Amazingly, it has been 40 years since the Black Panther Party was founded. Some sticklers to detail will point to the fact that it was in October, not May of 1966, that the Black Panther Party was founded by two young men in Oakland, California, named Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. That’s true, but that’s not the end of the story. The late African nationalist Kwame Touré, formerly known as Stokley Carmichael, when a leader of SNCC, or the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, published — a month before Huey and Bobby joined together — an article detailing SNCC’s efforts to organize, both in the South and the Northeast. In a September 1966 article published in the New York Review of Books, Touré wrote:
“SNCC today is working in both North and South on programs of voter registration and independent political organizing. In some places such as Alabama, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and New Jersey, independent organizing under the Black Panther symbol is in progress. The creation of a national Black Panther Party must come about. It will take time to build. And it is much too early to predict its success. We have no infallible master plan, and we make no claim to exclusive knowledge of how to end racism. Different groups will work in their own different ways. SNCC cannot spell out the full logistics of self-determination, but it can address itself to the problem by helping Black communities define their needs, realize their strength, and go into action along a variety of lines which they must choose for themselves. Without knowing all the answers, it can address itself to the basic problem of poverty, to the fact that in Lowndes County 86 white families own 90 percent of the land. What are Black people in that county going to do for jobs? Where are they going to get money? There must be a re-allocation of land, of money.” That’s from the book Stokely Speaks: From Black Power Back to Pan Africanism, originally published by Vintage in 1965. It was, in fact, SNCC’s efforts in Lowndes County, Alabama, that inspired Huey to use the name, Black Panther Party. But it’s been 40 years. It’s safe to say that much of the history of Huey’s party remains hidden history. This isn’t rhetoric. It’s fact.
One year ago I received a wealth of letters from college students who had read my book We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party. Here, scores of letters from a wide variety of racial and ethnic groups, almost all of whom expressed shock and surprise, not just at the unknown history of the party, but at the history of Black resistance overall. One writer, Shanara P, wrote, “Most of the facts you wrote in your book were never taught in the schools I went to.” Another student, John M, wrote, “I feel cheated because this is the first time I’ve heard such stories.” As a writer and a historian, I was, of course, delighted by such letters, but as a former member of the party, it was eye opening at how invisible the party has come with the passage of time. But why should we be surprised? What did we expect? Yes, it’s been 40 years, but the problems faced by Black people; of sub-human housing, of poor education, of racist killer cops, of courts of injustice, of unemployment, are just as real today as they were in 1966. The struggle continues. From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are produced by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
