What Is The Black Panther Party For Self Defense?

The formation of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was a direct response to the systematic and institutionalized racism suffered by the African American community over the course of the United States’ history. The unjust oppression of Blacks did not end with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964; rather, the oppression took a different form: housing discrimination, disenfranchisement, job discrimination, segregation, police brutality, to name a few. Because these sorts of oppressions formed around the Black community, regardless of gender, the response to these oppressions was largely driven by men and women who did not place women’s rights and civil rights in the same arena, at least initially. The Black
As outlined in the Black Panther’s Ten Point Program, the Black Panther Party mainly wanted self-determination for the Black community, having recognized that the system was set up against them; included on the Ten Point Program are demands as basic as employment, decent housing, proper housing, an end to police brutality, and fair trials for black prisoners. While these demands are made in reference to the Black community as a whole—not specifically to Black men—the actions of the newly formed party in Oakland suggested an almost regressive view towards women’s roles in the party and in the sought after self-determined Black communities. In its inception, the Black Panther Party was a male-only organization, one that advocated the supporting role of women in contrast to the active role of men. This is seen in first issue of the Party newspaper, The Black Panther, where founders Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver released an ad for the recruitment of new
While it cannot be argued that Black men—indeed, the entire Black community—did not need building up at this point in the nation’s history especially badly after decades of too much struggle and too little progress, the choice to leave women out of the early revolution cannot be overlooked. Moreover, the decision to eliminate black women may have been due to more than an oversight on the founders’ parts: Newton and Cleaver seemed to assert in writings that black women were not only passive in the struggle for black liberation but that they were partly responsible for emasculating the black man, doing little more than waiting patiently for him to recover enough to protect the black