Gangland: Race War 2007 - Kathleen Neal Cleaver - Khalid Abdul Muhammad - Noam Chomsky - Storyville: The Black Panthers TV - The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution 2015 - Fred Hampton - Jonathan P Jackson - Huey Newton - Kerry Washington - Bobby Seale - Sekou Odinga - J Edgar Hoover - Assata Shakur - Curtis Austin - Jama Lazerow - Nicole Martin - The Murder of Fred Hampton 1971 - The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 2011 - Stokely Carmichael - Stokely Carmichael & Charles Vernon - Angela Davis - All Power to the People: The Black Panther Party & Beyond 2016 - Tupac Shakur: A Life in Ten Pictures TV - Adam Curtis TV -
In the late 1960s many gang members joined the Black Nationalist Movement. Groups like the Black Panthers promoted black power and self-defence. And launched social programmes to help the urban poor. Gangland: Race War, History 2007
Once Richard Nixon was elected president and was inaugurated in January 1969, we were targeted, bam, bam, bam, by a very sophisticated, advanced, counterintelligence program, at the same time, by very crude and violent police. Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Black Panther Party
The white race is absolutely disagreeable to get along with in peace. Dr Khalid Abdul Muhammad, Black Panthers
During the campaign waged by the national political police against the Black Panthers – including assassination, instigation of ghetto riots, and a variety of other means – the FBI estimated the ‘hard core members’ of the targeted organization at only eight hundred ... The repressive agencies of the state proceeded with a campaign of violence and disruption to ensure that the Panthers did not succeed in organizing as a substantial social or political force. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
‘We referred to ourselves as the Vanguard. And we were setting by example a new course we wanted the entire community to follow.’ Storyville: The Black Panthers, BBC 2015
‘Our attack was not only against white supremacy but it was also against capitalism.’ ibid.
‘This was all-out attack on the Black Panther Party.’ ibid.
‘It was a split in the Party and within days we began to feel just how bad it was.’ ibid.
There are over 20 Panthers who remain in prison. ibid.
We were making history. And there wasn’t nice and clean. There wasn’t easy. It was complex. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Erica Huggins, Netflix 2015
The police jump on you, beat you up, put the gun at your head, this is what we’re going through on a daily basis. ibid. Warne Pharr
We want freedom, we want decent housing, we want education for our people, we want an immediate end to police brutality … ibid. Black Panthers
The Black Panther Party demands that Huey P Newton be set free. ibid. Eldridge Cleaver
Free Breakfast For Children Served Here Every School Morning. ibid. sign
The reality is that the majority of the rank and file by the end of the ’60s are women. ibid. Claybourne Carson, historian
In other cities the Panthers were under physical attack from the police departments. But New York City was going to handle its Panther problem differently: they created a conspiracy case that allowed them to arrest the entire leadership of the New York City Black Panther Party. ibid. Jamal Joseph
He [Bobby Seale] kept insisting on his right to represent himself, and the judge’s response to that was to order the bailiffs to put gaffer tape over his mouth and tie him to his chair. ibid. Mike Gray, filmmaker
It was like a slaughterhouse. And there was blood all over the place. ibid. Mike Gray, assassination of Fred Hampton
It was a death squad that did this raid. It was a police death squad. And the whole thing was set up by the FBI. ibid. historian
It was a split in the party. And within days we began to feel just how bad it was. ibid. William Calhoun
There are over 20 Panthers that remain in prison. ibid. caption
We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism. Fred Hampton
So we say – we always say in the Black Panther Party that they can do anything they want to to us. We might not be back. I might be in jail. I might be anywhere. But when I leave, you’ll remember I said, with the last words on my lips, that I am a revolutionary. And you’re going to have to keep on saying that. You’re going to have to say that I am a proletariat, I am the people. I am not the pigs. You’ve got to make a distinction. And the people are going to have to attack the pigs. The people are going to have to stand up against the pigs. That’s what the Panthers are doing here. That’s what the Panthers are doing all over the world. Fred Hampton, speech I am a Revolutionary
Yes, we do defend our office as we do defend our homes. This is a constitutional right everyone has, and nothing’s funny about that. The only reason they get mad at the Black Panther Party when you do it is for the simple reason that we’re political. Fred Hampton
We are quite obviously faced with a need to organize some small defenses to the more flagrant abuses of the system now … While we await the precise moment when all of capitalism’s victims will indignantly rise to destroy the system, we are being devoured … Some of us are going to have to take our courage in hand and build a hard revolutionary cadre for selective retaliatory violence. Jonathan P Jackson, Blood in My Eye p11-12
Comrade, Repression exposes. By drawing violence from the beast, the vanguard party is demonstrating for the world to examine just exactly what terms their rule is predicated on – their power to organize violence, our acquiescence. Jonathan P Jackson, Blood in My Eye p23
Black Power is giving power to the people who have not had the power to determine their own destiny. Huey Newton
The FBI was most disturbed by the Panthers’ survival programs providing community service. The popular free breakfast program, in which the party provided free hot breakfasts to children in Black communities throughout the United States, was, as already noted, a particular thorn in the side of J Edgar Hoover. Finding little to criticize about the program objectively, the Bureau decided to destroy it. Huey P Newton, dissertation ‘War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America’
I suggested that we use the panther as our symbol and call our political vehicle the Black Panther Party. The panther is a fierce animal, but he will not attack until he is backed into a corner; then he will strike out. Huey Newton, Revolutionary Suicide, 1973
I have no doubt that the revolution will triumph. The people of the world will prevail, seize power, seize the means of production, wipe out racism, capitalism. ibid. p4
The police are there in our community not to promote our welfare or for our security and our safety but they are there to contain us, to brutalize, to murder us. Huey Newton, Oakland Black Panthers
I think most people, when they think about the Black Panther Party, they think in very abstract, caricatured terms. They think about black fists in the air, but they don’t thin about the actual people, and the families, and the relationships. Kerry Washington
There is an entire generation of young people who know nothing about how viciously the FBI attacked the Black Panther Party, and why. Bobby Seale
The FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program would work hand-in-hand with police departments, literally planning attacks on Black Panther Party offices throughout the United States of America. Bobby Seale
What kind of motivated me to join the Black Panther Party was that I, along with some of the comrades that I was working with in New York, had heard about the Black Panther Party, and they were doing things that we wanted to do in New York, and we thought that would be a better vehicle than the vehicle that we had going on in New York. They were better organised, and they already had their Ten-Point Platform and Program, and people already heard about them. So we decided that we would join the party, when given a chance. Sekou Odinga
You state that the Bureau under the [counter-intelligence programs] should not attack programs of community interest such as the [Black Panther Party] Breakfast for Children … You have obviously missed the point … This program was formed by the BPP for obvious reasons, including their efforts to create an image of civility, assume community control of Negroes, and to fill adolescent children with their insidious poison. J Edgar Hoover