A Curriculum for the Black Radicalism Era

This collection of handouts is a product of Meridian Academy’s Division 3 Humanities class in 2019-2020.

To understand one response to the of the , students read Assata: An Autobiography, by , a member of the . Shakur’s book describes her disillusionment with the civil rights movement and her frustrations with the lack of gains that it achieved. However, Shakur of course does not represent all perspectives or experiences of her era. For this reason, students researched another movement, group, or facet of this time period. Because teaching is one of the most effective forms of learning, students designed an assignment – including readings, video, or audio and reflection questions – to help others learn about their chosen subject. Together, these assignments comprise a multifaceted curriculum on this era. Major Leaders of the

What do you know about the Black Panther Party?

What was the Black Panther Party?

The Black Panther Party was one of the major political groups during the 1960’s and 70’s that fought for black rights. The group was started by Huey Newton and in 1966 in Oakland, California. They founded The Black Panther Party when Malcom X was shot and an unarmed black teen named Matthew Johnson was killed by police. Newton and Seale drew their ideas from marxist ideologies and outlined their program with those views (History). While the party was seen as a , and it could be interpreted that way, the main goal of the party was to stop against the African American community and get more black people elected to office (History). Excerpted from “” an article from History. ​ ​

Read this excerpt from Brian Baggins’s article “History of the Black Panther Party,” published on the Marxists Internet ​ ​ Archive.

“The practices of the late were deeply rooted in the theoretical foundations of the Black Panther Party. Malcolm had represented both a militant , with the dignity and self-respect to stand up and fight to win equality for all oppressed minorities; while also being an outstanding role model, someone who sought to bring about positive social services; something the Black Panthers would take to new heights. The Panthers followed Malcolm's belief of international working class unity across the spectrum of color and gender, and thus united with various minority and white revolutionary groups. From the tenets of they set the role of their Party as the vanguard of the revolution and worked to establish a united front, while from Marxism they addressed the capitalist economic system, embraced the theory of dialectical materialism, and represented the need for all workers to forcefully take over the means of production In the beginning of … 1968, after selling Mao's Red Book to university students in order to buy shotguns, the Party makes the book required reading. Meanwhile, the FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, begins a program called COINTELPRO (counterintelligence program) to break up the spreading unity of revolutionary groups that had begun solidifying through the work and example of the Panthers — the , , Students for a Democratic Society, the SNCC, SCLC, Poor People's , Cesar Chavez and others in the farm labor movement, the , Young Puerto Rican Brothers, the and many others. To destroy the party, the FBI begins with a program of surgical — killing leading members of the party who they know cannot be otherwise subverted. Following these mass killings would be a series of arrests, followed by a program of psychological warfare, designed to split the party both politically and morally through the use of espionage, provocateurs, and chemical warfare.”

Reflect: How does The Black Panthers' use of Marxism and other practices change the way you see them? Do you think the FBI’s involvement was necessary?

Leaders of the BPP

You have learned a bit about who was in the party, and who founded it from the articles above, but the main leaders of the party were named Bobby Seale, , , Huey Newton, , and . Together with the help of many others, they fought against police brutality and helped the African American communities that were in poverty. Excerpted from The “Black Panthers” an article from History. ​ ​ ​

Read the following speech (1970) Huey P. Newton, “The Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements” ​ written on April 17, 2018 by Quintard Taylor

Reflect: Do you agree with what Newton said about gaining security within yourself so you can accept others that are different? Why or why not?

Read the excerpt below from this interview with Eldridge Cleaver about the Black Panther Party on PBS. ​ ​ ​ ​ CLEAVER: When these riots started all over the country in the aftermath of the of Martin Luther King -- I think he got killed on the fourth of April. This shootout that we had took place on the sixth and the seventh of April. So we saw it coming while the police were acting so we decided to get down first. So we started the fight. There were 14 of us. We went down into the area of Oakland where the violence was the worst a few blocks away from where Huey Newton had killed that cop so we dealt with them when they came upon us. We were well armed, and we had a shootout that lasted an hour and a half. I will tell anybody that that was the first experience of freedom that I had. I was free for an hour and a half because during that time the repressive forces couldn't put their hand on me because we were shooting it out with them for an hour and a half. Three police officers got wounded. None of them got killed; I got wounded. Another Panther got wounded. didn't get wounded during the shootout, but they murdered him after we were in custody. That is why I am sitting here today because the police offers to whom we surrendered -- when I came back from my exile and was going to court on those charges. I was facing charges that would give me 82 years in prison. This police officer came to court one day, and the district attorney said, "Eldridge, there is somebody that wants to meet you. Would you mind talking to him?" I said, "well, I will meet anybody, Ben. Bring them on. Who is it?" He said, "it's Lieutenant Hilliard ." I knew his name from the grand jury transcript. This was the guy that we surrendered to. He told me -- he said, "Eldridge, remember that night? Remember when you came out of the building and you looked up and there was a police officer in the window and you had a pistol in your face about three feet from your face?" I said, "I sure do remember that." He said, "you know I was already squeezing the trigger. I was going to blow your head off because three officers had gotten wounded. All that shooting had everybody on edge.

So I was pulling the trigger to blow your head off, and something told me not to do it." I said, "praise the Lord." He said, "praise the Lord." He told me, "I am no longer a police officer." He said, "I have my own private security firm now." He said, "the reason that they have not been rushing you to court is because of my testimony and the testimony of 13 other police officers who were that night who do not agree withwhat the police did in the way they killed Bobby Hutton." He said, "they murdered Bobby. They murdered my prisoner." That's what he said. Then he went on to describe -- he said, "the police have the responsibility of enforcing the law, the guardians of the law. But what they did that night was worse than what you did." He said, "if you are going to court, I am going to testify against you because what you did was wrong. But I'm also going to testify against them because what they did was worse. There is no statute of limitation on . What they did was first degree murder." This is w hat he said.

They just took Bobby and pushed him. They pushed him, and he only went about five feet. He was stumbling and almost falling. They shot him 12 times, man. Murdered him right there on the spot. He fell down.

Reflect: How does hearing his story change how you feel about the party?

Read the following excerpt from “Was Fred Hampton Executed?” written on December 25, 1976 by By Jeff Gottlieb ​ ​ and Jeff Cohen.

In the predawn hours of , 1969, police, under the direction of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, raided the ramshackle headquarters of the local chapter of the Black Panther Party. When the smoke cleared, Chairman Fred Hampton and party member were dead; four others lay seriously wounded. Today in Chicago, seven years after the raid, the facts are slowly emerging, as a civil crawls through its tenth month. The families of Hampton and Clark, along with the seven who survived the foray, have filed a $47.7 million damage suit. , three former and present FBI agents, an ex-FBI informant, and twenty-six other police personnel stand accused of having conspired to violate the civil rights of the Panthers, and then of covering it up. In essence, the plaintiffs and their lawyers are out to prove that the FBI/police conspired to execute Fred Hampton. At 17, Hampton was a black youth on the road to “making it” in white America. He was graduated from high school in Maywood, Ill, with academic honors, three varsity letters, and a Junior Achievement Award. Four years later he was dead. As youth director of the Maywood NAACP, he had built an unusually strong 500-member youth group in a community of 27,000. After his nonviolent, integrationist activities aroused the hostility of Maywood authorities, Hampton moved to Chicago where he organized a local chapter of the Black Panther Party. As Panther chief in Chicago, Hampton built a reputation as a uniter, bringing together the “Rainbow Coalition” of Puerto Rican, white and black poor people, and engineering a tenuous peace among several warring ghetto . His death was a blow to this multiracial united front. Within hours of the raid, the authorities offered their explanation of what had occurred. Chicago Police Sgt. Daniel Groth, who led the fourteen police raiders, said: There must have been six or seven of them firing. The firing must have gone on ten or twelve minutes. If 200 shots were exchanged, that was nothing . It’s a miracle that not one policeman was killed. … At a press conference that day, State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan issued a statement, saying in part: The immediate, violent and criminal reaction of the occupants in shooting at announced police officers emphasizes the extreme viciousness of the Black Panther Party. So does their refusal to cease firing at police officers when urged to do so several times. On December 11, the ran an account drawn from the policemen involved in the , and accompanied by a photograph of the apartment on which circles were drawn around what purported to be holes caused by bullets fired at the police. Hanrahan later had a full-scale model of the apartment constructed so that the participating policemen could re-enact the raid on WBBM-TV, the local CBS affiliate. Each officer acted out his part step by step for the TV cameras as if rehearsing a scene for a SWAT episode in slow . One cop said that as soon as he announced he was a police officer, occupants of the apartment responded with shotgun fire. Two raiders demonstrated how as they approached the front room, they were greeted by a woman who fired a shotgun blast at them as they stood in the doorway. Another cop explained how he had fired through a door and then received return fire, presumably from Mark Clark.

Reflect: How do you feel about what happened to Fred Hampton? What does this say about society today and what the Black Panthers did to affect today?

Read the following article “Bobby Seale (1936 - )” written on February 24th, 2007 by Craig Collisson ​ ​ Reflect: Why do you think that Seale had such a distinct career change, going from engineer to black rights activist?

When Seale ran for mayor of Oakland why did he get the second most votes? What about him might have appealed to Oakland voters?

Watch this excerpt (2:38 - 4:22) from one of Stokely Carmichael speeches on February 17th, 1968 ​ ​ Reflect: Why does Carmichael say “we must first develop an undying love for our people”? What does he hope this will achieve?

What does Carmichael mean by “first our people, then you and I as individuals”? Do you agree with him?

Sexism in the Party

We remember the Black Panther Party as a group of men who were fighting for black rights, but in reality over 60% of the party was made up of women. Very few of these women became public figures, many of them remained as those behind the scenes, while males in the party rose to the top and became household names. In comparison to many other groups fighting for black rights, the BPP was one of the more progressive ones, in the sense that it didn’t encourage sexism and was less oppressive to women. Despite this, it was the mid 1950’s and sexism was a natural and constant occurrence meaning that there was plenty of sexism in the party.

Read the following excerpt “Women in the Black Panther Party” By Ashley Farmer, Mary Phillips, Robyn C. Spencer and Leela Yellesetty in the International Socialist Review.

In February 1970, , communication secretary of the Black Panther Party (BPP), was asked by a reporter from the “women’s page” of what she thought was a woman’s role in the revolution. She responded, in part: “No one ever asks what a man’s place in the Revolution is.” --- The BPP had a stated policy of gender equality from its outset, in stark contrast with many left groups at the time. Assata Shakur stated that she joined the BPP in after coming around other Black nationalist groups whose gender politics bothered her: “The BPP was the most progressive organization at that time [and] had the most positive images in terms of . . . the position of women in the propaganda . . . I felt it was the most positive thing that I could do because many of the other organizations at the time were so sexist, I mean to the extreme . . . There was a whole saturation of the whole climate with this quest for manhood . . . even though that might be oppressive to you as a human being . . . For me joining the BPP was one of the best options at the time.” ---

Sexist attitudes and formulations among party leadership were evidenced perhaps most starkly in the case of Eldridge Cleaver, who joined the party and became minister of information in 1967. Cleaver, a convicted rapist, wrote in his influential book that he considered the rape of white women to be a revolutionary act, and that he “practiced” on Black women to start. While this book was written before he entered the party, he never officially repudiated these views before joining. --- “What I think is distinctive about gender relations within the Black Panther Party is not how those gender relations duplicated what was going on in the world around us. In fact, that world was extremely misogynist and authoritarian. That’s part of what inspired us to fight against it. When women suffered hostility, abuse, neglect, and assault—this was not something arising from the policies or structure of the Black Panther Party, something absent from the world—that’s what was going on in the world. The difference that being in the Black Panther Party made was that it put a woman in a position when such treatment occurred to contest it.” ---

“Women ran the BPP pretty much. I don’t know how it got to be a male’s party or thought of being a male’s party. Because those things, when you really look at it in terms of society, those things are looked on as being woman things, you know, feeding children, taking care of the sick and uh, so. Yeah we did that. We actually ran it.” ---

“I [Ashley Farmer] would describe the gender politics of the Black Panther Party as nuanced and fluid—definitely far more dynamic than many people have given it credit for until recently. Some women found it to be an incredibly sexist organization. Others confirmed that sexism and an emphasis in traditional gender roles existed within the group as it did everywhere and that they didn’t find the BPP to be worse than other organizations. In fact, they appreciated that within the party, members were at least talking about gender roles, sexism, and organizing. Finally, there were women who found that there was very little sexism or emphasis on traditional gender roles. You know, when you’re in the trenches, whether that be serving the community or involved in a shootout with the police, it doesn’t really matter if you’re a man or a women. Folks were just trying to survive and get things done.”

Reflect: Do you think that the party encouraged sexism or the times are to blame for the sexism that women in the BPP experienced?

Why do you think that women were working behind the scenes if the BPP was composed mainly of women? If they had run the BPP do you think that this would have halted or slowed their progress? Why?

Watch “Elaine Brown: Visions in ” (0:03 - 6:19) ​ ​ Reflect: Why do you think that the first thought in people's minds was that Brown had slept with other leaders of the BPP to become chairman of the party?

Final Reflection: How did your thoughts on the Black Panther Party change from the start of the packet to the end?

Do you think that sexism was magnified in the Black Panther Party?

Do you think that the BPP contributed to where we are today, on the topic of black rights?

Women in the Black Panther Party

Women in the BPP Read this article about women in the BPP and answer the questions using what you learned from the article. ​ ​ What percentage of the BPP were women and why was that significant?

What motivated women to join the party and why?

Do you think the benefits from being members of the BPP outweighed the sexism women had to endure?

The Breakfast Program Read this excerpt from “Women in the Black Panther Party: an internal struggle for power, equality, and survival”, written by ​ ​ Robert James Seither, a student at The College of . Scholar Samuel Josephs states that the women had the change of mind that both sexes were complementary yet still vital. Following the trend of increasing intensity and drive, the next group of women to speak out called for full equality. Women like June Culberson passionately proclaimed that women needed ‘“equal footing and equal rank”’ to men of equivalent skill and that they should shed the “Pantherette” moniker for the simple title of “Panther”. Other women expressed that they should be called “comrades” as the male members in the Party. As women rose through the party, they became just as involved mentally and spiritually as men. They performed their roles with passion and were at the forefront of programs to help the community. Most notable were the women’s social activism especially involving Black youth. The party women moved to the streets to promote the ideas of “revolutionary intercommunalism,” which was the application of Marxist ideals of providing for the members of a community in need. Women led the way towards Black Panther survival programs. These programs worked to provide a stable education and support system to the African American children around them. Women organized food drives provided school children with daily nutritious meals. Other breakfast drives fed children before they went to class. The Black Panther women collected and gave away shoes, clothing and coats, as well. On top of these programs, the Panthers founded a daycare called the Child Development Center (CDC) and other centers where hundreds of children, many of them the children of Panther members, received daily educational instruction. Other women did not shy away from serving on the front lines of defense for the party. For example, women like joined their male comrades at the forefront of the armed revolution. Huggins was arrested and jailed alongside Bobby Seale and several other men on charges of torturing and murdering a fellow Panther suspected of informing the FBI.

While there is no denying that the women of the Party performed extremely important and helpful tasks, the female presence began to have a disruptive effect on the inner workings of the group. For instance, the survival program gains were controversial, and for understandable reasons. Supporting African American children and providing a better future for them was a resounding positive impact on the community but it simply was not one of the central goals of the Black Panther Party, which had been established to combat police violence. This was one of the first examples of how female influence shifted the views of the party. In addition, as commendable as the passionate self-sacrifice of women like Erika Huggins were, it again went against a fundamental founding priority of the BPP, which had been established as a means of empowering Black men and restoring their power.

What new ideas did women bring and why do you think it was important that they did so? How do you think their ideas changed the Panthers’ image?

Do you think it was important for there to be new ideas in the BPP?

Elaine Brown Read the article: ‘I have all the guns and money’: When a woman led the Black Panther Party ​ With this position of power, Elaine Brown was able to help other women. Do you think her position was essential to this change?

How do you think it affected Brown that the movement that was so often associated with men?

How do you think women have influenced the BPP?

Angela Davis Watch 1:00 to 5:16 and from 6:22 to the end of this video and answer the questions below. ​ ​ Based on this excerpt, why do you think Davis is part of the party?

What can you garner about who Davis is, given the mention of her book in the video?

Soul on Ice Read these anecdotes from Eldridge Cleaver’s book, Soul on Ice. “‘After a while I asked dear coos in a neutral voice, ‘Have you ever hit a black woman?’ As if his switch had been flipped his eyes lit up and anxious for what in his death he took to be a change of subject. The Lazarus took the bait, the twinkle in his eye turned evil as he leaned across the table and said in a confidential way, ‘I wish I had a nickel for every bitch whose ass I put my foot in. I'd be so rich right now that you lanes would have to put and you request six months in advance just to get to see me let alone sit down at the same table with me.’(page ___)

“‘...for 400 years you have had the fear of the slave master in you, but now it's time for you to know the fear of your own kind”, snorted the accused. And he took a spoonful of beans into his mouth chewing them absently. He resumed talking after a few moments. ‘Black women take kindness for weakness, leave them the least little opening and they will put you on the cross. I hate a black bitch. You can't trust them like white women and if you try to they won't appreciate it and they won't know how to act. It would be like trying to pamper a cobra. Anyway every black woman secretly hates black men. Secretly they all love white men some of them will tell you to your face the others will tell you by the deeds and actions. Haven't you ever noticed that just as soon as a black woman becomes successful she marries a white man? I'm going about what I know. I know one black bitch who always says that there’s nothing a black man could do for her except leave her alone or bring her a message phone or carry a message to a white man. There's no love left between a black man and a black woman.’ (page ___) The BPP was viewed as a traditionally masculine group. Why do you think BPP members felt the need to promote their masculinity?

What do these quotes tell you about how Cleaver viewed his own masculinity?

Considering Cleaver was an important leader in the BPP, how do you think his perception of black masculinity affected how he treated women in the BPP?

Final Reflection Questions: How do you think women left their mark in the BPP?

Why do you think their actions are not as recognized as their male contemporaries? Black Panther Party Programs

Before you begin, jot down some thoughts about how the media portrayed the Black Panther Party from what you already know. Consider Assata Shakur’s experiences, especially with prospective jurors on her trial who had already been influenced by what they saw (about Shakur’s case as well as other Black activists and movements) in the news. Feel free to consider your own preconceived notions about the Black Panther Party.

Note: For the following questions, your answers can be relatively short, about a few sentences each. ​

First, read the 10-Point Platform and Program. Read the bolded lines and examine the text below each ​ ​ bolded line for an explanation of each point.

Based on the list, what are some of the BPP’s demands and core beliefs? Name at least 2 demands and 2 beliefs expressed in the source.

Why do you think the decision was made to include text from the Declaration of Independence at the end of the Ten Point Platform? What kind of a reaction does this cause in the reader? What kind of connections does it urge them to draw?

Read "The Black Panther Party and the Free Breakfast for Children Program" from the African American ​ ​ Intellectual History Society published on February 16, 2016.

How is the Black Panther Party more complex than it’s often portrayed? How does this compare with your views of them prior to reading this article?

The Black Panther Party’s breakfast program was its most successful and well-known “survival program.” What do you think made it so successful? Why was this program so important to Black and oppressed communities?

Melvin Dickson, a former member of the Black Panther Party, claimed that the FBI targeted the breakfast program because it “shed light on the failure of the U.S. government to address issues of poverty.” Do you agree? Do you think this was the main reason the FBI targeted the breakfast program? What other factors could have contributed to the FBI targeting them?

Watch this video by Al Jazeera about the Black Panther Party’s free healthcare program (February 11, ​ ​ 2018). *Watch 00:00-06:50.* ​

Why do you think we choose not to remember the large impact that the Black Panther Party’s free healthcare program had on the U.S. healthcare system and practices? Why are we so inclined to remember them as a group focused on violence?

Through sickle cell testing, free clinics across the country, and bringing Chinese medicine techniques to the U.S., the Black Panther Party had a tremendous impact on its communities and the U.S. healthcare system. However, the narrative we remember is very different, as described in the video. Where else do you see distorted, or false, narratives of history similar to that of the BPP?

Read this description of the Oakland Community Learning Center and look over the attached photos. ​ ​ Then read this piece, written by a teacher at the Learning Center. (Low image quality, but legible if you zoom in.) ​ ​

What does the environment of the OCLC seem to have been like? What kind of space would it have provided (especially compared to the BPP’s other programs)?

Choose a short quote from the second source. How does it describe the OCLC and its relationship to the community around it?

As touched on in many of the above sources, the Black Panther Party was portrayed in a way that gave many people a negative impression of it (J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, called the Black Panthers “the greatest threat to the internal security of the ”), despite not knowing any real information on the Party’s goals. The BPP was shown as an exclusively violent group with aims to upend American society. With this in mind, give a short response to the following reflection questions.

Why is it so hard for us to acknowledge the Black Panther Party both as a group that had programs that benefited their communities and as a group that advocated violent self-defense and used violence as a tactic?

Why do you think the media and the U.S. government were so invested in portraying the BPP as a threatening organization with harmful goals?

The

How can art from different periods of history reflect the political climate? What examples can you think of?

Read this article from the New York Public Library, “Exploring the Literary Within the Movement.” ​ ​ Reflect: In this article it states that the Black Arts movement “was the artistic voice that helped increase political activism ” Do you ​ … think that without this Movement, the would have been as impactful?

Watch 4:08-5:48 of this interview with , a leader of the Black Arts Movement, from 1972 ​ ​ Reflect: What does Baraka say about how art and politics can work together? Do you agree? Why or why not?

Read these excerpts from "The Path Cleared by Amiri Baraka" by Jelani Cobb published on January 15, 2014, by The ​ ​ ​ New Yorker. Long before his death, last week, at the age of seventy-nine, Amiri Baraka attained the status reserved for those whose unruly complexities and contradictions spill beyond the neat categories we prefer for our public figures. Baraka was part trickster and part provocateur, a brilliant juggler of genres, ideas, and identities, whose career spanned nearly six decades. Words like “controversial” and “polarizing” crowded his obituaries, but these terms, while technically accurate, are about as revelatory as calling winter cold. The received wisdom about Baraka in his later years dismissed him as a relic of the sixties, a rage prophet still shouting in an era when the anger had long since dissipated. But to draw this conclusion was to ignore a great deal of evidence to the contrary. -- To an almost embarrassing extent, Baraka’s voice was a template for my early literary efforts. But I was hardly the only one who tried to mimic him. Baraka already occupied a complicated niche in the world of letters; by the late eighties, his early work had come under considerable critique, much of it well founded. Critics rightly damned the masculinist excesses and ambient homophobia of his brand of sixties black-nationalist sexism. In time, Baraka came full circle on these matters, denouncing his missteps, but this, too, was characteristic of the trajectory of his thinking—he didn’t so much evolve from his old positions as ricochet into new ones. -- Baraka was a controversial figure. He was also enigmatic, eccentric, brilliant, and possessed of a fount of indignation at the wrongs of the world as he understood them. To those who shared his reference points, he contained a black-brown diaspora of multitudes. In “In the Tradition,” Baraka writes, “Our fingerprints are everywhere on you, America, our fingerprints are everywhere.” In ways that were apparent to those who cared to recognize it, his were, too.

Reflect: Do you think this article's approach to acknowledging the flaws in Baraka as well as celebrating the good he did is effective? Why or why not?

Can you think of other movements that had similar issues but are still important to history?

Read this excerpt from Poets.org’s "A Brief Guide to the Black Arts Movement." ​ ​ "Sometimes referred to as 'the artistic sister of the Black Power Movement,' the Black Arts Movement stands as the single most controversial moment in the history of African-American literature — possibly in American literature as a whole. Although it fundamentally changed American attitudes both toward the function and meaning of literature as well as the place of ethnic literature in English departments, African-American scholars as prominent as Henry Louis Gates, Jr., have deemed it the 'shortest and least successful' movement in African American cultural history." —"Black Creativity: On the Cutting Edge," Time (Oct. 10, 1994) With roots in the civil rights movement, Malcolm X and the , and the Black Power movement, the Black Arts movement is usually dated from approximately 1960 to 1970. Both the Black Power and Black Arts movements were responses to the turbulent socio-political landscape of the time. As racial inequality prevailed and black leaders such as , Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated, organizations like the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense worked to protect the rights of . On the relationship between the Black Power and Black Arts movements, Larry Neal writes, “Black Art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept. The Black Arts and the Black Power concept both related … broadly to the Afro-American’s desire for self-determination and nationhood.” The artists within the Black Arts movement sought to create politically engaged work that explored the African American cultural and historical experience and transformed the way African Americans were portrayed in literature and the arts.

Reflect: Do you feel like the art created in the Black Arts Movement is a way to visually represent the Black Power Movement?

Read this excerpt from this article, “Black Aesthetic: Envisioning Blackness in American Graphic Design.” Then examine the six graphic art pieces from the Black Arts Movement section. ​ During the late 1960’s and 1970’s, the Black Arts Movement took the Black aesthetic to new heights. Originally started in in 1965 by LeRoi Jones, the Black Arts Movement, (primarily a literary movement), a commune of Black Arts, Black Power, and Afri-Cobra movements, defined a general Black aesthetic that collectively embraced the notion that the Black aesthetic be rooted within the core of Black life. In Gayle Addison’s edited volume, The Black Aesthetic, it is well asserted that the central component to Black artistic endeavors not be nested within “ aesthetic philosophies or aesthetic history, … but in Black History, Black culture, and Black social life.” During the Black Arts Movement, visual communication presented Blacks with the opportunity to embrace their own culture by bringing issues of social, economic, and political conditions to the forefront of American life. Graphic design was used to produce connotations of Blackness–Black as beautiful, creative, militant, and proud. , artist/designer, and minister of culture for the Black Panther party, viewed revolutionary art as the only means of expressing “the correct picture of our struggle.”

Then reflect on those graphic designs: What similarities do you see in the six different pieces?

How are these pieces reflecting the themes of both the Black Arts Movement and the Black Power Movement?

Go to this website, read the introductory paragraphs, and listen to 16:30-22:36 of the interview. ​ ​ Reflect: How are the Last Poets a unique group?

How are music and other forms of art able to inspire change in a way that other methods may not be able to?

How do you think the Black Arts Movement has impacted current politics and artists?

Legislation and Research as a Weapon

Start by setting a four minute timer. In the box below, list what you know about the way that the criminal justice system handles/has handled drug abuse. It is totally okay (and encouraged) to list your assumptions here as well. Continue for the full four minutes.

Read the Mulford Act, taken from the official website of the California State Legislature. ​ ​ This act was published in 1967 and repeals previous California legislation allowing people to carry loaded firearms in public. Reflect: What is the purpose of writing legislation in legal nomenclature? Are there any parts of the Mulford Act that could be misinterpreted?

Watch up to 9:12 in this documentary. This documentary compiles news footage to tell the story of the passing of the ​ ​ Mulford Act. Before starting, read the description under the video. Reflect: In 4-5 sentences summarize what you saw:

Read the excerpt below from this Atlantic article, titled “The Secret History of Guns” written by Adam Winkler. It is ​ only required to read the excerpt below, but we encourage reading the full article because it is interesting. This article ​ discusses the history of gun control in the U.S. especially in the context of the Black Panther Party in California in the 60s. The author, Adam Winkler, is a professor at the UCLA School of Law. He has written many books including, The Battle Over the ​ Right to Bear Arms in America. ​ The Panthers, however, took it to an extreme, carrying their guns in public, displaying them for everyone—especially the police—to see. Newton had discovered, during classes at Law School, that California law allowed people to carry guns in public so long as they were visible, and not pointed at anyone in a threatening way.

In February of 1967, Oakland police officers stopped a car carrying Newton, Seale, and several other Panthers with rifles and handguns. When one officer asked to see one of the guns, Newton refused. “I don’t have to give you anything but my identification, name, and address,” he insisted. This, too, he had learned in law school.

“Who in the hell do you think you are?” an officer responded.

“Who in the hell do you think you are?,” Newton replied indignantly. He told the officer that he and his friends had a legal right to have their firearms.

Newton got out of the car, still holding his rifle.

“What are you going to do with that gun?” asked one of the stunned policemen.

“What are you going to do with your gun?,” Newton replied.

By this time, the scene had drawn a crowd of onlookers. An officer told the bystanders to on, but Newton shouted at them to stay. California law, he yelled, gave civilians a right to observe a police officer making an arrest, so long as they didn’t interfere. Newton played it up for the crowd. In a loud voice, he told the police officers, “If you try to shoot at me or if you try to take this gun, I’m going to shoot back at you, swine.” Although normally a black man with Newton’s attitude would quickly find himself handcuffed in the back of a police car, enough people had gathered on the street to discourage the officers from doing anything rash. Because they hadn’t committed any crime, the Panthers were allowed to go on their way.

The people who’d witnessed the scene were dumbstruck. Not even Bobby Seale could believe it. Right then, he said, he knew that Newton was the “baddest motherfucker in the world.” Newton’s message was clear: “The gun is where it’s at and about and in.” After the February incident, the Panthers began a regular practice of policing the police. Thanks to an army of new recruits inspired to join up when they heard about Newton’s bravado, groups of armed Panthers would drive around following police cars. When the police stopped a black person, the Panthers would stand off to the side and shout out legal advice.

Don Mulford, a conservative Republican state assemblyman from Alameda County, which includes Oakland, was determined to end the Panthers’ police patrols. To disarm the Panthers, he proposed a law that would prohibit the carrying of a loaded weapon in any California city. When Newton found out about this, he told Seale, “You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to the Capitol.” Seale was incredulous. “The Capitol?” Newton explained: “Mulford’s there, and they’re trying to pass a law against our guns, and we’re going to the Capitol steps.” Newton’s plan was to take a select group of Panthers “loaded down to the gills,” to send a message to California lawmakers about the group’s opposition to any new gun control. The Panthers’ methods provoked an immediate backlash. The day of their statehouse protest, lawmakers said the incident would speed enactment of Mulford’s gun-control proposal. Mulford himself pledged to make his bill even tougher, and he added a provision barring anyone but law enforcement from bringing a loaded firearm into the state capitol.

Republicans in California eagerly supported increased gun control. Governor Reagan told reporters that afternoon that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.” He called guns a “ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will.” In a later press conference, Reagan said he didn’t “know of any sportsman who leaves his home with a gun to go out into the field to hunt or for target shooting who carries that gun loaded.” The Mulford Act, he said, “would work no hardship on the honest citizen.”

The fear inspired by black people with guns also led the to consider new gun restrictions, after the summer of 1967 brought what the historian Harvard Sitkoff called the “most intense and destructive wave of racial violence the nation had ever witnessed.” Devastating riots engulfed Detroit and Newark. Police and National Guardsmen who tried to help restore order were greeted with sniper fire.

A 1968 federal report blamed the unrest at least partly on the easy availability of guns. Because rioters used guns to keep law enforcement at bay, the report’s authors asserted that a recent spike in firearms sales and permit applications was “directly related to the actuality and prospect of civil disorders.” They drew “the firm conclusion that effective firearms controls are an essential contribution to domestic peace and tranquility.”

Political will in Congress reached the critical point around this time. In April of 1968, James Earl Ray, a virulent racist, used a Remington Gamemaster deer rifle to kill Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. King’s assassination—and the sniper fire faced by police trying to quell the resulting riots—gave gun-control advocates a vivid argument. Two months later, a man wielding a .22-caliber Iver Johnson Cadet revolver shot Robert F. Kennedy in . The very next day, Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, the first federal gun-control law in 30 years. Months later, the Gun Control Act of 1968 amended and enlarged it.

Together, these laws greatly expanded the federal licensing system for gun dealers and clarified which people—including anyone previously convicted of a , the mentally ill, illegal-drug users, and minors—were not allowed to own firearms. More controversially, the laws restricted importation of “Saturday Night Specials”—the small, cheap, poor-quality handguns so named by Detroit police for their association with urban crime, which spiked on weekends. Because these inexpensive pistols were popular in minority communities, one critic said the new federal gun legislation “was passed not to control guns but to control blacks.”

Reflect: What (if anything) surprised? Why do you think it surprised you? If you didn’t find anything surprising why do you think that is?

Finally, based on the information included here, write a short paragraph with your thoughts on how the War on Drugs and gun legislation has had an effect on racial disparities in the United States today. Explicitly mention at least 3 sources in your response.

Watch this excerpt from America’s War on Drugs episode 2, which aired on the History channel in 2017. The excerpt ​ of the documentary can be viewed at this link. ​ ​ This four part documentary series is intended to provide a comprehensive view of the origins of the War on Drugs in the United States. Each episode is devoted to a different subcategory of illicit drugs. The primary focus of episode 2 is the trade between South America and the United States, usually through either the border between California and Mexico or sea/air trade into Florida. This particular excerpt provides a view of one of the national organizations devoted to production of coca plants, which are used to make cocaine. In particular, it shows how the organization was formed. Reflect: Choose one moment from the documentary and note it here. Explain why it stood out to you.

Read this excerpt from the ACLU article published in 2006 entitled “Cracks in the System: Twenty Years of the Unjust ​ Federal Law”. ​ For context, this is an informational packet created with the intent to provide an ethical and legal argument for changing the sentencing laws for crack cocaine in the United States. While it cites a lot of non-politicized sources, the article itself does push the agenda of the ACLU. [Len Bias--a college basketball star and recent Celtics draft pick]’s death sparked a national media frenzy largely focused on the drug that was suspected, mistakenly, of killing him – crack cocaine. A few weeks after Bias’ death, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, establishing for the first time mandatory minimum sentences triggered by specific quantities of cocaine. Congress also established much tougher sentences for crack cocaine offenses than for powder cocaine cases. For example, distribution of just 5 grams of crack carries a minimum 5-year federal prison sentence, while for powder cocaine, distribution of 500 grams – 100 times the amount of crack cocaine – carries the same sentence. October 2006 marks the twentieth anniversary of this law. In the twenty years since its passage, many of the myths surrounding crack cocaine have been dispelled, as it has become clear that there is no scientific or penological justification for the 100:1 ratio. The United States Sentencing Commission, created by Congress in 1984 to develop fair federal sentencing guidelines, concluded that crack is not appreciably different from powder cocaine in either its chemical composition or the physical reactions of its users. Accordingly, on three separate occasions, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has urged Congress to reconsider the statutory penalties for crack cocaine. Judges, commentators, federal prosecutors, medical professionals, and other experts have all concurred with this assessment.

… Because of its relative low cost, crack cocaine is more accessible for poor Americans, many of whom are African Americans. Conversely, powder cocaine is much more expensive and tends to be used by more affluent white Americans. Nationwide statistics compiled by the Sentencing Commission reveal that African Americans are more likely to be convicted of crack cocaine offenses, while whites are more likely to be convicted of powder cocaine offenses. Thus, the sentencing disparities punishing crack cocaine offenses more harshly than powder cocaine offenses unjustly and disproportionately penalize African American defendants for drug trafficking comparable to that of white defendants. Compounding the problem is the fact that whites are disproportionately less likely to be prosecuted for drug offenses in the first place; when prosecuted, are more likely to be acquitted; and even if convicted, are much less likely to be sent to prison. Recent data indicates that African Americans make up 15% of the country’s drug users, yet they comprise 37% of those arrested for drug violations, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of those sentenced to prison for a drug offense. Specifically with regard to crack, more than 80% of the defendants sentenced for crack offenses are African American, despite the fact that more than 66% of crack users are white or Hispanic.

… Indeed, if Congress wanted to send a message by enacting mandatory minimums that the Department of Justice should be more focused on high-level cocaine traffickers, Congress missed the mark. Instead of targeting large-scale traffickers, the law established low-level drug quantities to trigger lengthy mandatory minimum prison terms. The Sentencing Commission reports that only 15% of federal cocaine traffickers can be classified as high-level, while over 70% of crack defendants have low-level involvement in drug activity, such as street level dealers, couriers, or lookouts. Consider the following: A supplier sells 450 grams of powder cocaine to a middleman who cuts it and sells smaller ounce quantities of this powder to several street dealers. One of the street dealers mixes a small amount of this powder cocaine with baking soda, cooks it, and produces a 5.1 gram rock of crack. If the street dealer gets arrested and charged federally, he or she faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. Even if the drug supplier in this example were caught, he or she would not be subject to the same 5-year sentence as the street dealer since the supplier only had 450 grams of powder cocaine, not the 500 grams necessary to trigger the same sentence.

Reflect: What, if anything, surprises you about the information here? Does it contradict any of your baseline assumptions about the War on Drugs? If so, how?

Read the following excerpt from this source on mandatory minimums from the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. ​ ​ Mandatory minimum sentencing laws force a judge to hand down a minimum prison sentence based on the charges a prosecutor brings against a defendant which result in a -- usually a guilty plea. Many states have such laws. These laws take away from a judge the traditional and proper authority to account for the actual circumstances of the crime and the characteristics of the individual defendant when imposing a sentence.

… The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 also required a minimum sentence of 5 years for drug offenses that involved 5 grams of ​ ​ ​ ​ crack, 500 grams of cocaine, 1 kilogram of heroin, 40 grams of a substance with a detectable amount of fentanyl, 5 grams of methamphetamine, 100 kilograms or 100 plants of marijuana, and other drugs (21 U.S.C. 841(b)(1)(B), P.L. 99-570). That law also required a minimum sentence of 10 years for drug offenses that involved 50 grams of crack, 5 kilograms of ​ ​ ​ cocaine, 1 kilogram of heroin, 400 grams of a substance with a detectable amount of fentanyl, 50 grams of methamphetamine, 1000 kilograms or 1000 plants of marijuana, and other drugs. In essence, Congress abandoned the idea that Federal judges -- appointed by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate -- have the wisdom and training to identify the most serious drug offenders and punish them appropriately.

… Mandatory sentences have the effect of transferring sentencing power from judges to prosecutors. Prosecutors frequently threaten to bring charges carrying long mandatory minimum sentences and longer guidelines sentences. These threats are effective in scaring a defendant to plead guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence and to give up every factual and legal basis for a defense. As a result, every year at least 95 percent of federal drug defendants plead guilty.

… The elimination of judicial discretion in sentencing has allowed prosecutors to acquire excessive power to impose sentences. Defendants who plan to assert a legal defense (guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution) are threatened by prosecutors that they will inform the court that the defendants are failing to "take responsibility." A finding of failing to take responsibility results in longer sentences. On the other hand, prosecutors negotiate more generously with defendants who can reveal information about other defendants or the location of the hidden proceeds of the crimes. Higher-level offenders with greater knowledge of the details of a criminal organization have the power to manipulate the system by trading what they know for a shorter sentence in contrast to lower-level offenders who have no such knowledge.

… Excessively long sentences are not only unjust but extremely expensive and wasteful. In FY 2015, the average cost of incarceration of a federal prisoner was just under $32,000. The federal prison budget has risen from less than $3.7 billion in 2000 and less than $5 billion in 2006 to about $7 billion in 2017. This exceeds the $5.5 billion allocated by the federal government to care for all the homeless people in the U.S. (It was estimated that on a January night in 2014 there were more than half a million homeless people in America's shelters and streets.)

Reflect: Imagine that you’re a representative in Congress in 1986. Formulate two arguments in support of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Next, switch your viewpoint and write down two talking points against the bill. List them here:

Which side is it easier to argue for? Why do you think that is the case?

Abuse of the Criminal Justice System

What do you think the goal of the criminal justice system should be? Do you think that it accomplishes that goal?

Read this article by Lamont Lilly, “ hero , presente!” about Afeni Shakur, a member of the ​ ​ Black Panther Party who was falsely charged with conspiracy along with 20 other members of the Black Panther Party in 1969, then respond to the questions below. Reflect: How was the criminal justice system used against these members of the Black Panther Party?

What reasoning does the article give for the targeting of the Black Panther Party?

Excerpt from Assata: An Autobiography, a book written by Assata Shakur (pg. 245). Shakur is a black revolutionary, ​ ​ once part of the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, and an all-around activist. Police enforcement agencies branded her as a figurehead for the Black Liberation Army, and framed her for murder and bank . After escaping prison, she fled to , where she still lives today. She is currently one of the most wanted women by the FBI. “We were in dire need of experts. We needed to find a ballistics expert and a forensic chemist, among others, to refute the state's charges. We were also in desperate need of an investigator to locate some of the doctors who had treated me while i was hospitalized and other potential witnesses. We fought and harped on this point until finally the judge, Theodore Appleby, issued an order that the state pay for the experts. But once we got the order, we found that we were in the same position that we started from. Without exception, everybody that we went to for help turned us down. The types of experts we needed almost always are police or are working for police agencies. Because my case involved the murder of a police officer, none of them would touch the case. The most crucial part of the prosecutor's case was the "scientific testimony" alleging that i had huge amounts of the dead state trooper's blood on me. We wanted someone who knew what they were doing to go over every inch of those clothes, to check out what was on them and also to check out what had been done to them. But we could not find one forensic chemist to work for us, let alone testify for us. If they had, they would never again have been able to work in peace for any police agency. People never hear about this side of a trial. But there is no place a defendant in a criminal trial can go to find "experts" in sciences commonly known as "police sciences." The police can virtually write up a report saying anything they want, and there is no way of refuting it. And there have been cases where "experts" have been double agents: working for a defendant while secretly working with the prosecutor.” (245)

Reflect: In what ways was Assata Shakur prevented from having a fair trial?

What made it hard for Shakur to fight back against the criminal justice system?

Elmer G. Pratt, more commonly known as Geronimo ji-Jagam or , was a leader of the Black Panther Party who was convicted of murder, despite a misuse and lack of real evidence. Read this article, titled “Elmer G. ​ ​ Pratt, Jailed Panther Leader, Dies at 63,” written by Douglas Martin, and respond to the question below. Reflect: How was Pratt’s imprisonment related to his role in the Black Panther Party?

Albert Woodfox was a prisoner at the Angola State Penitentiary. In 1974, he, alongside Herman Wallace, a fellow politically active inmate, were accused of murdering a prison guard. They were thrown into solitary confinement with another (again politically conscious) prisoner named . They became known as the . Woodfox lived in solitary for nearly 44 years before his ultimate release in 2017. Watch this video on Albert Woodfox ​ ​ of the Angola Three, and answer the question below. Reflect: How was solitary confinement used as a political weapon against Woodfox?

Read this article by Elizabeth Hines, entitled “Wilmington Ten,” discussing the Wilmington Ten, a group of civil rights ​ ​ activists that rioted over school desegregation, and respond to the question below. Reflect: What do you see as a possible political motivator for false imprisonment in the case of the Wilmington Ten?

Excerpt from a speech by Assata Shakur, taken from her book, Assata: An Autobiography (pg. 167). ​ ​ “I do not think that it's just an accident that we are on trial here. This case is just another example of what has been going on in this country. Throughout amerika's history, people have been imprisoned because of their political beliefs and charged with criminal acts in order to justify that imprisonment. Those who dared to speak out against the injustices in this country, both Black and white, have paid dearly for their courage, sometimes with their lives. , Stokely Carmichael, , the Rosenbergs, and Lolita Lebron were all charged with crimes because of their political beliefs. Martin Luther King went to jail countless times for leading nonviolent demonstrations. Why, you are probably asking yourself, would this government want to put me or Ronald Myers in jail? In my mind, the answer to that is very simple: for the same reason that this government has put everyone else in jail who spoke up for freedom, who said give me liberty or give me death.” (167)

Reflect: How does Assata’s explanation for the imprisonment of these political leaders match up with what you’ve read in the above sources?

Final Reflection Questions What are some of the methods that were used in the criminal justice system to target movement leaders?

How was the criminal justice system abused to suppress movements?

Reflecting on your original answer, how do you think the criminal justice system is actually used? Does this match up with your original thoughts about the goal of the CJS?

COINTELPRO and National Security COINTELPRO was a government program run by the FBI from 1956-1971 that aimed to take down far-left groups and civil rights organizations. Later, it also targeted the Ku Klux Klan. COINTELPRO was led by J. Edgar Hoover. It utilized overly intrusive and invasive tactics that were later deemed unconstitutional and denounced by the government.

How much do you believe the government should be intervening in people’s personal lives and information for the sake of national security or under that guise? Some examples of government intervention for security include wiretapping (listening to people’s phone calls), opening people’s mail, or going undercover into an organization. Examples of threats to national security include terrorism, extermist groups threatening violence, or threats to specific government leaders.

Please listen to this NPR radio piece on the history of COINTELPRO. ​ ​ What does it seem that J. Edgar Hoover’s motive was for COINTELPRO?

What was the scope of COINTELPRO? How many people actually knew what was occurring?

What is FISA? How does it relate to COINTELPRO?

Next, read this article by the Washington Post on the assassination of Fred Hampton. ​ ​ Why was Fred Hampton viewed as a threat? Do you believe that threat was credible? Why or why not? Please use one quote from the article when answering.

What were the consequences of the assassination of Fred Hampton? What impact has Fred Hampton had not only on Chicago, but on the US as a whole?

Now, read this article by the Union on Michael “Eddie” Conway and his false conviction. ​ ​ What was Conway doing prior to his arrest and conviction? Do you think that had any bearing on his arrest?

If the government can manufacture evidence and frame you for holding it accountable, what impact do you think that knowledge might have on dissenters? Does free speech exist in a society that can punish you for speaking out against it?

Please watch this New York Times video on YouTube concerning the heist that exposed key COINTELPRO ​ ​ ​ ​ documents and resistance to the program.

Do you think this was the only way to prove to the public what the FBI was doing?

What did the Raine’s family risk by breaking in? Why do you think this chance was still worth it to them?

Please take notes below on some ways in which COINTELPRO connects to issues that have occured in more recent times: ● ● ●

Please read this article by People’s World on the similarities between COINTELPRO and the Patriot Act ​ ​ and the ethics of government surveillance.

How has the defense of national security been used to justify inavise government surveillance? Please provide one quote.

Do you think government surveillance is justified in any situation? Why or why not?

In both the case of COINTELPRO and the Patriot Act, details about these programs were obtained illegally. Do you think this information was too important not to be shared despite how it was obtained? Why or why not?

Now, after learning more about COINTELPRO, do you think the government overstepped its bounds with the program? Did your opinion change on how much the government should be intervening in people’s personal lives and information for the sake of national security?

The Black Liberation Army

The Black Liberation Army, or BLA, was an armed resistance group whose members were also part of the Black Panthers. One of the BLA’s leaders, Assata Shakur, said, “There is and always will be, until every Black man, woman and child is FREE, a Black Liberation Army.”

This is an overview of the Black Liberation Army. Please read until you feel ready to answer the ​ questions. To watch an optional video, click here. ​ ​ Would the groups murder African American police officers?

What attacks did the groups execute?

If you were alive at this time, would you have protested peacefully or violently? Why?

Read this article from Politico. ​ ​ What were most members armed with, how did they get the upper hand during the attacks? How did this affect the movement?

What made these people want to fight back against cops? What do you consider “fighting back” against oppressive systems?

What did ex Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver say about the attack on the bridge? ​

These two sources are both documents created by the BLA as a message to various groups. Read through them and pay attention to the main points of the communiques and the tone. ● Communique #1 ● Communique #2

How would you summarize the main points of the two communiques that you read?

What surprised you the most about the two communiques that you read?

Four years after the BLA was founded, and after the majority of their attacks, they sent this ​ communique reflecting on how things had gone so far. Read through it carefully. ​ What circumstances described in this message might be different if the BLA was active today?

How do you think the tone of this message is different from the two sources that you read above?

Finally, choose a quote from one of these sources that you find especially compelling and add it to this group document. Next to your quote, explain why you chose it. ​

Intersectionality within the Women’s Suffrage Movement and the Feminist Movement

The women’s suffrage movement, and the subsequent feminist movement, are often thought of as single entities. However, through their various iterations throughout the 1900s and up until today, racism has segregated these movements, and the fact that the women’s suffrage movement and the feminist movement were almost exclusively led by white women, and were internally racist, has sometimes inspired black communities to initiate movements that intentionally distanced themselves from the label of “feminism,” while still supporting similar goals.

First, read this short article, intended to give context to the instances of found within the ​ ​ women’s suffrage movement. Why do you think the women’s suffrage was so intentionally exclusive?

How did the women’s suffrage movement’s exclusivity add to the perception that suffrage (and later, feminism) is a “white woman’s issue”, in spite of very vocal black suffragists like Mary Church Terrel? How did these come to be viewed as separate issues?

Read this NPR article about Ida B. Wells in the women's suffrage movement. ​ ​ How do Ida B. Wells’ actions tie into modern feminism today?

Read this article detailing the lives of many women who were activists during the Civil Rights Movement. ​ ​ Why would women be given less credit and treated worse while doing the same kinds of activism and protest work as the men, who were heralded as “heroes”?

Why would someone like , who led the movement so strongly in Nashville for so long, be so quickly pushed out in favor of a male activist, even someone with less public favor? In what ways do you think this has influenced how these activists are remembered and taught about, and how do you think it affects our perception of these movements?

Read this excerpt about the history of black feminism. ​ ​ Why were some black women dissuaded from identifying as feminists? What were some of the actions taken by black women in response?

Read this excerpt from “Struggling to Connect” by Winifred Breines, and then read this excerpt from the ​ ​ ​ ​ memoirs of Casey Hayden and Mary King, two white female activists and political scientists who worked closely with Black Civil Rights activists in order to gain a better understanding of and empathy for the movement. Why do you think many people in the Civil Rights Movement viewed feminism as “pedantic” even though it was an issue they themselves faced?

During the Black power movement, many black feminists refused to call themselves by the “feminist” label. Do you see this decision continuing today? If so, how?

Listen to this radio story from 7:12 up until the ad break (15:47) ​ ​ Why would mainstream feminism focus on upper class white women, if the goal was to liberate all women from oppression?

Kendall talks about what her grandmother told her about the “dreams of slaves.” How might black feminism be based on this legacy, based off of what we have read about it?

With all of this context in mind, here are some reflection questions about your personal experiences with feminism: Have you been in spaces where your identities (such as your gender identity, race, religion, ethnicity, sexuality) aren't completely represented or understood?

How have you seen black feminism in your life?

What do you think could be done to make feminism more inclusive, and what would prevent this?

Pan-Africanism Inside and Outside of the United States

Pan means “all”. 1. What do you think the term “Pan Africanism” means?

2. Remembering back to what we learned earlier in the year, what caused the lack of unity between enslaved people during slavery in the U.S?

First, read an article from PADEAP, Pan African Development Education and Advocacy Program. ​ ​ Disclaimer: This article might be slightly biased considering it was written by an organization ​ supporting Pan Africanism. 1. What were the origins of Pan Africanism ideology?

2. What do you think the creators of Pan Africanism ideology originally thought the benefits to pan africanism were?

Next, read an excerpt from an article speaking of the history of Pan Africanism, here. ​ ​ By the 1920s, Pan-Africanism represented an ideology with multiple currents. Along with Garvey and the UNIA, several others pursued Pan-African liberation. The African Blood Brotherhood was an extremely small organization by comparison, never reaching more than a few thousand members. Its members, especially its founder Cyril Briggs (from the small Leeward Island of Nevis), the Barbadian orator Richard B. Moore, and the African-American social worker and clubwoman Grace Campbell, articulated a Pan-African politics that sought to link African liberation, national independence in the Caribbean, and anti-racist struggles in the United States with proletarian revolution for . Many ABB members became the first black members of the American Communist Party and pursued their Pan-African vision within the institutions of the Moscow-based Communist International, where they met and built ties with Francophone black radicals in , as well as West African activists. The most enduring representation of early-twentieth-century Pan-Africanism came in the Pan-African congresses. W. E. B. Du Bois, the renowned scholar and intellectual who headed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s publicity department, where he edited its magazine The Crisis, had been a member of Crummell’s American Negro Academy and participated in the 1900 Pan-African Conference in London. The approaching Paris Peace Conference would decide the future of Germany’s African colonies. Du Bois called for the Pan-African Congress to meet in Paris, and it was convened February 19–21, 1919, at the Grand Hôtel. Presided over by Blaise Diagne of Senegal and Du Bois, it attracted delegates from throughout the , though no representatives came from the British West Indies, and hardly any were present from West Africa. White representatives from , Belgium, and defended their countries’ colonial policies, while the U.S. representative William Walling (an NAACP co founder) argued that changes to American racial policies were on the horizon. Indeed, the resolution adopted at the congress tended more toward moderation and gradual reform than anything approximating a demand for immediate independence. The resolution called on the proposed League of Nations to establish rules and codes for governing African colonial subjects and outlined a series of guidelines for governing Africans and peoples of African descent. Du Bois seemed to recognize the problems that attended the first Pan-African Congress, especially the lack of voice from Africans themselves. In planning the second congress, he expressed a desire to “have a strong representation of the West Africans.” The second congress met in London, August 27–29, 1921, and in Brussels and Paris from August 31 to September 2, 1921. Importantly, a third of its participants came from Africa, though only seven of the 113 were from the Caribbean. The congress’s resolution came out more forcefully for self-government in Africa, the return of expropriated lands, the development of the masses, and for race leaders to align themselves more closely to black workers rather than white capitalists. This congress also established a second Pan-African Association, which Du Bois controlled. This PAA fared little better than its first iteration, but it did allow Du Bois to stave off the deep schisms that began to develop between the Anglophone and Francophone participants. In 1923 Du Bois was able to convene a third PAC in London and Lisbon, Portugal. The fourth PAC, organized by the Women’s International Circle for Peace and Foreign Relations (a black women’s club in New York led by Addie W. Hunton, Nina Du Bois, and Minnie Pickens,) met in 1927. It was originally to meet in Tunisia or the Caribbean, but when the French and British governments blocked the congress, it was moved to . At the New York congress, former African Blood Brothers Richard B. Moore and Otto Huiswoud pushed the adoption of a resolution supporting black workers and calling for Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian liberation, and urging Caribbean national liberation and federation. Moore and Huiswoud soon emerged at the forefront of an effort among black radicals in the communist movement to build an international organization with African diasporic radicals from the Caribbean and Africa. The Trinidadian George Padmore had joined the American Communist Party while a student at Howard University in 1927. Rising rapidly within the party, he found himself in 1930 in Hamburg, Germany, heading the Communist International’s Negro Bureau and leading the newly formed International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW). The ITUCNW organized black maritime workers in Europe, who helped circulate the organization’s journal, The Negro Worker.

Final Reflection Questions 1. What do you think unity could mean for oppressed groups?

2. What are the benefits of unity for a group as large as this? What are the drawbacks?

3. Finally, do you think Pan Africanism would be as accepted and widespread, today, as it was when the idea was created and proposed? Why or why not?

The Black Panther Party and Solidarity Movements

What are the ways in which different groups have come together to fight for the same cause?

Excerpt from “Los Siete de la Raza, the Black Panther Party, and Solidarity between the African-American and ​ Latina/o Communities” by Theo Shaw originally published May 15, 2018, on Medium., ​ ​ On Friday, April 27, I attended Seattle’s Black Panther Party (“BPP”) anniversary events at Washington Hall. I was particularly moved by the courageous man on the panel titled “The Angola 3 and Political Prisoners.” Albert Woodfox, a Black Panther and , reminded us that “individuals create chaos, movements create change.” Mr. Woodfox spent four and a half decades in solitary confinement in Angola Prison, a prison and former slave plantation in . Robert King, who spent twenty-nine years in solitary in the same Louisiana prison, remarked that “we want to attack the legality of immortality; not just people who have been politicized — all victims of this political system.” Addressing the dehumanization of the American prison system, Mr. King went on to say that “just because it is legal does not mean it is moral.” During their imprisonment, both men became mesmerized by the message of the Black Panther Party. It was Fred Hampton, a revolutionary Black Panther Party member, who brilliantly remarked that “we’re going to fight racism with solidarity.” -- Solidarity was one of the defining characteristics of the Black Panther Party. The Panthers made significant efforts to express solidarity with the Chicano struggle, as reported in In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a ​ Revolutionary. Once such instance was the case of Los Siete de la Raza. Los Siete was a group of young Latinos, from the ​ mainly Latino Mission District of San Francisco, who were framed for the murder of a policeman in May of 1969. Los Siete developed a close working relationship with the BPP and organizations in the Puerto Rican and Chicano movements. The Panthers declared support for the group, calling them revolutionary heroes” who will “always be welcome in our camp.” -- The Panthers declared unequivocally that “the Black Panther Party stands in support of Los Siete de La Raza and in firm solidarity with the Latin community.” In American, there are many systematic barriers affecting both the African-American and Latina/o community. In this piece, I will explore the Los Siete and solidarity with the BPP and examine the current social barriers in affecting both groups today. I aim to show that there are many benefits to both groups working together in search for justice and power. As Ericka Huggins, human rights activist, Black Panther leader, and former political prisoner explains, “we can form alliances across formations and identities; we can rest in unity.”

Reflect: What are the specific ways in which the BPP created solidarity with other movements?

Excerpt from “Zapantera Negra” by Marc James Leger, published February 24, 2017. ​ What is the role of revolutionary art in times of distress? When Emory Douglas, former Minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party, accepted an invitation from the art collective EDELO and the Rigo 23 to meet with autonomous and Indigenous and Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico, they addressed just this question. Zapantera Negra is the result of their encounter. It unites the bold aesthetics, ​ revolutionary dreams, and dignified declarations of two leading movements that redefine emancipatory politics in the twentieth and twenty-first century.

The artists of the Black Panthers and the Zapatistas were born into a centuries-long struggle against racial capitalism and colonialism, domestic repression and international war and plunder. Not only did these two movements offer the world an enduring image of freedom and dignified rebellion, they did so with signature style, putting culture and aesthetics at the forefront of political life. A powerful elixir of hope and determination, Zapantera Negra provides an electrifying presentation ​ ​ of interviews, militant artwork, and original documents from these two movements’ struggle for dignity and liberation. How does the cover artwork pictured above represent the merging of both the Zapatistas and the Black Panther Party?

From “Show your Solidarity with the Indian Nations,” poster from Wounded Knee occupation” from AIM, published ​ 1973. List the tactics from the poster here

1. Organize local demonstrations and vigils to draw attention to the situation of native Americans 2. Send Money to: American Indian Movement 3. Go to Wounded Knee now 4. Write and wire your congress.

Have you encountered these tactics before? Can you think of other tactics that are often presented alongside these tactics?

Read this excerpt from the article ““Concrete Analysis of Concrete Conditions”: A Study of the Relationship between ​ the Black Panther Party and Maoism” ​ Black Panther Party, Maoism, and Anti-imperialism The Black Panther Party’s acceptance of Maoism was closely related to the anti-imperialist characteristics of Maoist thought. Prior to the founding of the Black Panther Party, the civil rights activists had recognized their own work as part of a global movement against imperialism. According to Sellers, by the beginning of 1967 the majority of SNCC’s members had already considered themselves “part of an emerging Third World coalition of who were anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and antiracist.” Not until the rise of the later phase of the Black Power movement did the word “revolutionary” come into use in the Civil Rights Movement. The black “revolutionaries” were particularly interested in the works of the Third World revolutionaries: ’s The Wretched of the Earth, ’s Guerrilla Warfare, and ​ ​ ​ ​ Chairman Mao’s writings were all closely read and studied. In these works, the black revolutionaries discovered a shared destiny of suffering from exploitation by an imperialist class system. On April 16th, 1968, days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Chairman made a famous speech entitled “A New Storm Against Imperialism.” Mao’s solid anti-imperialist perspective and charismatic revolutionary tone appeared to be highly fascinating to the black revolutionaries. In the speech, Mao claimed that the Afro-American struggle was “not only a struggle waged by the exploited and oppressed Black people for freedom and emancipation, it is also a new clarion call to all the exploited and oppressed people of the United States to fight against the barbarous rule of the monopoly capitalist class. It is a tremendous aid and inspiration to the struggle of the people throughout the world against U.S. imperialism and to the struggle of the Vietnamese people against U.S. imperialism.” Considering the actions of against being drafted for Vietnam, we can better understand why the ideas and revolutionary calls of Mao appeared to be so appealing to the black revolutionaries. The black revolutionaries were fighting against the established social institutions of white America, and the revolutionaries, including Chairman Mao, were fighting and condemning the imperialism of the United States. They were both targeting the same object—the U.S. capitalist, imperialist system. Sharing this same target of “revolution”, the black revolutionaries found the ideas of Chairman Mao extremely attractive to them.

Black Panther Party, Maoism, and Intercommunalism “Intercommunalism” was a term created by the Black Panthers that recognized a contradiction between “the small circle that administers and profits from the empire of the United States and the peoples of the world who want to determine their own destinies.” In a speech in February 1971, Huey Newton outlined the evolution of the revolutionaries from “black nationalists” to “revolutionary nationalists,” then to “internationalists,” and finally to advocates and fighters for “revolutionary intercommunalism.” In every stage of this evolution, said Newton, the revolutionaries encountered new problems in new conditions: When the revolutionaries still considered themselves “black nationalists,” they found that the small number of people in the nation of Black Americans was a barrier for them to become a dominant force to gain power. Therefore, they turned into “revolutionary nationalists” and joined with the world-wide struggle movements for decolonization and nationhood. Later, these “revolutionary nationalists” again changed their self-definitions into “internationalists” in recognition of their own concern with the other people in the world and those people’s hope for social and economic revolutions. Eventually, the “internationalists” discovered the problem of Black American struggles: the United States was “no longer a nation,” so that the black people’s problem could not be solved in a “national” way; instead, it should be approached from units of society as “communities.” According to Newton, a community was a “small unit with a comprehensive collection of institutions that exists to serve a small group of people,” and communities all over the world were connected together in either reactionary or revolutionary ways. The Panthers finally landed on the theory of intercommunalism, a great breakthrough from the pure in the beginning. This theoretical innovation was clearly marked by the influence of Maoist internationalism. The Panthers recognized ’s internationalist effort in generously aiding the Third World countries in Africa. This Maoist international spirit greatly inspired people like Huey Newton, who quoted Chairman Mao’s internationalist statement in front of his narration of his trip to China. However, the breakthrough from internationalism to intercommunalism, which looked like a deviation from Mao’s thought, was also a product of Maoist influence. The answer is Mao’s philosophy, which Newton called the “dialectical materialist method.”

After completing the Venn diagram above, do you think the Red Guard was more like the Black Panther Party or different?

The Black Panther Party and : Allyship with Cuba and the Red Guard ​

To understand the Black Panther Party’s political ideology, it’s important first to understand the Black Panther Party ​ 10-Point Program, which had 10 Points: ​ 1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black community. 2 . We want full employment for our people. 3 We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black community. 4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings. 5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. 6. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society. 6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service. 7. We want an immediate end to pólice brutality and murder of black people. 8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails. 9. 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. 10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace, and as out major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate, for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

WHITE PANTHER PARTY 10-POINT PROGRAM 1. Full endorsement and support of Black Panther Party's 10-Point Program. 2. Total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock and roll dope, and fucking in the streets; 3. Free exchange of energy and materials -- we demand the end of money; 4. Free food, clothes, housing, dope, music, bodies, medical care - everything! free for everybody; 5. Free access to Information media - free the technology from the greed creeps! 6. Free time & space for all humans - dissolve all unnatural boundaries; 7. Free all schools and all structures from corporate rule - turn the buildings over to the people at once! 8. Free all prisoners everywhere -- they are our brothers; 9. Free all soldiers at once -- no more conscripted armies; 10. Free the people from their "leaders" - leaders suck - all power to all the people -- freedom means free everyone! xx xx xxxx xxxx Our program is cultural revolution through a total assault on the culture which makes use of every tooi, every energy and every media we can get our collective hands on. We take our program with us everywhere we go and use any means necessary to exposé people to it. , Minister of Information We take as our héroes, those that we have been told to hate and to fear; Eldridge Cleaver, Rap Brown, Fidel. The Red Guard are our Brothers, and Black Panthers are our Brothers, we join with them in the liberation of the planet.

What trend do you see in these points? List three points you consider the most important.

Finally, consider this picture of Black activist Angela Davis with and Vilma Espín at the 2nd Congress of the Federation of Cuban Women in 1974.

How do these ties to Communist-led parties relate to the Black Panther ideology? Do you find any connections between what you’ve learned about Communist ideology, specifically Maoism, and the Black Panther Party?