthers were a wonderful example of the original party’s reach.
Similarly, in Dallas, the group known as Guerilla Mainframe participates in community aid programs as a method of resistance. They also engage in militant protests to police brutality within their community, which is very reminiscent of the Black Panthers. The legacy of the BPP has been carried on around the world with the Yellow Panthers in Vietnam, the Vanguard Party of the Bahamas, and many more groups that studied and copied the Black Panthers’ model of organizing resistance. Thus, we should remember The Black Panther Party not as a terrorist group but rather as an inspirational Party that was key in the fight for black liberation and abolition of class. Thus, in the name of the Black Panthers and the millions of other deaths resulting from capitalism, we must endorse alternative methods of communing.
