1 00:00:01,466 --> 00:00:03,566 JOHN YANG: In the 1960s, civil rights movement, some concluded 2 00:00:03,566 --> 00:00:08,100 that non-violence and the focus on integration had failed. Rather than integrating society, 3 00:00:09,833 --> 00:00:11,933 they wanted to fundamentally change it, and they didn't renounce violence 4 00:00:11,933 --> 00:00:16,933 and self-defense. Their cry was Black Power, rather than we shall overcome. 5 00:00:18,900 --> 00:00:21,900 One of the most prominent of these groups was the Black Panther Party. It was also 6 00:00:21,900 --> 00:00:26,433 perhaps one of the most misunderstood and most vilified by the white establishment 7 00:00:26,433 --> 00:00:29,933 for Black History Month. That's the topic of tonight's Hidden Histories. 8 00:00:29,933 --> 00:00:34,933 JOHN YANG (voice-over): The Black Panther Party was revolutionary and both its goals and its 9 00:00:40,300 --> 00:00:45,266 tactics. It began in 1966. In response to both the assassination of Malcolm X, a leading advocate of 10 00:00:47,533 --> 00:00:52,200 black separatism, and the killing of an unarmed black 16-year-old named Matthew Johnson during 11 00:00:54,466 --> 00:00:57,800 a San Francisco police stop. Founders Bobby Seale and Huey Newton were college students at the time. 12 00:00:59,800 --> 00:01:02,433 HUEY P. NEWTON, Co-Founder, Black Panther Party: We have a Black Panther Party. As 13 00:01:02,433 --> 00:01:06,333 long as the evil Tetra and corrupt officials, 14 00:01:06,333 --> 00:01:11,333 as long as the oppressor makes the laws the people are not bound to respect them, 15 00:01:13,333 --> 00:01:17,466 we are bound to transform society and erect a system where people will receive justice. 16 00:01:20,233 --> 00:01:22,600 JOHN YANG (voice-over): Their 10 Point program leaned heavily on 17 00:01:22,600 --> 00:01:27,600 Marxism. They saw black American struggles as part of a global liberation movement. 18 00:01:29,366 --> 00:01:33,466 HUEY NEWTON: In America, Black people are treated very much as the Vietnamese 19 00:01:35,200 --> 00:01:37,900 people are any other colonized people because where you were brutalized, 20 00:01:37,900 --> 00:01:42,900 the police in our community occupy our area our community as a foreign troop occupies territory. 21 00:01:45,500 --> 00:01:48,566 JOHN YANG (voice-over): They provided community services called Survival 22 00:01:48,566 --> 00:01:53,533 Programs to promote self-determination, free food, especially breakfast for schoolchildren, 23 00:01:55,633 --> 00:01:59,333 free health care and voter registration drives. They established schools in nine cities. 24 00:02:01,066 --> 00:02:04,200 MAN: I cannot stand you these oppressor foreign troops in our community. 25 00:02:04,200 --> 00:02:08,033 JOHN YANG (voice-over): Women made up roughly half of the Panther membership of about 2,000, 26 00:02:08,033 --> 00:02:13,033 and they often held leadership roles. From 1974 until 1977, 27 00:02:14,500 --> 00:02:16,633 Elaine Brown was the head of the National Party, but it was the 28 00:02:16,633 --> 00:02:21,466 group's paramilitary displays that drew the white establishments, attention and alarm. 29 00:02:23,200 --> 00:02:25,900 Members patrolled neighborhoods and black jackets and black berets, 30 00:02:25,900 --> 00:02:30,900 openly and legally carrying weapons. For many white Americans, a photo of 31 00:02:30,900 --> 00:02:35,900 stern looking Newton holding a rifle and a spear became their image of Black Panthers. 32 00:02:37,200 --> 00:02:39,400 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called the party the 33 00:02:39,400 --> 00:02:44,400 greatest threat to internal security in ordered surveillance to expose, disrupt, 34 00:02:46,033 --> 00:02:49,333 misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the Black Panthers. 35 00:02:49,333 --> 00:02:54,233 Tensions with local police led to deadly clashes. In Chicago a police raid killed 36 00:02:54,233 --> 00:02:59,200 rising party star Fred Hampton and party member Mark Clark. In 1982, the federal government paid 37 00:03:01,200 --> 00:03:05,333 $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that the FBI had a role in the Chicago raid. 38 00:03:07,233 --> 00:03:11,066 Plagued by internal disputes and power struggles the party was essentially 39 00:03:11,066 --> 00:03:16,066 defunct by the late 1970s. It was formally disbanded in 1982. 40 00:03:18,400 --> 00:03:23,400 But many see parts of its legacy living on today in groups like Black Lives Matter. 41 00:03:25,400 --> 00:03:27,900 JOHN YANG: Party members are among the first to openly challenged police violence often 42 00:03:27,900 --> 00:03:32,100 converging on the scene when officers stopped young black men on the streets. 43 00:03:32,100 --> 00:03:37,000 Donna Murch is an associate professor of history at Rutgers University and the author of "Living 44 00:03:37,000 --> 00:03:42,000 For The City, Migration, Education and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California." 45 00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:48,300 Donna, from your perspective, what is the greatest legacy of the Black Panther Party? 46 00:03:48,300 --> 00:03:52,266 DONNA MURCH, Author, "Living For The City": I think the greatest legacy was a youth movement, 47 00:03:52,266 --> 00:03:57,266 a young organization composed mainly of people in their late teens and early 20s 48 00:03:57,266 --> 00:04:02,000 working class youth that had migrated from the south, who found themselves 49 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:07,000 having unprecedented access to high school and college in California. 50 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:12,900 And out of that, they helped form a study group and create a new type of organization 51 00:04:14,766 --> 00:04:18,266 and youth movement that was focused on serving the community. It started with 52 00:04:18,266 --> 00:04:23,266 confronting police violence, because that's what the community saw as its single biggest problem. 53 00:04:25,600 --> 00:04:29,200 This is the era of the urban rebellions, you know, the party is formed a year after Watts, and they 54 00:04:31,233 --> 00:04:35,100 were willing to perform a form of activism in order to empower others. But very quickly, 55 00:04:37,500 --> 00:04:42,333 after the police patrols, the Panthers shifted into something called Survival Pending Revolution, 56 00:04:44,333 --> 00:04:48,066 which meant founding free breakfast programs, Freedom Schools, and the longest running 57 00:04:48,066 --> 00:04:53,066 institution of the Black Panther Party was a school in Oakland that ran for almost a decade. 58 00:04:55,033 --> 00:04:57,633 JOHN YANG: Can you put the Black Panther Party in sort of the context of the civil 59 00:04:57,633 --> 00:05:02,633 rights movement of where they stood, what role the organization filled what their contributions were? 60 00:05:04,366 --> 00:05:06,200 DONNA MURCH: I think one of the best ways to understand the Panther Party 61 00:05:06,200 --> 00:05:10,733 is to think about the Black Freedom Movement, as having a large geography 62 00:05:10,733 --> 00:05:15,733 and time period. So the party is formed year after the passage of the Voting Rights Act. 63 00:05:18,033 --> 00:05:22,400 But you know, the dismantling of legal segregation in the South did not dismantle the problems of 64 00:05:24,433 --> 00:05:27,900 economics, and access in the north and in the West. And one of the central issues about this 65 00:05:29,933 --> 00:05:34,600 was both police violence, and people not having equal access to the social welfare state. 66 00:05:36,266 --> 00:05:39,666 So, I would describe the Panthers as emerging in this moment, post-civil 67 00:05:39,666 --> 00:05:43,833 rights after the accomplishments of the civil rights movement of the successful 68 00:05:43,833 --> 00:05:47,100 passage of the Civil Rights Act, and also the Voting Rights Act. 69 00:05:47,100 --> 00:05:52,100 But I would be remiss to not talk about the global link to the Panthers. They're formed in 1966. And 70 00:05:54,400 --> 00:05:58,833 this is after over a decade of decolonization of African countries winning their independence. And 71 00:06:00,933 --> 00:06:04,633 also very importantly, they look to Asia. The Panthers are formed in Northern California, 72 00:06:06,666 --> 00:06:10,900 and they were adamant in their opposition to the Vietnam War and American imperialism. 73 00:06:12,566 --> 00:06:16,100 They identified with the Vietnamese, the Viet Men and with Hoochie Men, 74 00:06:16,100 --> 00:06:21,100 and they actually looked a lot to Vietnam, to China, and to a vision of anti-colonialism and 75 00:06:24,466 --> 00:06:29,466 a socialist state that would serve the people. So, I think that's one of the most important contexts. 76 00:06:31,333 --> 00:06:34,433 The other thing I really want to stress because the popular representations of 77 00:06:34,433 --> 00:06:39,433 the Panthers is wrong. So many people find out about the Panthers through Forrest Gump, 78 00:06:40,733 --> 00:06:43,133 they're represented as anti-white black militants. 79 00:06:43,133 --> 00:06:47,466 But the truth is, is that the party of all the 60s organizations, they had the 80 00:06:47,466 --> 00:06:51,933 strongest ties to creating a multiracial coalition, what was called in this period, 81 00:06:51,933 --> 00:06:56,600 the rainbow coalition that Jesse Jackson later picks up on. So they united with 82 00:06:56,600 --> 00:07:01,400 white radical youth who they called Mother Country Radicals to oppose the Vietnam War. 83 00:07:01,400 --> 00:07:06,400 And this was incredibly threatening to the government of the time, you know, 84 00:07:08,466 --> 00:07:12,033 to J. Edgar Hoover in particular, because you basically saw multiracial coalition 85 00:07:14,033 --> 00:07:17,133 uniting to stop anti-communism and violence in the global south. So I think that would 86 00:07:18,900 --> 00:07:23,800 also be the Panthers legacy, a model of multiracial coalition building. 87 00:07:23,800 --> 00:07:27,633 JOHN YANG: You mentioned the free breakfast program that they ran in communities, 88 00:07:27,633 --> 00:07:32,000 which is not that far, apart from the federal free breakfast program 89 00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:36,666 that's being run now. But there was also a political vision. And that wasn't there. 90 00:07:36,666 --> 00:07:40,666 DONNA MURCH: Yes, that's such an important point. They were arguing that the social 91 00:07:42,733 --> 00:07:46,500 welfare state as it existed was not serving the people and that they as teenagers could provide 92 00:07:48,266 --> 00:07:52,066 free breakfast. And when they started their freedom schools, so many of the 93 00:07:52,066 --> 00:07:56,933 low income children who went to Panther schools had not had breakfast, and they couldn't learn. 94 00:07:56,933 --> 00:08:01,933 And so they were shaming the state. And although we don't have the direct 95 00:08:03,333 --> 00:08:05,500 documentary evidence, it is thought by many scholars, 96 00:08:05,500 --> 00:08:10,500 that that shaming of the state prompted the issuing of free school lunch. 97 00:08:12,366 --> 00:08:14,066 JOHN YANG: Are there groups today that you see as direct descendants of the 98 00:08:14,066 --> 00:08:17,333 Black Panther Party that can draw a direct line from them to today? 99 00:08:17,333 --> 00:08:21,666 DONNA MURCH: Yeah, I would say, you know, my first book was about the party's Genesis 100 00:08:21,666 --> 00:08:26,666 in Oakland. It's called Living For The City. But my second book is about the last 10 years, 101 00:08:28,566 --> 00:08:32,033 and it's about the Black Lives Matter movement and why they chose Assata Shakur, 102 00:08:33,466 --> 00:08:35,600 who was a rank and file Panther member from New York City. 103 00:08:35,600 --> 00:08:39,533 So she's not from Oakland, where the Panthers were formed. She's from New York, 104 00:08:39,533 --> 00:08:43,333 and she wasn't part of the traditional male leadership, and especially over 105 00:08:43,333 --> 00:08:48,266 the last 10 years in the fight against state violence and murder and mass incarceration, 106 00:08:48,266 --> 00:08:53,266 Assata has become the best known of the Panthers. And it's from a poem that she 107 00:08:55,500 --> 00:08:58,700 wrote in Cuba in the 1980s that so many of these movement organizations opened their meetings. 108 00:09:00,500 --> 00:09:04,200 It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. 109 00:09:04,200 --> 00:09:09,200 We must love and protect one another. We have nothing to lose but our chains. 110 00:09:10,833 --> 00:09:12,566 JOHN YANG: Donna Murch of Rutgers University. Thank you very much. 111 00:09:12,566 --> 00:09:14,500 DONNA MURCH: Thank you. It's truly my pleasure.