The Black Panthers were initially formed to patrol the streets of ghetto areas and protect citizens, but they soon moved on to try and improve the local neighborhoods by opening many hospitals and food lines to treat children who were without proper care. They soon moved out of their founding city in Oakland, CA and had small organizations in in many major cities. The Black Panthers also believed that the key to gaining their freedom was in educating the public of the horrors many people were going through. To convey these messages to people and to gain publicity, many BP members began teaching classes in social studies and political sciences. One of the philosophers the the Black Panthers held key to their struggle was Malcolm X, although when they publicized this many people began considering them a black supremacist group do to the misleading ideas people spread about Malcolm X. Malcolm X's ideas were what caused The Black Panthers to come up with their ten point program.
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.
We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.
2. We want full employment for our people.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to
give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the
white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the
means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in
the community so that the people of the community can organize and
employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our Black Community.
We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are
demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and
two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and
mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency
which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now
aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The
Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in
the slaughter of over twenty million black people; therefore, we feel
that this is a modest demand that we make.
4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to
our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into
cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and
make decent housing for its people.
5. We want education for our
people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society.
We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the
present-day society.
We believe in an educational system that
will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have
knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he
has little chance to relate to anything else.
6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.
We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the
military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us.
We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like
black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of
America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the
racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.
7. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people.
We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by
organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our
black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to
bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm
themselves for self defense.
8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.
We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails
and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
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.
We believe
that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that
black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer
is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical,
environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court
will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the
black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white
juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the
black community.
10. We want land, bread, housing, education,
clothing, justice and peace. And as our 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.
When in the course of human events,
it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands
which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers
of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature
and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to
the separation.
We hold these truths to be self evident, that
all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are
instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and
to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such
principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed,
will dictate that governments long established should not be changed
for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath
shown, that mankind are more disposed to supper, while evils are
sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which
they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpation's,
pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them
under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw
off such government, and to provide new guards for their future
security.
I agree with most of The Black Panthers Ideals. Although many of them were openly communist and socialist they were trying to remove the parts of communism that would make it easily corruptible and purely keep the ideal which communism was built around, power to the common person. They also did some many noble things, such as trying to unify the street gangs to stop bloodshed and support their cause and despite the stereotypes, The Black Panthers rarely resorted to violence.
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