you saw a picture of a brother who was looking menacing with a gun.” And that was not what you saw in the media. The government refused to, so the community loved the Party. “We were providing these basic survival programs, as we called them, for the Black community and oppressed communities, when the government wasn’t doing it. “The Black Panther Party was doing what the government should’ve done,” Newton said.
Huey p newton black panther free#
Edgar Hoover once called the free breakfast program the “ greatest internal threat to national security.” Ironically, after the panthers piloted the free meals through 28 national chapters, the idea was adopted in public schools and eventually evolved into the federally-funded WIC program. We had a free ambulance program in North Carolina-Black people were dying because the ambulance wouldn’t even come and pick them up.”įBI Director J.
We had a service called SAFE (Seniors Against a Fearful Environment) where we would escort seniors to the bank, or, you know, to do their grocery shopping. “We knew that children could not learn if they were hungry, but we also had free clinics. “The most famous and most notable would be the free breakfasts the panthers offered to thousands of children in Oakland and other cities, providing basic nutrition for kids from poor families, long before the government took on this responsibility,” she said in an interview. Newton Foundation, notes that the foundation published a book a few years ago documenting the survival programs. Saturu Ned, a former member of The Lumpen and educator at the Oakland Community Learning Center who’s currently a member of the Black Panther Party Legacy Alumni Network.įredrika Newton, Huey’s widow and the executive director of the Huey P. After that, we were addressing the community,” said Dr.
“All those films and movies we’ve seen, they always depict that particular origin period, with the berets and jackets, which only lasted up until mid-1970. Veteran Black Panthers say Hollywood and mainstream media portrayals of the party have often been misleading, focusing on a brief period of time when militant activism was at its peak, and not on the 65 community-oriented “survival programs” they say are the true measure of the party’s legacy and impact. As numerous events commemorating the party’s 55th anniversary approach in the coming days-including an unveiling ceremony for a bust of co-founder Huey Newton, an anniversary gathering in DeFremery Park, a tribute to the San Francisco chapter members at the Bayview Opera House, an art exhibit at the Joyce Gordon Gallery, and a remembrance of the Panthers’ singing group, The Lumpen-that mystique has again come to the fore. Along with the Southern Civil Rights Movement, it transcended Black history to become American history, with all the gravitas that implies. The Black Panther mystique is a powerful and complex one.
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