Bobby Seale and the Black Panther Party for
Self-Defense
Paradigm shifts in the classroom
Deborah Stapleton
Summer Institute 2010
Our perception of the past colors the way we see the present. The way we were raised for instance: our parents’ values, religion, sensibilities, even their attitudes of decorum are naturally absorbed and internalized. I believe the values and attitudes learned at our parents’ knee, whether they were just or unjust, after all who is to judge that, abide in memory when we are grown. I believe it takes a determined event or direct experience to change one’s world view. Furthermore, an educated examination of all sides of an argument is necessary to remain objective. Yet, bound by beliefs of the people we love and the culture in which we were raised, paradigms are not tenuous but have deep roots along the family tree. Paradigms can be changed and many would argue, should be changed, especially when altering our attitudes might help us live together with humanity, understanding, concern, and integrity. Within this framework of childhood experiences, I will examine my own shifting perceptions about the Black Panther Party.
When I was a child in the late 1960’s I remember hearing about the Black Panther Party. Scary! They carried guns. They looked seriously angry which translated in my mind to “mean.” Let me paint a picture for you: I am seated cross legged on the floor about 8 feet in front of our black and white console television. My dad is behind me in his Lay-z-Boy recliner, newspaper in his lap, cigarette resting in the ash tray. My mother is in the kitchen washing the supper dishes. The family had nearly completed another full day of a privileged life free of want and full of advantages, many of which we were not even aware. On the screen of the 6 o’clock evening news were images of Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, founding members of the Black Panther Party, in their militant stance, guns, anger and blackness. Their reports and quotes were delivered in somber tones by the elderly white broadcaster on the screen. Party members had been arrested. In my mind they must have done something horribly wrong if they were in jail! In my child’s perspective, the policeman was your friend. The police keep us safe from bad people.
Fast forward to 2010 when I read the book Seize the Time by Bobby Seale, and heard him speak to a gathering of teachers. Gone are Seale’s weapon, his militant leather jacket and beret, his anger. Gone too is most of my childhood naiveté. Bobby Seale’s speech was framed with word pictures of his childhood and the shaping of a man who grew up learning the carpentry trade, who carried a pocket knife, hunted with guns (“righteous gun power” as the BPP called it), loved learning facts, joined the Air Force in the 50’s, became a top airplane mechanic and got in trouble for anger issues (in marble games as well as in the military). To my surprise, I realized that Bobby Seale and my own father shared many, many family values and experiences. My father owned guns, pocket knives and played marbles with steel shooters. My father joined the Air Force in the 50’s, became a top airplane mechanic and displayed anger issues with his superiors. My father stood up and fought his own fights for what he thought was moral and right just like Mr. Seale. In fact, recently my father and I opened the family safe in the basement where he proudly presented me with my very own ivory handled pistol, “in case you ever need to defend yourself” he explained. My father, Bill, and his black contemporary, Bobby Seale, had indeed lived similar lives but in different colored skin. The white man, though born and raised by poor sustenance farming parents, would benefit from attitudes grown in white privilege. The black man would fight against true subjugation at the hands of whom he labeled “the white power structure” and “fascist gestapo pigs” (police).
With this Venn diagram of Bill and Bobby comparisons spinning in my mind, I became aware of my own shifting attitudes about the Black Panther Party. Was Bobby Seale an honest humanitarian whose mission was to educate, empower, and feed 10,000 of his brothers and sisters? Was he a law abiding activist who was targeted by the police because he was black? Seale’s classic anthem to the civil rights movement of the late 60’s and early 70’s, Seize the Time, is a colorful narrative of the origin of the party, its mission and its legal battles. In Seize the Time, Seale outlines the party’s 10 point program, its rules of decorum and membership and vision for the black race. The reader can hear Bobby’s youthful voice in the text yet wonder if it was he or his co-founder Huey Newton who was more revolutionary and combative. After all, Bobby lives while Huey is mourned. Through the angry rhetoric in the text and his in-person narrative, Seale appears to be a person who has fought to guarantee his personal civil rights by owning a gun but also fought to exercise a broader mission of feeding, educating, and empowering his race.
Lesson ideas for using archived Black Panther Party Newspapers in the elementary classroom should be preceded by understanding of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights since the Black Panther Party used these founding documents as the underpinning of their 10 point program. For example, Bobby Seale, in his presentation to the recent 2010 teacher gathering quoted from the Declaration of Independence:
“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 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.”
When children compare the above dignity-laden words with accounts of unwarranted oppression of black people, their innate desire for justice may inspire understanding. According to Mr. Seale, memorizing these lines from the Declaration of Independence was required for party membership at one time.
When teaching children in grades four and five, I think it is vital to teach them to examine alternate points of view. Exploring motivations and ideas of Black Panther Party members compared to the majority white attitudes at the time may help modern day children understand the situation. Another approach might be to examine the power of language. Connotations and context of words can bolster or berate; they can be conciliatory or condemning. Consider for example, this phrase from the Black Panther Party’s Newspaper:
“Issue
by issue, the people's revolutionary struggle for national salvation unfolds in
the pages of The Black Panther Community News Service, free from the
distortion, bias, and lies of the oppressor controlled mass media. The People's
paper tells how starting out with nothing, the People's Party, The Black
Panther Party, moved with the people to implement Free Breakfast Programs to
feed our hungry children, Free Health Clinics to care for the sick, Free
Clothing Programs to clothe our needy, Liberation Schools to educate our youth
and Community Centers to keep the community informed. With each meal served,
with each child clothed, and with each bandage applied, we were attacked wilder
and wilder - Fred Hampton and Mark Clark murdered in their sleep by Chicago's
thin blue line on December 4, 1969 and the L.A. office attacked by 400 crazed
pigs on December 8, 12969 (VOL. IV, NO. 2).”
Some questions for a grand discussion might include: Whose point of view is free of distortion and bias? Who controlled the mass media at the time? Who organized the free breakfast and free health clinics? What balance or relationship lies between the service missions of the BPP and its self-defense vision? What’s the story behind the Hampton and Clark shootings? What connotations are implied in the phrases, “thin blue line” and “crazed pigs”? Perhaps a student exercise might invite students to write the same news report from a white person’s perspective.
I used to think that the Civil Rights Movement was over. Studying the history of the Black Panther Party, its members and legal injustices has changed my point of view about the integrity of the FBI and the United States government, and the inviolability of the police. The Civil Rights Movement is ongoing in the United States, in Champaign-Urbana, and in fact, in me as I crack the veneer of white privilege and glimpse the struggles of those who have been judged for so long because of the color of their skin.
http://www.bobbyseale.com/phototour/12.htm (photos)
http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/unknown-date/party-rules.htm (rules of decorum and membership in the Black Panther Party)
http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/1966/10/15.htm (The BPP’s 10 point program)
http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/1969/03/26.htm (audio clip of Huey Newton and breakfast program)
http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/Chapter_History/pdf/North_Carolina/North_Carolina_Chapter.pdf (Black Panther Party Newspaper Mar 28, 1970)
http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/BPP_Newspapers/bpp_newspapers_index_2.html (Archive of all Black Panther Party Newspapers)
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Denzil-Dowell-Killed25apr67.htm (first Black Panther Party publication Apr 25, 1967)
http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/1968/paper-panthers.htm (warning to BPP on hippies)
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights.html (Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights)