The thrill-seeking white militants claim they were inspired by the black power movement, particularly by the gun-toting Black Panther Party, which had come to prominence in Oakland, California. But in fact, the Black Panthers were a far more sophisticated political organization than their white imitators would ever be, and had a far different agenda. What they represented for the black community was something extremely positive. They represented, in a sense... A new and different form of what we traditionally call in our community talented tenth.
This is the notion that the best of our community has to put its education and resources at the disposal of the community. Prior to the middle 60s that had always been defined in terms of highly educated middle-class black people. Here on the other hand we have relatively uneducated young black street people.
who find that they have resources within themselves, which through organization can begin to transform the community. That's why they caught on so fast. They represented the organizational expression of all the people on the corners without work, outside in the schoolyards without an education, without an identity, but with an agenda for manhood and for achievement, hopefully, in this country. The Ten Point Program.
Number one, we want freedom. We want the power to control the destiny of our black communities. Number two, we want full employment for our people.
Number three, we want an end to the robbery by the white men of our black communities. Number four... Most white Americans saw only their guns and heard only their violent rhetoric. But black militant groups like the Black Panthers were the demanding voice of a younger generation that had given up on Martin Luther King's nonviolent tactics.
Their implied threats of violence and their radical political agenda made them extremely frightening to mainstream America. Number nine, we want all black people who have been brought to court to be tried by a jury of their peers or people from their black communities as defined in the Constitution. Number ten, we want land, justice, housing, education, clothing, and peace. And as a major political objective...
a United Nations supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colonies of America in which only black people will participate to decide or determine the will of black people as to their national destiny. Right on, brother. Right on. Beautiful. Right on.
Our parents were very negative about the Black Panthers and so whenever you mentioned it in my house my mother would go loopy but once I started to talk with a lot of people and people who were affiliated with the Black Panther Party I decided that they had a good program and that I really started looking inwardly at myself and who I was and Where I was going and what I wanted to do and what I wanted my children to be or how they would grow and would they grow with this inferiority complex that the white society had pushed on us so long and I decided that I wanted to go the route of the Black Panther. Congratulations you are now registered to go to the Alabama County of California. As the Panthers organized voter registration drives, health centers, and food distribution programs, they won growing support in black communities nationwide.
But an escalating cycle of shootouts, arrests, and eventually what Panthers claimed were assassinations by police led to the almost complete elimination of the Black Panther Party by the early 1970s. How did they die? Hey, in 1969, the FBI, through its counterintelligence program, targeted the Panthers for elimination. There's plenty of documentary evidence that shows this. In that year alone, in 1969, 26 Panthers were killed by local law enforcement agents, and 750 Panthers were imprisoned or jailed.
The organization was largely destroyed systematically by the local and federal authorities. The difference I would say between the Civil Rights Movement of 1954 to 68 and the Black Power Movement was that the Civil Rights Movement sought equality with whites. There's a middle class movement. The black power movement assumed equality of person and merely sought the opportunity to express that equality by saying we are a proud people. We don't need you to tell us that.
Our kinky hair is glorious. Who our black skin is something we're proud of. and we are who we are.
Now we merely seek to express that. You, young man, come here. You're a negro. No. I am your teacher.
You are a negro. No. Suppose I threatened to beat you, what would you say?
Aren't you a negro now? Now. What are you? I'm black and beautiful.
What is your nationality? My nationality is Afro-American. Suppose I had some money in my pocket. Suppose I gave you a dollar to say that you're an Afro-American negro. This is money now.
Money talks. Money talks. This dollar. And if you don't say it, you don't get it. You're an American negro, aren't you?
Now. You won't have any money. You know you need money, don't you?
Yes. You need money to live, don't you? Yes. Alright, all you have to say, Leon, is that you're an American Negro. Aren't you an American Negro?
Are you an American Negro? No. What are you?
I'm black and beautiful. What's your nationality? My nationality is Afro-American.
Very good, man. Keep it up. Go sit down. You had to think about that a minute, didn't you? Yeah.
Alright. All right, everybody, what is your nationality? My nationality is African. I remember getting my afro.
I used to straighten my hair with the chemicals, and you'd burn your head, and it was very expensive. And I remember showing your Africanness and your blackness by wearing an afro. And I remember having beautiful dashikis, beautiful.
It's like a garment that's like a shirt with beautiful, brilliant colors. And you just had this regal sense. I also remember learning for the first time in college that African culture was a wonderful culture. It wasn't ooga-booga and idiot people, you know, running through the jungles.
We were very brilliant and had great cultures. I remember the pictures of the African kings and queens, and there was this whole sense of, hey, this is all right. And reading Lerone Bennett's book, Before the Mayflower in African American Studies, you are denied that history in, at least as I was, growing up in the 1980s.
1950s and 60s. Nobody tells you that. It looked like everywhere you went, somebody was trying to see who could be the blackest in whatever, you know, who care where it was. Somebody get up on a box making a speech and somebody was, a brother was always trying to show he was blacker than somebody else.
We went through a heavy wave of Africans. Swahili, the language. Then we begin to name our children, the African name. In our home, every, what, Wednesday night? Friday.
Every Friday, my husband gave our children an assignment. They had to learn something about Africa and report on it. And it paid off.
It really did. It paid off. You know, and today they really appreciate it. I mean, you don't have to go around wearing it on your collar, but it comes out.
And you know who you are.