Friday, April 6, 2012

The Black Panthers: Policing the police


The Black Panther Party was started as part of the civil rights movement in Oakland, California.  Although the party started in colleges it quickly emerged as a youth movement and reaction to policing of youth in Oakland. As we read in Rios' book policing of youth is not a current trend. What most interested me about the Black Panther movement is the agency of the youth. Out of community concerns grew this political consciousness and activist work.  For example, in the ghettos of Oakland there existed an intersection which needed a traffic light due to the fatality of numerous youth attempting to cross the street. Members of the Panther organizations, Newton and Seale, had tried numerous times to advocate with the city to put up a stop sign.  After failed attempts to have their voices heard they took it upon themselves to  start directing traffic at this dangerous crossroads. Their strategy worked because shortly thereafter the city installed a signal.  The Panthers also followed the police with law books in hand to document any brutality. Before the Panthers started several of the leaders had themselves spent time in juvenile corrections. Ironically during their time in corrections they studied Martin Luther King and Malcom X thus setting the stage for the movement. There existed a saying among black youth that stated, "There are only three ways a black man can get an education:college, prison and military." I find it fascinating that they used their time in corrections to exercise agency and create an  ideology and vision of their future resistance. In David Hilliards autobiography he writes about one of the Panthers stating, " Eldridge inspired me on a personal level,....He was left to destroy himself in a prison cage, Instead he has mastered language and made the entire sociey listen to him."  In 1966 the Black Panther Party created a platform and program that listed a ten point plan. They stated they wanted freedom and the power to determine their destiny. We want employment for our people.  We want an end to the robbery of Black communities.  They further stated that forty acres and two mules was promised them 100 years ago as resititution for slave labor and mass murder of black people.  We want decent housing fit for human beings and education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches our true history and our role in the present day society. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people. I find it sad that this was the plan some forty years ago, before I was even born! Yet, here we are history repeating itself with the policing and  killing of an innocent black youth in Florida, Trayvon Martin.




Murch, Donna Jean. Living For The City:Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California.The University of North Carolina Press,2010.


3 comments:

  1. Nice post, Martha. I like how you tied the Black Panther movement to youth activism. BTW: Did you know that Bobby Seale spoke at NAU last week?

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  2. Like Vera, I also liked how you tied the Black Panther movement to youth activism. I am super disturbed that I had no idea that the Black Panther movement began as a youth activist movement (until we talked about it in class on Tuesday). I really think that my ignorance speaks volumes about how certain histories are framed in schools (here in America) and whose history is taught! I grew up in an upper-middle class suburb about 25 minutes away from Oakland, and the Black Panthers were almost framed as a “terrorist group” in the history classes that I took. There was no talk about their opposition to the policing of youth of color, and how their political consciousness grew out of their lived experiences of oppression. This idea about teaching only certain histories is definitely connected the whole ethnic studies ban too… It makes me so angry! And to think that I believed what they told me about the Black Panthers…So disturbing.

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  3. Anastasia: I appreciate your sentiments. Back in the Stone Age, we didn't even learn about the Black Panthers. I also never learned any Mexican American history--not in K-12 or in college. We've come a long way, but boy, do we have a long way left to go!

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