White America’s horrified reactions to Beyoncé’s Super Bowl performance and her salute to the Black Civil Rights activist group, the Black Panther Party, shows you just how misinformed the public still is. For posterity’s sake, I’ll reiterate the facts: The Black Panther Party was not a hate group. They did not promote the killing of policemen, and they were not power hungry deranged militants.
Here are some of the BPP’s demands as per their Ten Point Program: “We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black people, other people of color, all oppressed people inside the United States; We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black and oppressed communities” and other such requests.
The Panthers enacted programs such as Police Patrols, where armed citizens monitored the behavior of police officers and challenged police brutality. They also had Free Breakfast For Children Programs, and many other community outreach projects created for the advancement of oppressed communities. Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of the Black Panthers, were inspired by Malcolm X’s words, “The time has come to fight back in self-defense whenever and wherever the black man is being unjustly and unlawfully attacked.”
It was the Black Panther Party’s stance on self-defense which brought them the attention of former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and his campaign, COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO, which was enacted for the intent “to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or OTHERWISE NEUTRALIZE,” as said in transcripts from official COINTELPRO FBI documents any political activist groups or individuals such as the Black Panther Party, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Young Lords, and others.
They planted false media stories, forged correspondences and made threatening phone calls. J. Edgar’s “BLACK HATE” group, alongside local police, abused the legal system to harass activist groups like the Black Panthers to make them appear as criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and fabricated evidence for the wrongful imprisonment of the Black Panther party members.
The group even conspired with local police departments to conduct illegal break-ins, commit assaults, and even assassinations. For example, on Dec. 4, 1967, Chicago police officers executed a pre-dawn raid on an apartment and their sleeping inhabitants that left Illinois Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark dead, several other Panthers wounded, and seven raid survivors arrested on fabricated attempted murder charges.
The idea of our nation’s government operating with such underhanded evil tactics may seem unbelievable, but these are all thoroughly investigated and heavily documented facts. The shame felt at the true extent of America’s corruption in those times has led to keeping the truth silenced, but that only serves to give credence to the hate filled lies of the FBI.
So next time you hear anyone trying to speak ill of the Black Panthers, don’t blame them for being misinformed, but educate them on the Black Panthers’ truly beautiful legacy of racial equality, social advancement, and Black empowerment.
