Black Panther Party - The Black Panthers: portraits from an unfinished revolution

Copyright 2016 by Bryan Shih

Introduction: The Black Panthers and Black Power 2016 by Peniel E. Joseph; To Live for the People: The Rank and File and the Histories of the Black Panther Party 2016 Yohuru Williams; The Black Panther Party and the Rise of Radical Ethnic Nationalism 2016 by Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar; The Global Panthers 2016 by Nico Slate; Revolution, Struggle, and Resilience: Women in the Black Panther Party 2016 by Rhonda Y. Williams; The Black Panther Rank and File 2016 by Jama Lazerow; On the Black Panther Partys Health Activism 2016 by Alondra Nelson

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Designed by Jack Lenzo

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Shih, Bryan, editor. | Williams, Yohuru R., editor.

Title: The Black Panthers: portraits from an unfinished revolution / edited by Bryan Shih and Yohuru Williams.

Description: First edition. | New York: Nation Books, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016012694 (print) | LCCN 2016012882 (ebook) | ISBN 9781568585567 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Black Panther PartyHistory. | Black Panther PartyPictorial works. | Black Panther PartyInterviews. | African American political activistsInterviews. | African American social reformersInterviews. | African American radicalsInterviews. | Black Panther PartyHistorySources. | Black powerUnited StatesHistory20th centurySources. | African AmericansPolitics and government20th centurySources.

Classification: LCC E185.615 .B54645 2016 (print) | LCC E185.615 (ebook) | DDC 322.4/20973dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016012694

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my mother, for teaching me fairness. To my father,

for teaching me the power of a good letter.

BRYAN SHIH

For my parents, Ralph and Elizabeth Williams

YOHURU WILLIAMS

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

The easiest way to say it is just to imagine worker bees. Youve got one queen; everybody else works. Rank and filethose were the worker bees. We did it all.

Claudia Chesson-Williams

We worked a lot, but it was good work, it was great work. Honestly, it was the best job I ever had.

Madalynn Carol Rucker

THERE ARE ALWAYS TWO PEOPLE IN EVERY PICTURE, THE CELEBRATED photographer Ansel Adams once observed, the photographer and the viewer. But what of the subject of both the photographer and the viewers gaze? The year 2016 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP), an organization that remains largely frozen in the popular narrative portrait of the 1960s as the most fearsome and violent of extremist organizations. These labels have stuck despite an explosion of books, articles, movies, and several documentaries meant to shine a brighter light on its activities. Notwithstanding these efforts, the BPP remains one of the most misunderstood organizations of the twentieth century.

Founded by Merritt Junior College students Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland in 1966, at its height the party boasted some 5,000 members nationally and even an international wing. Heavily influenced by the speeches and writings of Black Power luminaries such as Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), the party took its symbol from the Alabama Lowndes County Freedom Organization but fashioned a program that pledged revolutionary change, celebrated third world revolutionary struggles, and made armed self-defense one of its cornerstones. Despite dropping self-defense from its title in 1968, the party was maligned in the national press for its rhetoric and targeted by the FBI for neutralization, forever shaping how we understand it.

In the popular retelling of the Panthers history, the partys founders and national spokesperson Eldridge Cleaver, as well as its numerous run-ins with police, take center stage. But the history of the Black Panther Party is about more than iconic leaders such as Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver. Here, instead of taking the typical top-down view of Panther history, we offer the reader a view of the party from the bottom up by focusing on the rank-and-file members responsible for its day-to-day operations. These women and men transformed the BPP from a small, Oakland-based organization into an influential national party with chapters in nearly every major city across the country. It is in this sense a very different portrait of the party, one in which the subjects and not merely their photographers and viewers speak.

The book was the brainchild of former print and radio journalist and photographer Bryan Shih, who started taking portraits of the Panthers at reunions and gatherings to demystify the group and present its former members as they are today: a collection of individuals from a wide variety of professions linked by a commitment to social justice that remains even fifty years after the BPPs creation. His stunning photography is matched by the poignant stories shared by the women and men whose powerful images reveal the dignity, love, grit, and battle scars of the foot soldiers of the party.

From the outset, Bryan and I sought to shift the conventional history of the party away from its leaders to the grassroots by conducting oral histories with ordinary members, many of whom were teenagers when they joined and thus still alive to give their testimonies. They spoke of why they joined, what appealed to them about the BPP, the sacrifices they made, and how they understood their work. Above all, they recalled the long-lasting transformations they went through during their time in the party. Richard Brown says he joined for the gun and the chance to finally stand toe-to-toe with the police but along the way found an unexpected talent for community organizing. Norma Mtume was a college student in Los Angeles with a flair for numbers when she joined the Panthers. She eventually rose to become the minister of finance for the entire party. Like so many of the subjects included in this book, both Brown and Mtume have dedicated much of their post-Panther lives to community and professional work whose roots stretch back to the original principles of the party.

The interviews are divided loosely based on the content Bryan covered in his conversations with the Panthers, which took place sometime after their photo sessions. Although we have elected to separate them based on subject headings to provide organization and structure, the content is generally more extensive than the chapter titles alone indicate.