Black Panther Party Worksheets
Do you want to save dozens of hours in time? Get your evenings and weekends back? Be able to teach about the Black Panther Party to your students?
Our worksheet bundle includes a fact file and printable worksheets and student activities. Perfect for both the classroom and homeschooling!
Resource Examples
Click any of the example images below to view a larger version.
Fact File
Student Activities
Table of Contents
Add a header to begin generating the table of contents
Summary
- Historical Background
- Repression of Government and Expansion of the BPP
- BPP and Womanism
- Legacy
Key Facts And Information
Let’s know more about the Black Panther Party!
Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, two college students from Oakland, California, established the Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-defence) in October 1966. The organisation was a Marxist–Leninist and Black power political outfit. The party was active in the United States from 1966 to 1982, with chapters in numerous large American cities, such as San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and Philadelphia.
The Panthers ultimately evolved into a Marxist revolutionary organisation that advocated for the arming of all African Americans, the exemption of African Americans from the draft, and all sanctions of perceived ‘white America’, the release of all African Americans from jail and the payment of compensation to African Americans for centuries of exploitation by white Americans. Panther membership surpassed 2,000 during its zenith in the late 1960s, and the organisation maintained chapters in numerous significant American cities.
Black Panther Party founders Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton standing in the street
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY
- The economic and social inequality that African Americans experienced in cities across North America persisted despite the ratification of the 1960s civil rights legislation that followed the landmark United States Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954). These urban centres were characterised by poverty and reduced public services, where residents were burdened by poor living conditions, joblessness, chronic health issues, violence, and limited opportunities to alter their circumstances.
- Urban disturbances in the 1960s, including those in the Watts district of Los Angeles in 1965, and the increased use of police violence as a measure to impose order on cities throughout North America were both influenced by these conditions. Huey P. Newton and Robert George Seale, students at Merritt Junior College, established the Black Panther Party for Self-defence on 15 October 1966 in West Oakland, California. This was in the aftermath of the assassination of an African American revolutionary, Malcolm X, in 1965.
- The organisation immediately sought to distinguish itself from African American cultural nationalist organisations, such as the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Nation of Islam, to which it was frequently contrasted, by shortening its name to the Black Panther Party (BPP). Despite the fact that the Black Panther Party and cultural nationalists shared certain philosophical positions and tactical features, they differed on a number of fundamental issues. For example, the Black Panther Party distinguished between racist and nonracist white people. It allied itself with progressive members of the latter group, whereas African American cultural nationalists generally regarded all white people as oppressors. Additionally, the Black Panther Party maintained that African American capitalists and elites could and frequently did exploit and oppress others, particularly the African American working class, in contrast to the general belief of cultural nationalists that all African Americans were oppressed.
- The Black Panther Party, in contrast to cultural nationalists, maintained the belief that symbolic systems, including language and imagery, were ineffective in achieving liberation despite their significance. This is the most significant distinction. It viewed symbols as hopelessly insufficient to address the unjust material conditions, such as joblessness, that capitalism induced. The Black Panther Party established a Ten Point Program from the outset. The Ten Point Program was divided into two sections: The initial article, What We Want Now!, delineated the objectives of the Black Panther Party with respect to the leaders of American society. The second section, What We Believe, delineated the philosophical beliefs of the party and the liberties that African Americans believed they were entitled to but were not.
Ten Point Program of the Black Panther Party
Ten Point Program
-
- We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.
- We want full employment for our people.
- We want an end to the robbery by the Capitalists of our Black Community.
- We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
- We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in present-day society.
- We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.
- We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people.
- We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.
- We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Black Communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.
- We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.
- The Ten Point Program delineates a number of positions that align with the Black Panther Party’s fundamental stance: the abolition of capitalism is a prerequisite for social justice, and economic exploitation is the source of all oppression in the United States and internationally. In the 1960s, this socialist economic perspective, which was influenced by a Marxist political philosophy, was in alignment with other social movements in the United States and other regions of the globe.
- Consequently, the Black Panther Party was simultaneously in the purview of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its counterintelligence programme, COINTELPRO, despite the fact that it found allies both within and beyond the borders of North America. In 1969, FBI Director John Edgar Hoover stated that the Black Panther Party was, in fact, the most significant threat to national security.
- There was an effort by COINTELPRO to incite rivalries among Black nationalist factions and to capitalise on existing ones. One such endeavour was to intensify the degree of animosity between the Black Panthers and the Blackstone Rangers, a Chicago street gang.
- The FBI sent an anonymous letter to the Rangers’ gang commander claiming that the Panthers were threatening his life, a letter whose intent was to provoke preemptive violence against Panther leadership. In Southern California, the FBI made similar efforts to exacerbate a gang war between the Black Panther Party and a Black nationalist organisation called the US Organization, allegedly sending a provocative letter to the US Organization to increase existing antagonism.
- COINTELPRO also sought to undermine the Black Panther Party by focusing on their social and community initiatives, such as the Free Breakfast for Children programme. The programme’s success elucidated the government’s inability to address child poverty and hunger, thereby underscoring the limitations of the nation’s War on Poverty.
REPRESSION OF GOVERNMENT AND EXPANSION OF THE BPP
- On 28 October 1967, Oakland police officer John Frey was fatally shot during a traffic encounter with Newton. Newton and backup officer Herbert Heanes also sustained gunshot wounds. Newton was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter during the trial; however, the conviction was subsequently reversed. Newton’s assertion that he had been falsely accused at the time resulted in the Party’s ‘Free Huey!’ campaign.
- The radical American left increased its recognition of the party as a result of the police shooting, which in turn facilitated the party’s nationwide expansion. Newton’s conviction was overturned on appeal after three years, and he was subsequently released. The ‘Free Huey!’ campaign formed alliances with a multitude of students and anti-war activists. At the same time, Newton awaited trial, advancing an anti-imperialist political ideology that linked the oppression of anti-war protestors to the oppression of Black and Vietnamese people.
- Apprentice Carter established the Southern California chapter in Los Angeles in 1968. Carter was the commander of the Slauson Street gang, and a significant number of the Los Angeles chapter’s initial recruits were Slausons. In May 1967, the Black Panther Party was thrust into the national spotlight when a small group of its members, led by its chair, Seale, marched into the California state legislature in Sacramento, fully armed. The Black Panther Party marched on the body in protest of the pending Mulford Act, emboldened by the belief that African Americans had a constitutional right to bear arms. The Black Panther Party perceived the legislation, which was a gun control measure, as a political manoeuvre designed to impede the organisation’s efforts to address police brutality in the Oakland community. Later that year, the news of Newton’s arrest following a shootout with police in which an officer was slain was added to the images of gun-toting Black Panthers entering the Capitol.
Survival Programs
- The Black Panther Party initiated over 35 Survival Programs. These provided community assistance, including education, tuberculosis testing, legal aid, transportation assistance, ambulance service, and the manufacture and distribution of free shoes to impoverished individuals, in addition to challenging police brutality.
- The Free Breakfast for Children Program, which was initiated in January 1969, was particularly noteworthy, as it was implemented in every significant American city with a Black Panther Party chapter. The federal government had implemented a comparable demonstration programme in 1966; however, it was arguably in response to the Panthers’ initiative that the programme was subsequently extended and made permanent in 1975.
- The party was able to reinforce the ties of young people to their communities, influence their minds and garner widespread support for their ideologies through this programme. The breakfast programme was so well-received that the Black Panther Party asserted that it helped feed 20,000 children during the 1968–69 academic year. Volunteers primarily managed the initiative, the majority of whom were women.
- These volunteers included both party members and non-affiliated community members. The individuals who were involved in the programme attentively ensured that the free breakfasts were a tangible benefit to the impoverished communities of the city. By instructing children in liberation lessons during their mealtime, they also transformed the programme into a potent symbol of racial injustice and peripheral marginalisation in the United States.
Flyer that describes the free breakfast programme for children
- Free services, including clothing distribution, classes on politics and economics, free medical clinics, lessons on self-defence and first aid, transportation to upstate prisons for family members of inmates, an emergency-response ambulance programme, drug and alcohol rehabilitation and sickle-cell disease testing, were available as part of other survival programmes.
- The free medical clinics were of great importance because they presented a vision of how the world could operate with free medical care. Ultimately, they were established in 13 locations throughout the country. The Medical Committee for Human Rights was established as a result of the community-based health care that these clinics provided, which was rooted in the Civil Rights Movement.
- The FBI proclaimed the Black Panther Party a communist organisation and an enemy of the United States government despite the social services it provided. Hoover had committed to the Black Panther Party’s demise in 1969 and allocated the FBI’s resources to this cause through COINTELPRO.
- In a protracted campaign against the Black Panther Party, COINTELPRO employed lethal force, misinformation, sabotage and agent provocateurs to decimate the national organisation.
- In December 1969, the FBI’s campaign reached its zenith with the execution of Fred Hampton, the Chicago Black Panther commander, during a five-hour police shootout at the Southern California headquarters of the Black Panther Party and an Illinois state police raid. The FBI’s measures were so extreme that the director of the agency publicly apologised for wrongful uses of power years later when they were revealed.
BPP AND WOMANISM
- The Black Panther Party consistently advocated for traditional gender roles and Black masculinity since its inception. In 1968, numerous articles encouraged female Panthers to support the male members of the BPP. Joan Tarika Lewis was the first woman to join the party in 1967. Nevertheless, women were present in the party from the outset and expanded their responsibilities throughout its existence.
- Women frequently formed coalitions to combat inequitable gender norms. In 1969, the party newspaper issued an official directive to male Panthers to consider female party members as equals, a significant departure from the notion of the female Panther as a subordinate. As a response to the distinctive experiences of African American women, the Black Panthers adopted a womanist ideology that emphasised racism as more oppressive than misogyny.
- Womanism, in contrast to specific feminist perspectives, advocated for a vision of gender roles that posited that men and women must collaborate to preserve African American culture and community. This vision posited that men do not hold a superior position in the family or community but rather occupy distinct roles.
- Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis and Erika Huggins were among the members of the party newspaper who portrayed women as intelligent political revolutionaries. The Black Panther Party newspaper frequently depicted women as active participants in the armed self-defence movement, as protectors of home, family and community by holding firearms and accompanied by children.
- The party officially supported women’s reproductive rights, including abortion, during the 1970s in recognition of the limited access impoverished women had to the procedure. In the Oakland chapter, sexual harassment and gender conflict were prevalent, and the party encountered substantial challenges in numerous chapters due to misogyny and gender oppression.
- After 21 New York Panther leaders were incarcerated, the Oakland Panthers arrived to support the New York City Panther chapter. However, they exhibited such chauvinistic attitudes towards the women of the New York Panthers that they had to be repelled at gunpoint. In response, the Chicago and New York chapters, among others, prioritised equal gender rights and endeavoured to eliminate discriminatory attitudes.
- As an organisation, the Black Panther Party was engaged in numerous community initiatives. These endeavours encompassed community outreach initiatives, such as the breakfast programme, education and health programmes. Women were frequently the primary individuals responsible for administering these programmes.
- Education was a primary objective of the Black Panther Party from the outset. This was emphasised in the Ten Point Platform, the Panthers’ public commentary and the newspaper that the party disseminated. The newspaper was one of the party’s primary and original measures for raising awareness and providing education.
LEGACY OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY
- The Black Panther Party’s influence expanded beyond the establishment of support organisations for the organisation since its inception in 1966, assuming a transnational character. For instance, activists in urban areas of Australia integrated the works of Black Panther Party members into their social movements.
- The Black Panthers’ rhetoric was emulated by the oppressed Dalits in India, and the Yellow Panthers, who identified themselves as representatives of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, also drew inspiration from the organisation. The Vanguard Party in the Bahamas, which was located in close proximity to the United States, conducted a thorough examination of the Black Panther Party. They drew inspiration from its political philosophy, adopted its Ten Point Program and uniforms, and published the newspaper Vanguard, which was similar in scope and format to the Black Panther Party’s newspaper, Black Panther.
- By 1998, Khallid Abdul Muhammad, the former national spokesperson for the Chicago-based Nation of Islam, had assumed the de facto leadership of the organisation. He led a group of New Black Panther Party members to Jasper, Texas, in the aftermath of the murder of James Byrd, Jr., a 49-year-old African American man who had been dragged behind a pickup truck by three members of the Ku Klux Klan. The group was armed with shotguns and rifles. The New Black Panther Party was also introduced to the public through the Million Youth March, which it initiated in New York in 1998.
- Many of the activities of the New Black Panther Party were evidently reminiscent of those of the original Black Panther Party. Simultaneously, the New Black Panther Party adopted a fervently cultural nationalist stance, which prompted certain former Black Panther Party leaders to condemn the organisation for appropriating the Black Panther Party’s name and legacy.
Frequently Asked Questions About The Black Panther Party
- What was the Black Panther Party?
The Black Panther Party (BPP) was a revolutionary socialist organisation founded in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California.
- What were the Black Panther Party's main objectives?
The Black Panther Party's main objectives included ending police brutality, providing access to quality education and healthcare, promoting Black pride, and establishing economic self-sufficiency in Black communities. They also advocated for civil rights, justice, and equality for all marginalised groups.
- What were some key programmes initiated by the Black Panther Party?
The BPP is known for several community-based programmes, the most famous of which is the Free Breakfast for Children Program, which serves thousands of children daily. Other programmes include health clinics, educational initiatives, transportation assistance, and legal aid.