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In this
photo
taken
Monday,
Oct. 3,
2016, a
poster
by Emory
Douglas
created
for the
Black
Panther
Party
newspaper
is seen
in the
exhibition
called
"All
Power to
the
People:
Black
Panthers
at 50"
at the
Oakland
Museum
of
California
in
Oakland,
Calif.
Hundreds
of
former
Black
Panthers
from
around
the
world
are
expected
to
gather
in
Oakland,
Calif.,
for a
four-day
conference
that
started
Thursday,
Oct. 20,
2016.
The
Panthers
emerged
from the
gritty
city 50
years
ago,
declaring
a new
party
dedicated
to
defending
African-Americans
against
police
brutality
and
protecting
their
rights.
(Photo:
Eric
Risberg,
AP) |
|
50 years
later,
Black
Panthers
look
back at
party's
founding
By
JANIE
HAR
ap.org
OAKLAND,
Calif. -
The
Black
Panthers
emerged
from
this
gritty
Northern
California
city 50
years
ago,
declaring
to a
nation
in
turmoil
a new
party
dedicated
to
defending
African-Americans
against
police
brutality
and
protecting
the
right of
a
downtrodden
people
to
determine
their
own
future.
In the
group's
short
life, it
launched
an
ambitious
breakfast
program
for
children
and
opened
free
health
clinics
to
screen
for
sickle-cell
anemia.
At the
same
time,
party
members
scared
mainstream
America
with
their
calls
for
revolution
that
were at
odds
with
Martin
Luther
King
Jr.'s
insistence
on
peaceful
protest.
The
Panthers
eventually
imploded,
weakened
by
internal
fighting
and by a
government
effort
to
undermine
the
group.
FBI
Director
J. Edgar
Hoover
said the
party
represented
the
nation's
"greatest
threat
to
internal
security."
The
Nixon
administration
moved to
shut it
down.
The
anniversary
comes as
new
tensions
between
black
communities
and law
enforcement
have
given
rise to
another
social-justice
movement
with
Oakland
ties -
Black
Lives
Matter.
Hundreds
of
Panthers
from
around
the
world
are
expected
in
Oakland
for a
four-day
conference
that
started
Thursday.
Two days
later,
co-founder
Bobby
Seale
will
celebrate
his 80th
birthday
with a
roast
sponsored
by the
National
Alumni
Association
of the
Black
Panther
Party.
Nationally,
African-Americans
continue
to lag
whites
in jobs,
housing
and
health.
And
Oakland,
once a
heavily
black
city, is
losing
its
African-American
population
as
soaring
home
prices
propelled
by the
technology
boom
drive
out
poorer
residents.
In this
photo
taken
Saturday,
Oct. 8,
2016,
former
Black
Panther
Party
leader
Elaine
Brown
answers
questions
outside
a museum
in
Oakland,
Calif.
Hundreds
of
former
Black
Panthers
from
around
the
world
are
expected
to
gather
in
Oakland,
Calif.,
for a
four-day
conference
that
started
Thursday,
Oct. 20,
2016.
The
Panthers
emerged
from the
gritty
city 50
years
ago,
declaring
a new
party
dedicated
to
defending
African-Americans
against
police
brutality
and
protecting
their
rights.
(Photo:
Eric
Risberg,
AP)
"The
only
change
is that
time has
passed,"
said
Elaine
Brown, a
former
party
chairwoman
who
remains
politically
active
in the
San
Francisco
Bay
Area.
"We are
the
poorest.
We have
the
least
economic
interests
in the
country,
and
consequently
we are
an
oppressed
people.
We
remain
an
oppressed
people."
Bobby
McCall
was 20
when he
left
Philadelphia
for
Oakland
to help
give
away
10,000
sacks of
free
food. He
agrees
that
conditions
have not
improved.
"That's
why we
have the
movement
Black
Lives
Matter,"
McCall
said.
"Only
they're
not as
organized
as we
were.
They
don't
have a
free
breakfast
program
like we
had.
They
have to
start
developing
programs."
The
generally
accepted
date of
the
party's
founding
is Oct.
15,
1966,
although
Seale
said it
was a
week
later,
on his
birthday.
It was
an era
of
Vietnam
War and
civil
rights
protests
when
Seale
and Huey
P.
Newton
drafted
the
party's
10-point
platform.
The
document
called
for
decent
housing
and
employment.
It
demanded
black
self-reliance.
They
named
their
group
the
Black
Panther
Party
for
Self-Defense
after a
black
civil
rights
group in
Alabama,
adopted
the
beret
worn by
the
French
resistance
to
Hitler
and
launched
armed
patrols.
In this
Friday,
Sept.
20, 2016
photo,
Bobby
Seale,
who
co-founded
the
Black
Panther
Party,
listens
to a
question
during
an
interview
at the
Eastside
Arts
Alliance
and
Cultural
Center
in
Oakland,
Calif.
Hundreds
of
former
Black
Panthers
from
around
the
world
are
expected
to
gather
in
Oakland,
California,
for a
four-day
conference
that
started
Thursday,
Oct. 20,
2016.
The
Panthers
emerged
from the
gritty
city 50
years
ago,
declaring
a new
party
dedicated
to
defending
African-Americans
against
police
brutality
and
protecting
their
rights.
(Photo:
Eric
Risberg,
AP)
In
response,
California
lawmakers
in 1967
repealed
the law
that
allowed
people
to carry
loaded
weapons
in
public.
The
Panthers
gained
national
attention
when
they
carried
guns
into the
state
Capitol
in
protest.
White
Americans
were
used to
King's
nonviolent
campaign
against
racism,
but they
were not
accustomed
to
seeing
black
Americans
with
guns.
Today, a
tart-tongued
Seale
bristles
at all
the talk
of free
breakfasts
and
firearms
without
what he
calls
critical
context.
He
formed
the
party,
he said,
to elect
minorities
to
political
seats.
The
"survival
programs"
such as
food and
clothing
giveaways
were
linked
to voter
registration
drives,
he said.
As for
the
violence
that
included
shootouts
with
police,
he said,
"The
power
structure
was
violent.
The Ku
Klux
Klan was
violent.
They
came and
they
attacked
us. If
you
shoot at
me, I'm
shooting
back. So
are you
going to
call
this
right to
self-defense
or are
you
going to
call
this
aggressive
violence?
It's not
aggressive
violence."
The
Oakland
Museum
of
California's
exhibit
"All
Power to
the
People:
Black
Panthers
at 50"
documents
the
party's
reign
from
1966 to
1982.
The
party's
decline
included
Nixon
administration
efforts
to
undermine
the
group
with
informants
and
misinformation.
"The FBI
inspired
raids on
Panther
offices.
There
was a
general
campaign
to
portray
them as
a
negative,
violent
organization,"
said
Rene de
Guzman,
the
museum's
director
of
exhibition
strategies
and
senior
curator
of art.
Members,
including
Seale
and
Newton,
cycled
in and
out of
jails
and
prisons.
Seale
left the
party in
1974.
Newton
dissolved
it in
1982,
shutting
down the
community
school
and
newspaper.
He was
later
shot
dead by
an
alleged
drug
dealer.
Many see
the
party's
influence
in the
youth
movements
of
today,
especially
Black
Lives
Matter,
which
also
protests
police
brutality.
It
started
as a
hashtag
and love
letter
to
blacks
posted
on
Facebook
by a
young
Oakland
activist
named
Alicia
Garza in
2013,
after
George
Zimmerman
was
acquitted
of
fatally
shooting
17-year-old
Trayvon
Martin
in
Florida.
Seale
would
like to
see
Black
Lives
Matter
organize
people
to seek
political
office
and
create
an
environmental
jobs
program
for
youth.
Robbie
Clark, a
35-year-old
housing
organizer
and
Black
Lives
Matter
activist
who grew
up in
Oakland,
said the
movement
already
does
just
that.
The
founders,
for
example,
work on
behalf
of
domestic
workers
and
immigrants.
Some
activists,
Clark
said,
want to
focus on
elections
and
others
want to
go
outside
the
political
system.
Many
insist
the
movement
needs
both.
"We can
shift
some of
those
conditions
by
having
the
right
people
in
office,"
Clark
said,
"but
it's
with the
understanding
that
having
different
people
in those
seats
doesn't
make the
system
change
overnight."
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