Progressive Pockets: a podcast about the untapped power of our wallets to build the world we want
A podcast at the intersection of social impact and personal finance that covers questions of how we might spend, donate, and invest more in line with our values.
Hosted by Genet "GG" Gimja
Formerly known as the Spend Donate Invest Podcast
Progressive Pockets: a podcast about the untapped power of our wallets to build the world we want
163. An Intro to the Black Panther Party's Social Programs
Links from today’s episode:
The History and Social Work Legacy of the Black Panther Party 2022, International Journal of Education and Human Developments
https://ijehd.cgrd.org/images/vol8no1/1.pdf
Black Panther Party Alumni Legacy Network
The Black Panther Party: Challenging Police and Promoting Social Change, National Museum of African American History and Culture
ICYMI another episode you might enjoy:
Episode#65 Celebrating Black Philanthropy (recorded before the 2024 rebranding of this show)
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Welcome to Progressive Pockets! Whatever keeps you up at night- climate change, income inequality, oppression, homelessness, you name it- there’s a real chance that we are leaving some of our power on the table. I believe that we can use our dollars, as everyday people, to help create the type of world we’d like to live in. I go by GG that’s short for Genet Gimja and you can reach out anytime at progressive pockets at gmail dot com if you want to suggest an episode or get in touch.
And today’s episode is about the social programs organized by the Black Panther Party.
Just in case you aren’t already familiar with the Black Panther Party, here are some fast facts about the organization:
The Black Panthers were a national group of community organizers, and activists and revolutionaries that existed from 1966 to 1982.
Huey Newton and Bobby Seale were young activists in Oakland, California who started the party. They were educating themselves on the history of oppression of African Americans and looking around and realizing that they were disappointed in the failure of the civil rights movement to go far enough. Originally, they were looking at the police violence and brutal oppression of civil rights protestors.
They looked at all of this and in 1966 they organized young, poor, disenfranchised African Americans into the Black Panther Party.
So originally the Black Panther Party was a response to police brutality,but very quickly it expanded to advocate for other social reforms.
The Panthers defended their communities with education, community services, independent media, and weapons. They attracted thousands of followers and international attention.
They were labeled as terrorists.
Now, what happened next was that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated.
What that meant was in 1968, the membership of the Black Panther Party expanded quickly. Bobby Hutton, one of the early members of the Black Panther Party was also killed at that time in a shoot out with police and there were a lot of protests that summer.
Thousands of new recruits joined the Party. And that made things challenging for such a new organization. Some new members were attracted by the Panthers standing up to the police. Some members were more interested in the robust social programs that the Panthers were running. The party was growing fast. Too fast.
Today when people talk about the Black Panthers I get the feeling that people are talking mostly about their attractive and powerful uniforms. They wore black leather jackets, sunglasses, black berets inspired by the French Resistance Fighters, they wore natural hair in Afros to challenge Eurocentric beauty standards. They wore black turtlenecks and political pins. I think people talk about that iconic look and that they carried guns. But I’m not sure people even really know what they were doing with those guns. I would encourage you to go down that rabbit hole if you are interested. I’ll start you with some basic info in the links today.
Today I want to focus on the bulk of their programming which were what they called the survival programs.
Local chapters of the Panthers, often led by women, focused attention on community “survival programs.”Women made up about half of the Panther membership and often held leadership roles. Vanetta Molson directed Seattle’s survival programs. Lynn French in Chicago and Audre Dunham in Boston were inspirational local leaders. Elaine Brown became the national chairwoman in 1972.
Kathleen Cleaver was the Communications Secretary and first woman on the Central Committee.
Assata Shakur Role: Activist and member of the BPP.
Charlotte Hill O'Neal Role: Activist and member involved in international solidarity efforts.
Angela Davis was associated with the Black Panther Party, she is a prolific activist, author and professor. Davis recognized and confronted the misogynistic attitudes prevalent within the BPP. She advocated for a more inclusive approach that acknowledged the unique struggles faced by Black women, emphasizing the intersectionality of race, class, and gender in their fight for liberation. I don’t know that the Black Panther Party ever fully got there with matters pertaining to Black women.
And yet women led a lot of the local chapters.
Speaking of intersectionality, I think one thing that made the Black Panther Party especially successful and especially scary to the powers that be is that they served the needs of all poor people, they did not solely focus on poor Black people. They served poor white people too. And other poor people.
Let’s play a quick guessing game. How many social programs do you think the Black Panther Party established for poor people?
The Black Panthers established over sixty programs to focus on the immediate needs of poor people. Sixty! Let’s talk about some of them.
Free Breakfast Program
The Panthers created a free breakfast program at the beginning of 1969. At the end of the year, twenty chapters across the country had initiated their own programs. Members of the Panthers got support from grocery stores, restaurants, and other local businesses to support the program. This was before America had programs like free breakfast in schools for poor children or Meals on Wheels.
Medical Clinics
The Panthers provided basic medical care and first aid to the poor. Health clinics
were opened in major cities throughout the country including Detroit, Memphis, Dallas, Seattle, Kansas City, Chicago, etc. When medical researchers were ignoring diseases specific to the Black community, the Panthers also pioneered a focus on researching and finding a cure for sickle cell anemia.
Education
In the arena of education, the Panthers established a Community School. The school educated youth from preschool to middle school. The school was for young kids I believe it was preschool up to middle school and keep in mind this was before we had school choice and charter schools in America. So many Panther programs were so innovative.
Media
The Panthers started a newspaper called the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service. It was first published in the Spring of 1967. It was purchased and read by individuals nationally and globally. The Black Panther featured popular news events, civil rights struggles, and international liberation movements, political cartoons, poems, art. It reached a circulation of 400,000 newspapers a week.
The Panthers started initiatives such as Free Clothing, Free Busing to Prison, Free Shoes,
Free Pest Control, Free Plumbing, Free Food, Free Ambulance Program, and Seniors Against Fearful Environment.
I call out these programs as inspiration for us all. In a recent episode I quoted Angela Davis in saying that the most common way we give up our power is by thinking we don’t have any. And I think the examples in this episode are an antidote to that assumption. Do we really not have any power? Or are there things we can do?
And even if you’re not the one to be out front leading the movement, do you have resources that can support the really important work that’s going on in your community?
I’m going to leave a lot of links for you in the show notes today.
Let’s end with a quote…
"You don't read about the survival programs we had going on for the people, the free children's breakfast program, trying to feed some of these hungry kids before they go off to school in the morning. The educational programs we had going on for these kids, for the older folks as well."
Huey Newton of the Black Panther Party
Let’s talk again soon!