The Panthers were baaaaaad. The Party was more than bad, it was bodacious. The sheer audacity of walking on to the California senate floor with rifles, demanding that black people have the right to bear arms and the right to self-defense, made me sit back and take along look at them. Assata Shakur
[The Party] dropped its wholesale attacks against whites and began to emphasize more of a class analysis of society. Its emphasis on Marxist–Leninist doctrine and its repeated espousal of Maoist statements signaled the group’s transition from a revolutionary nationalist to a revolutionary internationalist movement. Every Party member had to study Mao Tse-tung’s Little Red Book to advance his or her knowledge of peoples’ struggle and the revolutionary process. Curtis Austin
As inheritors of the discipline, pride, and calm self-assurance preached by Malcolm X, the Panthers became national heroes in black communities by infusing abstract nationalism with street toughness – by joining the rhythms of black working-class youth culture to the interracial élan and effervescence of Bay Area New Left politics ... In 1966, the Panthers defined Oakland’s ghetto as a territory, the police as interlopers, and the Panther mission as the defense of community. The Panthers’ famous ‘policing the police’ drew attention to the spatial remove that White Americans enjoyed from the police brutality that had come to characterize life in black urban communities. Jama Lazerow, Lazerow & Williams, 2006
When many people think of the Black Panther Party today, the image that comes to mind is male-centered and violent: a powerful man wearing the Panther’s signature black beret, with gun prominently in hand. This image has been seared into the collective conscious and appears on thousands of posters and T-shirts. It may be surprising, then, to learn that by the early 1970s, the Black Panther Party was two-thirds female.
Historian Ashley Farmer who is a postdoctoral fellow at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, offers an alternative to the conventional, macho portrayal of the Black Panthers. Farmer’s research shows that women played an instrumental role in shaping the black power movement. Their participation created new political models that encouraged women to be active and public revolutionary figures alongside men.
Farmer combed through publications such as The Black Panther newspaper to find evidence of black women’s public role. She looked particularly at newspaper artwork produced by women artists. What she found is that these women defied gender roles by depicting women as strong, gun-toting revolutionaries. In addition, women set a community-focused revolutionary agenda that supported programs for daycare, groceries, and housing. This research forms part of Farmer’s future book, tentatively titled What You've Got is a Revolution: Black Women’s Movements for Black Power.
The Black Panther Party formed in 1966 with the goal of protecting black neighborhoods and ending police brutality. The organization’s rapid expansion into multiple cities across the nation, along with high-profile arrests and protests, soon made the Black Panthers an icon of 1960s counterculture.
Key to the Panthers’ iconic success, according to Farmer, was a series of commanding drawings and photographs of the black male revolutionary. These images were first included in the organization’s newspaper The Black Panther (1968-1980). The revolutionary artwork contained within the newspaper’s pages produced a striking visual lesson in how to be a revolutionary, explains Farmer. What’s more, the enduring popularity of these images today helps fuel the common belief the party was largely male-centered.
But, by purposefully seeking out female artists, Farmer discovered that women played a crucial role internally in the creation of Black Panther revolutionary art and in shaping the black power movement.
Farmer examined the work of Tarika Lewis, whose artwork appeared in the first issues of The Black Panther in the late 1960s. Lewis helped create the popular image of the black male revolutionary. As Farmer explains, this shows how African-American women were integral to shaping the masculine Panther image from the Party’s earliest years. However, Lewis also challenged this early focus on the male image – by depicting women in similar revolutionary poses.
In Lewis’ depictions of both male and female revolutionaries, the revolutionary apparatus as a strong and fierce paramilitary figure standing alone among the ruins of a decaying urban landscape. Often, Farmer points out, these images were accompanied by captions that emphasized combating power structures such as police brutality, while thinking about specific ways to improve daily life in the black community. The images emphasized the ongoing black struggle and the need for armed self-defense and control of urban spaces – rather than simply the ultimate fate of the revolution.
Lewis’ images also contain a compelling message about gender, according to Farmer. By depicting both men and women independently as revolutionaries, Lewis made room for women to appear as heroes and leaders. Additionally, the portrayal of women as female warriors challenged the traditional female roles of caregiver and homemaker, expanding the ways in which women could contribute to the organization.
As the Black Panther Party grew in size and popularity, the FBI in 1968 declared it to be one of the greatest threats to the country. The Bureau killed or incarcerated many male leaders of the party. But the FBI failed to take into account that by the early 1970s, women made up two-thirds of the organization’s membership, leaving a base from which the Panthers could continue to organize.
The remaining women Panthers turned toward local-level activism, providing food, housing, and health care in local black communities. Farmer traces this political shift through the work of another female artist, Gayle Dickson, whose drawings appeared in The Black Panther by the early 1970s.
The remaining women Panthers turned toward local-level activism, providing food, housing, and health care in local black communities.
In her sketches, Dickson often depicted older African-American women. For example, one image shows an elderly woman smiling and holding a grocery bag filled with food from the Panthers’ Free Food Program. The woman also wears a pin stating vote for survival and holds campaign propaganda supporting candidates endorsed by the Black Panther Party.
Dickson’s revolutionary images underscore the change in the Panther political message, according to Farmer. Unlike Lewis’ images of confrontational and menacing revolutionary figures, Dickson portrayed women with softer expressions that reflected a more inviting and concerned Black Panther Party committed to rebuilding the black community.
Farmer’s research exposes how women in the Black Panther Party diversified the image of the male revolutionary ideal. Farmer contends that these artists also made a direct impact in real women’s lives by paving the way for more equal gender relations. For example, the Panthers held political education classes designed to end gender bias in the black community.
Understanding how women of color have historically incorporated gender into movements around racial and economic disparity is, for Farmer, the first step in rethinking how to approach the place of gender in socially complex settings today. In particular, Farmer’s research resonates in twenty-first-century America, where minorities are set to become the largest segment of the population.
‘A more nuanced understanding of minority women’s previous quests for gender equality can inform contemporary discussions of gender equality, and ensure these efforts represent the increasingly diverse population of America,’ says Farmer. Nicole Martin, ‘A Woman’s Place is in the Struggle’, cited Bust online & Feminism
Sir, you say your men were fired upon. Witnesses who have seen the apartment say there is no evidence of bullets from the direction where the Panthers were supposedly to be. The Murder of Fred Hampton, rozzer Hanrahan television interview, 1971
Brother was shot four or five times. They came through the door and shot him again to make sure he was dead. ibid. witness
This attack by the Black Panthers on the police. ibid. rozzer Hanrahan
The pig said, He is good and dead now. ibid. Sister with child
For non-violence to work, your opponents must have a conscience. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, Stokely Carmichael, 2011
When a black man strikes back he is an extremist. ibid. Malcolm X
We weren’t the ones who inflicted pain and harm on people. We weren’t the ones who kidnapped a whole culture. ibid. Erykah Badu 2010
This is the Harlem office where the 21 panthers who are now on trial worked. But despite the arrests, political education is still being carried out here today – regular classes in revolution. ibid. commentary
The Black Panther party started in Oakland, California and so you know the party is known mostly for its confrontational stances – and that’s a good thing to be confrontational against evil and violence. ibid. Professor Kathleen Cleaver 2010
Bobby Seale says that the Black Panthers are an American revolutionary party working to fulfil the basic needs of the black population: work, food, housing and education. ibid. commentary
J Edgar Hoover states that the Free Breakfast Program is the most dangerous internal threat to the US. The FBI unleashes the COINTELPRO covert operation to neutralize the black power movement. ibid. caption
Political trials are getting more and more common in the USA … A number of trials against radicals are being carried out across the country. ibid. commentary
23 February 1972: Angela Davis is tried, acquitted and released after 18 months of incarceration. ibid. caption