Hey guys! Hope you are all well, safe and happy! I wish you all a happy Black History Month. For black history month, I want to talk about a group of black activist legends from the 60’s. In fact, I don’t want to talk about it, I want to share some knowledge to shed some light on this group of leaders who contributed to our history. Let’s go back to the 1960’s.
Just a year after Malcolm X’s passing, The Panther Party for Self- Defense was founded in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and his friend, Bobby Seale. The Panther party was founded originally to protect black communities that lived in towns and neighborhoods from white-police brutality, but then they started recruiting regular people who wanted to fight for justice.The more African Americans were being oppressed in cities across North America, the more people wanted to fight against this oppression. They recruited more and more people, and eventually, they had over 2,000 Panther Party members. They shortened their name to just the Panther Party and continued to serve and protect the community. They were commonly compared to other American Cultural Nationalist Organizations, but they were different from these groups and here's why.
- The Black Panther Party believed that there could be white people who were non-racist and kind. They called these people white allies.
- The Black Panther Party knew that there were black people who were capitalists and exploiting all kinds of lower-class workers just as white capitalists were.
- The Panther Party followed a philosophy called Marxism. Marxism is a philosophy that studies how capitalism, or an economy controlled and benefiting higher-class-men instead of the government and therefore the people, affects economic development. The Party followed this philosophy and believed in revolution of the lower-class workers to overthrow capitalism.
The Panther Party, with Seale at its chair, led a protest against the pending Mulford Act, which was a prohibition from the government that forbade anyone from carrying self-defense tools, such as guns, into the public. They brought their self-defense tools to this protest, flexing their second Amendment Rights. Of course, the police officers didn’t like this. Their anger resulted in a shoot-out, which killed an officer. The government in response to this event, passes a bill for gun control as a sneaky plot to stop the efforts of the Party. These graphic images sparked people to join the Panther Party a year later, which got the party members in Almost all the states.
The Black Panther Party went on to do many notorious and worth-mentioning acts of bravery and courage, including working alongside and under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. and launching over 35 survival programs.
Well folks, that’s the beginning of the Super Black Panther Party as told by yours truly. Please let me know what your take-way from this blog or what you wish to share about the Panther Party. The Panther Party proves that their is good in all of us regardless of race and I am grateful for their great leadership, courage and bravery.
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