“While the year is different, the times are the same.”
That quote is from the afterword of the graphic novel The Black Panther Party written by writer David F. Walker.
The book was written in 2020, the same year George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, Ahmaud Arbery was killed by three white men in Georgia, and Breonna Taylor was killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky. According to Walker, 1,949 Black people were killed by police between 2013 and 2019 – 331 of whom were confirmed to have been unarmed.
The book tells the story of the party chronologically and highlights the people who were important to the cause.
The party had its beginnings in Oakland, California at the same time as the civil rights movement was taking center stage in the country.
It was mostly made up of people whose families left the south following World War II because of rampant racism and Jim Crow laws.
What they found was more racism and police brutality in the cities of the north and west.
The party’s original name was The Black Panther Party of Self-Defense, which is important because the focus was on resisting oppression, not engaging in aggressive violence. In the beginning, the Black Panthers were concerned mostly with protecting Blacks from police brutality.
Its focus began to include social programs like free breakfast for children.
The party was founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. They issued a 10-point program as the party’s manifesto:
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.
3. We Want an End to the Robbery by the Capitalists 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 were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in 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 fifty million Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.
4. We Want Decent Housing Fit for the Shelter of Human Beings.
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 the 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 Fourteenth 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 we 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.
Federal Bureau of Intelligence head J. Edgar Hoover deemed the Black Panthers as a major threat and so created COINTELPRO, an abbreviation for “Counter Intelligence Program.” The FBI infiltrated the party and spread disinformation, instigated violence, and targeted party leaders with legal harassment.
This book takes an unflinching look at its subject, revealing the story of the party and its leaders, warts and all.
Walker provides the facts and details in an engaging way and artist Marcus Kwame Anderson’s look is clean and crisp.
The graphic novel follows the timeline from the party’s origins to its ultimate demise.
What Walker and artist Anderson have created is an informative, accessible book that should be required reading for everyone.
This graphic novel is important to anyone interested in not only the Black Panther Party but also in the history of race relations in the United States.
