10 Lessons from Studying the Black Panther Party

I’ve been studying the Black Panther Party for years, but I deep dived again while preparing for the Krak Teet x Black Panther Party workshop this past Friday.

I re-read Revolutionary Suicide, Huey P. Newton’s autobiography, To Die for the People, A Taste of Power, and more. Watched beaucoup movies, documentaries, and YouTube interviews. In doing all of that, I grabbed a bunch of lessons that I already knew but also some that I was reminded of. Here are 10 of ’em:

People won’t always see the vision. Keep going though. When Huey and Bobby got started, people thought they were crazy. Arming yourself and patrolling the police? That’s a suicide mission, they said. So they just did it themselves. After seeing it in action and seeing it working, then folk started joining.

Easy ain’t a bad thang. They wrote the 10-point program in 15 minutes, according to Huey. I know sometimes when I do something important really fast, I start to doubt myself. It can’t be that good, right? I did it too fast. Nah, sometimes it’s been written in your spirit. You just needed to get it out.

Focus on what you can do, not what so-and-so ain’t doing. That includes the government. Instead of complaining about what the schools, landlords, and governments wasn’t doing right, they just did it themselves. They had over 60 survival programs. Look ’em up. It’s amazing.

Alliances are important. It don’t matter how talented you are. You need others. It don’t matter how many folk you have around you, you need to seek partnerships outside of your organization. Of course y’all gotta agree on core values, but it’s okay not to agree on everything.

Practice Sankofa, thoroughly. Sankofa is a word from Ghana that means “go back and get.” We have to study our history (family and community). When I say “thoroughly,” I mean sort through it. Determine what’s worth bringing into the present and what needs to stay behind. Talk about it though. Don’t sweep it under the rug. The Black Panther Party was amazing, but they weren’t perfect! They had A LOT of internal fuck ups.

Acknowledge the women. The ones who fed you, inspired you, and made shit happen. Too often in history, the women are missing from the story. That includes the Black Panther Party. Elaine Brown ran the party for years when Bobby was locked up and Huey was in exile. Think about the women who fed the neighborhood, kept the kids, raised the grandkids when the parents weren’t on their feet, held the church up, etc.

Be willing to change your mind/position. That can be hard to do when you’re in a leadership position. You don’t wanna look like a hypocrite or like you don’t know what you’re talking about it, but it’s important. God is change. (Octavia Butler said that.)

It ain’t always race. A lot of times it’s class. Everything ain’t just happening to black people. Since been, poor whites have been experiencing a lot of the same shit. Division between poor whites and black folk are intentional. Same master.

Tell your own story. A lot of people had a lot to say about Huey, Bobby, Elaine, Ida B. Wells (who died way before the Black Panther Party started). They wrote their own story though, so I don’t rely on old newspapers or textbooks or encyclopedias. I read ’em, but I also compare ’em to what the people said about themselves.

Ain’t no revolution without self-care. You ain’t breaking no generational curses or turning your neighborhood around or any of that if you ain’t pausing to take care of yourself. Huey was addicted to crack cocaine. I think a lot of that has to do with not pausing to assess his trauma. He went through a lot of shit, including solitary confinement in prison (then called the soul-breaker) for three consecutive years. Just because you survived, don’t mean it didn’t harm you. Take a pause. Get help. Talk about it. Take another pause. And realize that healing is never-ending.