welcome i'm Fredrika newton the president of the dr. Huey P Newton foundation my experience with the Black Panther Party began long before I officially joined as a 19 year old college student my mother Arlene slaughter who was the real estate broker for the party would often pose as a buyer to help secure several offices for the party I on the other hand would steal food from the coop grocery store where I work to feed students at what I didn't know was a panther school today I am the president of the dr. Huey P Newton Foundation which gets its namesake from my late husband the co-founder of the Black Panther Party the foundation is a cultural institution based in Oakland California and our mission is to preserve and promote the history ideals and legacy in the Black Panther Party the following video is a documentary from the Oakland Museum of California that reflects the party 50 years later it gives just a glimpse of the dedicated people and passionate workers that made the party possible and why the history deserves to be kept alive through a dedicated Museum of its own we are so thankful for the Oakland museum's dedication to keeping this history alive in the City of Oakland the birthplace of the Black Panther Party please do enjoy the film [Music] I was working with the city government of Oakland California at the time and I was concerned that we had very few politicians and some of the young people running around saying black power this black power that and I'm saying hey you're gonna wet you guys ain't gonna get any kind of power until you get take some political seats political seats yeah city council seats County Supervisor real seats or them the white man seat thinking you better make up your mind and make it some black Pope seat if you want to get some power in 1967 I was at Lincoln University a historical black University and someone gave me a copy of ramparts magazine if you were awake and concerned about the world and wanted to know more ramparts was it and as I opened the magazine to look at the article there was a picture of Huey Newton strapped to a hospital gurney with a bullet wound and I decided to leave and drive across the country to become part of the Huey P Newton defense committee but also to join the Black Panther Party because I read that it was a an organization created not just to end police brutality but the upliftment of all as the term was then poor and oppressed people in the world and that was the kind of organization I wanted to be a part of at the time when I joined the Black Panther Party Huey Newton was on trial in city of Oakland and my job at that time was to make sure the Huey arrived at court and left in one piece you know so the super committee which is the governing body of the Black Panther Party they used to say to me whatever happened to Huey bet it happening you first so something bad happen to hear Huey better happen to me first my work with the Black Panther Party was really an outgrowth of the kind of family activism that I was blessed with my mother actually founded the Huey P Newton defense committee which was an outgrowth of an organization that had been sort of called monkeys for Huey my mother did not consider herself a honky but a legitimately concerned social activist who wanted to write something that was wrong we were white effectively most of us working in predominantly white communities but we felt at the time that the kind of example and the kind of programs and the kind of perspective that the Black Panther Party had was right for us as well it was 1966 I graduated from high school and Black Power movement was in the air the black is beautiful is in the air James Brown was song was popular I'm black and I'm proud you know and we would be at home and we would be listening to Malcolm X Peaks on an album you know and it felt like contraband was for us in the black community especially aware students it was our 9/11 we tried the olive branch we tried peace we will no longer accept them just coming in and killing us we're going to defend ourselves from now on and also inform our people about their legal rights so thus was born the concept of the Black Panther Party for self-defense I think like so many people from Auckland it's always been a part of my DNA it's always been something that I've assumed I've always had Panther alums or Panther members be my teachers my Guardians my my caregivers so I think I think about Black Panthers the same way I think about hip-hop I was born in 84 both have been around my entire life I believe that oh we've heard about the Black Panthers when I was in middle school but I can't really remember it to be honest I think before I came to the museum to learn about it I never really understood what it was I heard about it like the name but I never really understood like what happened why where it happened stuff like that I first became aware of the Black Panthers around 6 or 7 years old no family history my family my family was telling me about one of my uncle James that was murdered by the Oakland Police and the Black Panthers came and supported my family behind that in seventh grade I had a teacher and I can't remember his name but I can remember his face very vividly and actually the first thing that we studied was the Holocaust and I had such a visceral reaction cry it I cried I cried I could stop crying like for days it was ridiculous he just started feeding me information about social movements the anti-war movement and eventually black Latino civil rights movement and eventually the black liberation movement so that's when I found out about the Black Panthers but it wasn't in a school book it was a book that he brought you know totally separate so my mother and father were both black panthers and affectionately the children have become known as Panther Cubs my father is Emory Douglas he was the he is the former Minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party so he was responsible for a majority of the artwork that you see related to the Panthers newspaper but in terms of really understanding a global perspective of what the who the Panthers were and what they did I didn't start learning that until college when I attended it one of my father's first lectures but my grandmother on the other hand my mother's mother she would talk to me and she would say you see those boys standing there on the corner the Panthers were here they wouldn't be doing it they'd have something to do [Music] when I was in high school sometime around 2002 for some reason I had this inclination to read about the past and I was not satisfied with what I was being taught in school so I found the people's history of the United States by Howard Zinn and I remember reading kind of zoning in on the 60s and 70s and I read about the Panthers I had never heard about the Black Panthers we never learned about them in school we learned about hippies and we learned about draft dodgers and all those things but hearing about a group of like young black radicals in California was like a completely new thing to me when I saw photos of Kathleen cleaver Angela Davis I felt like I was looking at a mirror of myself but at the time you know I I had like straight hair you know you I grew up in a small town so I you know you kind of try and blend in but the person who I wanted to be was kind of more those images that I saw I was about 15 16 I ever heard about the Black Panther Party you're so crazy eyes and heard from it from school the fact that I was a young man not knowing anything about you know such powerful history I feel like it was no priority letting young men of color just know about the power struggles of power to all the people this is an integral part of our society it should be taught across a range of different subject matter you know these are historical elements that really shape who we are how we engage in government what we should expect from government and how we perceive what change we can make as contributors in society you bring out the rebel in me the dark velvet feline tinder and fears a beautiful black panther you bring out the West Oakland African in me the warrior queen who took burnt land and grew culture like forests on indigenous burial ground you are the one I would try to stay home for maybe just maybe have another baby for allow you to enter my sacred spaces and pray at my altar before dawn You Only You you bring out the 79th and Lockwood in me the 92nd and hillside the attitude that melts plastic and sets your libido on fire phonies get scared but you'll you'll bring it out and get ignited so I keep it lit 100% for you you bring out IET Angola and Brazil in me the Atlantic and Caribbean Sea the Dyess for a black in me you bring out the Olmec stone heads with cornrows the Mayan chromatic connection the ephah Santeria and condom bleh in me the Pentecostal vodoun high priestess in me I could lead thousands of slaves to freedom and still come home and surrender to you you bring out the black-eyed peas and collard greens on New Year's Day in me the starvation fast on Thanksgiving in me the no religion having sinner in me the questionare of all things the pretty girl with ebony eyes the one that Stevie Wonder made songs about the one that lures tourists into ghettos fellas in shantytowns the one the ginger fire seek you bring out the Colombo's in me the young go letter and Hina and zynga and me you bring out the Holy Ghost hallelujah church on Sunday talking in tongues in me and it's just Friday afternoon I now pronounce you all mine I will paint your body in red ochre douse you and the fragrant scent of God's liqueur you can play in my locks when we're done I will cross your heart with my beads of sweat anointed and lilac wine now everyone will know you are mine you my love only you can get this love the way an Auckland woman loves come let me show you now [Music] being in the Black Panther Party changed my life in every way my heart opened to new ways of being I was very shy and I realized for instance that I had to step forward and speak because so many people after a point were being jailed and killed and jailed and killed that it was important for all of us to take responsibility for uplifting the communities we were serving the Black Panther Party changed my understanding of generosity and compassion because we gave all of the time we've worked 19 hour days and by the way the median age of a Black Panther Party member was 18 19 years old so my mind was expanding my heart was open and I was using my physical body pushing it to its limit every day the Black Panther Party became a place where people came to solve problems right so to me when I was 17 we were talking about starting a breakfast program actually feeding kids no one had done that before right and so those kind of programs will enable me to stay in organization because East but you have work on a program it's so fulfilling to you that each day that you wake up that you know you're doing something positive in your life you're making a difference you're feeding people's kids you're escorting somebody's grandmother or grandfather to the bank so they won't get robbed so those kind of programs are embedded in you they make you a stronger a stronger person and makes you eager to go out and do more it was my work volunteering at one of the Black Panther parties free clinics which got me interested in medicine I had actually dropped out of college to do this work and I actually went and discussed returning to college with the leadership of the Black Panther Party whether they thought it would be useful and good and the right thing for me to go back and try to become a doctor they thought it was a cool idea they said we need doctors and that's actually how I ended up going back to school and finishing school never had I experienced so much death month after month after month until I joined the Black Panther Party because is the local police in all of the cities where there were party chapters and the government's were bent on wiping us out when you skirt that close to losing your life you don't take any moments for granted that the highest example of that is the day that I got the phone call that John Huggins my husband and al Prentiss bunchy Carter my dearest friend had been killed on the UCLA campus in daylight then three months later I was arrested for conspiracy to commit murder and murder I did not commit and I spent two years incarcerated without my baby daughter so John was killed I was arrested when my daughter was three months old and when I the charges against Bobby and I and others were dropped my my daughter was two-and-a-half so that changed my life her life everything was changed personally they've shaped Who I am and how I think and you know particularly the women you know Erica and Elaine to see warrior women in positions of power and warrior women standing up in the face of power and taking the consequences for doing so I can shake my character it shapes how I carry myself it shaped my belief about you know where and what women should be in the struggle [Music] the work that I'm doing focused on improving outcomes for boys and men of color is really rooted in the work of organizations like the Black Panther Party what I saw in the Panthers is just a inspiring hope and belief in themselves and one another in the community and and the possibility for change I'm really concerned about mass incarceration and the amount of black people who are in prison today it's outright a form of slavery and it's something that has ravaged the black community all around the nation but specifically here in Oakland and Alameda County there are three hundred and seventy-five thousand people who are formerly incarcerated in Alameda County which is about a quarter to a third of the population we've been spending so much money on locking people up and just having them sit there and rot a disproportionate amount of black people I really feel that as long as we were being murdered at a rate of what I believe is more than one every 28 hours it's hard to move to do anything else I think it's harder people that who don't live in our communities to really understand the weight of that right and so for me there's all of these other ways in which we need to get liberated but getting in the pigs of our community is number one I think one of the issues that the Panthers brought up that back then was a really radical idea but now is very mainstream is like access to clean healthy food as a human right and land sovereignty essentially the reality of racism which has been entrenched in this country since its inception still exists the pervasiveness of racism and police departments across the country and police violence and still exists and perhaps most recently I have to add that the threat of fascism in this country still exists we now see rising onto the national political stage a bigoted bellicose demagogue who attracts a significant following and I find this extremely scary I don't see that we have successfully transformed our society into the kind of vision we had way back then we certainly tried our best in our limited way and the struggle continues the legacy of the Panther Party it's a community work we did the day-to-day work I mean I literally put down my my vile head you know put my career aside it wasn't yet till years later that I went back to school so all that time to work in the civil rights movement you know what's the secret was a great sacrifice I'm when I talk to people I said well that's happened a long time ago anywhere in 2016 I said well the Black Panther Party is started 14 medical clinics in America two are still open today there are two cities in America in Portland and Seattle where people are still receiving services from institutions set up by the Black Panther Party in 2016 today kids are receiving a breakfast today every morning because a little black panther party people know they have sickle cell anemia or the sickle cell trait because of the Black Panther Party so all these things make it different to people's lives cost us life and death I would say the legacy of the Panther Party is a legacy of resistance it's a legacy of rebellion it's a legacy of justice and these are all things that I believe you know America is firmly rooted in this is how our country began seek with people seeking freedom from tyranny freedom from oppression is one the best things the moving to Oakland right but a lot of my heroes were here their source of inspiration both because of the work they did but I think also the anger and the rage that boils up in arts bellies when we look at what was done to them by this government we look at how some of them are still paying the consequences that was done by this government that that serves as you know part of the fire that keeps us moving he was working and also keeps us very clearly aware of the enemy we're dealing with the Black Panthers represent something very important for the culture of Oakland we have a very unique social justice organizing culture here the Oakland is almost like an incubator for social justice movements and tactics and a lot of that has to do with the Black Panther Party you know young man bigger than me no pick me up and get me this bear hug while they're holding me one hand and holding up their sagging pants with the other and this is what they tell us we love you you put your life on the line for us we know we got issues out here and we're ready to work with you to solve them I think the legacy what they wanted us generations later to remember today that you have to fight for what you want and that doesn't mean like physically but you got to put in some effort and show that you really want it and good things will come and I would like to us to be remembered not only as servants of the people but as that movement that was bringing us to a place of harmony and balance [Music] [Music] blackbodies glisten and hot sunshine blood let's from open wounds and covers ghettos full of starving children hungry for comfort hungry for justice hungry for liberation cooling libation comes in the formation of a party much-needed relief dressed in black leather jackets in black berets set atop fully nappy heads furrowed brows and focused dark eyes that seemed too much to look the other way or turn the other cheek a valiant rejection of meek minor passivity that lulls the people to sleep working in concert with their oppressors in return for empty promises of equality somewhere on a distant horizon the hollow sound of one entering the chamber demands freedom now and echoes through project houses social service agencies and government institutions this was the promise of revolution demonized glorified feared and rejected no matter the work moved forward with a single-minded focus on freedom the people were thrilled the politicians terrified the world of fire with love for black skin and black language black music black power sacrifice is so big there is not enough room in my mind to over stand what you gave what you built how you wept what you felt how you strategize what you organized how you were attacked and how you fought back and all of what you lost your youth your families your friends your freedom you ignited the hopes of generations of black nations inspired millions to stand tall and fearless in the face of an impossible enemy to push through the sewage of capitalism the scourge of racism the lie of the American dream you taught us to fiend for our freedom to demand it at any cost to reject any fear of loss and a build across ideologies to imagine society where the underdog wins little black girls and little black boys saw you in their reflection inspiring a rejection of Ken and Barbie in favor of Huey and Elaine dreaming of being just like you someday and I did two nappy-headed seventh-grade me found you buried deep in a book placed high on a shelf in an empty library on a hot Vegas Sunday afternoon I had learned about king of parks in school but there had been no mention of you and as I studied I started to balloon to question authority to challenge my teachers to push back the narrative it became less conscious of my hair and we're politically aware but the courage to return stares of racist rednecks on Vega streets whose hatred pour down their faces in Vegas heat I should brave inside your courage and toll inside your legacy you carried me through and out of that godforsaken town landing me here to your birthplace with a heart of the Panther beats own and I see you I see your pain buried beneath personas you put on when you walk out your front door I see wounded warrior speaking at rallies and being honored at dinners I see strained budgets and bodies that push forward in spite of it all I see new generations trying to emulate you and failing we cannot be you we can never be you that was your time and your space there is no turning back the clock the way we honor you is to walk forward along the path that you have laid praying with moving hands and feet while doing the work in your name the prevailing mists tend to be that Panthers were dangerous that they were they were thugs that they were radicals without a cause and I think that you know that these were all mists that were spread in order to define them in order to discredit them in order to paint them in a negative light I don't know criminals who you know who feed people's breakfast in the morning or desk or seems to get your checks cashed or get bus transportation for people in the community to ride buses to go to prison so they so we can keep the family unit together I don't know any criminals that do those kind of things but we were grouped in that counting category and all we were trying to do is better the community the Black Panther Party was anything but a racist organization the Black Panther Party rejected a racist vision racism implies the ability to oppress other people because of the color of their skin or because of their religious belief and the Black Panther Party was in no way in a position or it ever sought to do that they had a deep and profound understanding of what racial oppression means in this country but they had a class perspective on where this oppression originated and that this struggle that we were all involved in wasn't in the end about race it was about changing class dynamics of oppression and that was part of what made them such a threat was that they were about uniting movements of oppressed people to build one United movement where black power mattered and brown power mattered and yellow power mattered and red power matter these are people tried to say that we were the opposite of non-violence that wasn't the point at all the right to peaceful protest is non-violence right peaceful protest First Amendment a constitutionalist eighths of America that's the law of the land that you have a right to peacefully assemble and peacefully redress your grievances a lot of times when I was out traveling growing up here from Oakland was a dangerous with the Black Panthers and I just could think of anything further from the truth every Panther I've known has been committed to freedom in a really tangible way and to hear them addressed as terrorists or to hear them addresses as violent or anti-american even I feel like the Panthers did something that was more American than anything dissent and so I feel like in a really real way the Panthers did are the best Americans I know I never realized that at the time that that I was the first female to join it was at a conference at UC Berkeley years ago and we had a panel with all the men of the party and all the female and and Bobby Seales was there he pointed me out and said I was the first female to come into the office oh yeah I guess I was I think at the time women you know young women we didn't think of it as being oh you're male you're female you have to do this and you have to do this just because you're a woman we did everything because the word hat needed to be done and so the guys peeled potatoes and served kids just like the women did I think people get mixed up with the women's liberation movement we this is pre all of it I never forgot one time I got to Chicago there for the first time and we came from the big rally out of the church you know it's five or six seven hundred people over there and we got back over to the headquarters and they had this big long table you could sit 20-some people around this long table then suddenly all these sisters come out with platters and platters of fried chicken three or four planets you know bowls of greens and cornbread and potato salad and what-have-you at 7:00 sitting on the table then I noticed assistants stood back against the wall about eight or eight eight eight and nine of them I said aren't you sisters gonna eat oh we don't eat until the brothers finish eating does it wait a minute wait a minute what yeah a chairman you see the sisters got to wait for us brother's side here you know to eat first Isis crap and their guy was guy says put that chicken down he's getting ready to put that chicken down I says I hereby give you a directive you did the work here obviously you cooked all this food and these guys getting ready to get all the choice pieces and leave the crumbs to you I said that's crap that's pure exploitation so there was male chauvinism elements in the Black Panther Party but we worked to eradicate it you couldn't refer to women outside of their names to the b-word and those kind of things you could not disrespect the sister in the party women in the Black Panther Party had every opportunity to events there were women in the party that ran chapters like Ericka Huggins ran the New Haven captain so in the Black Panther Party you learned to take take orders from whoever was in charge whoever's in charge was qualified to be in charge so even if she was a male chauvinism if you didn't like that person you couldn't show it or if you didn't like women being in in the party or holding the position it was time for you to leave [Music] I don't like the word regret it's kind of a pointless demotion I think we're very young people we were impassioned than we were dedicated and we're committed but we were young and with youth comes excitement and vigor and energy and it also comes naivete and lack of a big perspective sometimes more often times so I personally have come to reject the use of arms as a way of solving the big problems that we face in the world I don't and will not ever oppose a group of people or an individual who feel it and find it as a last resort necessary to take up arms against legitimate and overwhelming oppression but I feel this tremendous risk in the use of any kind of violence we had a lot of guns in the cultural mix of the time and I'm not at this moment criticizing that but for myself personally I I find that use of the gun as a metaphor for the legitimate struggle of people's an image that I personally don't don't like and don't connect with now regrets yeah I do have some criticism of things we did for instance of profanity we were for a period of time the Black Panther Party was caught up into this free speech movement kind of jargon where we would say wolves on our minds cussing use foul language and older people in the community and not really for that you know so that turned off a lot of people people who go to church or religious you know and our at a certain point of our legacy the party kind of strayed away from working with the Church in the community right so our understanding at that time was something kind of either you're part of the problem or part of solution kind of you know concept which is was incorrect because a person could be part of the problem and part of solution at the same time that's the dual nature of things when I had my child my daughter we had I guess the Child Development Center I guess this was called CDC and so I thought dad you place your child in the CDC and she gets raised up while you do all the work you know and I missed I missed out on a lot you know so actually it was until after I left a party that I began to understand a lot of things about myself and I was in the moment and I never made judgment on anything that happened in the moment I just was in the moment you know anyway yeah in place of every liquor store and check cashing place in every community in the United States I don't want just a picture of me and here we stand it up somewhere you know I mean I want the grassroots brothers and sisters and various programs you know I mean those programs was the thing that gave the Black Panther Party real character wow I'm so glad you asked that question because I think I should design it along with Emory Douglas should design it since we're both artists and I I imagine two youth male and female at a forefront the vanguard and the community behind them I would build a monument and Bobby Hutton Park in West Oakland it's called the FIR Murray Park I would change that name I would take that sign and throw it to the curb and put up a sign that says Bobby Hutton Park the People's Park the first image that pops into my head is the fist and like I can imagine just a jury hit like plaque this would be really neat oh it doesn't need to be phallic that's one thing about it it could be round it could be pyramid shaped it could be more ethereal where would it be well you'd think Oakland of course you know because this is where we originated it but I think it's even greater than that like more it's greater than Nandi but I think it should be in Washington DC right along with with the rest of them you know to get political with it you could put it across the street from the own CA in front of the courthouse that could be really impactful I highly don't the fact that there is not a monument says a lot and I think that is a mistake and I think we should be uplifting all of the positive contributions of folks who have work to resist who have worked to reform our society for the better and in my mind that's what a panther monument would do it would affirm and uplift the value of all those heroes who contributed to paving the way voice [Music] let's call a spade a spade let's call a pitchfork a pitchfork let's just say we know what a posse looked like what a mob can do we know about chasing ghosts we know about finding ourselves in dark rooms we know about safety in numbers let's admit that the town people ain't never been afraid of the giant that the body has always been bigger than the head that the power has always been with of and for the people so let's just tell the truth let's just be honest let's talk back let's March defer Murray let's outline some points and let us speak of police who will step over our sleeping children to shoot their fathers and ask why they woke and ask why we have guns we cannot forget how whales sound escaping from a siren or a boy let us call little bobbies name let's call little bobbies mama let's put her on the phone with Wanda Johnson or Sybrina Fulton let's talk about how easy it is to choke how America's gravest mass shooting is durational Collective let's say Wounded Knee and never again let's say move on HQ and never again let's say it in the same breath as Flint's in the same water as everywhere we have been drowned let's say America and mean necessarily the trail we wept to get here the choppy ocean that fought to kill us let's say Los Angeles and Philadelphia and I cry and mean the parts of the world who knew revolution as we did black and impoverished and just coming back from a war like always say let's talk about money as if the first u.s. bailout in Stockton the hull of a slave ship oh but we ain't supposed to talk about that we're supposed to talk about cotton we ain't supposed to talk about that gin we ain't supposed to talk about Jim Crow we supposed to be post we ain't supposed to ask for what's owed we're supposed to be thankful to a tyrant we supposed to kowtow we supposed to back down we supposed to not talk about our egg or what we've missed or how we ain't never had a language or a flag or even a proper family reunion we are never going to know the names of the people who died for us to live in terror let us admit that the idea of Africa is still an offence punishable by death we are not to dream of going home not to speak of what has been stolen not to feed our children not even to let our hair take flight we ain't supposed to do anything but die not nothing we supposed to die we supposed to not even know we supposed to die we supposed to not speak that we know we're supposed to die we're supposed to watch our sisters rub crack chalk on their eyes we supposed to sit and eat stale crust and look on from the outside what kind of party is that let's start our own we supposed to sit here and wait till somebody let us let us stop waiting on freedom like it's the whooping-cough stop hoping freedom is going to court us on a Thursday date night quit crossing our legs and biding our time and biting our nails it's our birthright and they will lie to us and tell us we are violent for wanting peace peace is our dowry we read to a democracy that keeps taking off this ring we married to a decadent system that marks squalor and honor we saw what they do to our leaders we see how they trying to string us up there are bodies on the asphalt there are members and holding there are lines drawn all around us and they close and in tight there's a courthouse there's a free breakfast there's Emory's pen there are tariqas fingers Sonia's poems and Bobby's plans and kitchen there are instruments of light and joy there are folks waiting on orders there are children in the hallway singing songs about our mothers these blues people in their black leather there are teenagers sneaking into our meetings there are old folks who are both afraid and resentful they didn't do this first but some did some dusted off their pistols and got right to it right here on Grover MLK right here on 10th Street right here on front of my climene's and Merritt come on real revolution come real revolution come real fire and fake alibi come some Sunday when some brother comes to with a visceral realization that he lost anity to a country that would have his breast on a plaque would have his head without thinking and mounted he's either gonna want to get even or get freedom the whole universe stands to benefit if this black man is free the truth of the matter is white folks freedom depends on ours and we've outgrown a binary that excludes all other comrades we talk about all the people all the people all the people let's take all the power all the power all the power all the people all the people all the people all the power all the power all power to the people [Applause] you