Black power movement | |
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Part of the counterculture of the 1960s | |
Date | 1966–1980s |
Location | United States |
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The black power movement or black liberation movement was a branch or counterculture within the civil rights movement of the United States, reacting against its more moderate, mainstream, or incremental tendencies and motivated by a desire for safety and self-sufficiency that was not available inside redlined African American neighborhoods. Black power activists founded black-owned bookstores, food cooperatives, farms, media, printing presses, schools, clinics and ambulance services. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
The movement was partially inspired by ideologies and individuals who were outside of the United States, such as American expatriates in newly independent Ghana. [7] It also impacted others outside of the United States, such as the Black Power Revolution in Trinidad and Tobago. [8]
By the late 1960s, black power came to represent the demand for more immediate violent action to counter American white supremacy. Most of these ideas were influenced by Malcolm X's criticism of Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful protest methods. The 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, coupled with the urban riots of 1964 and 1965, ignited the movement. [9] New organizations that supported Black Power philosophies ranging from the adoption of socialism by certain sects of the movement to black nationalism, including the Black Panther Party (BPP), grew to prominence. [8]
While black American thinkers such as Robert F. Williams and Malcolm X influenced the early black power movement, the Black Panther Party and its views are widely seen as the cornerstone. It was influenced by philosophies such as pan-Africanism, black nationalism and socialism, as well as contemporary events including the Cuban Revolution and the decolonization of Africa. [10]
The first popular use of the term "black power" as a social and racial slogan was by Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) and Willie Ricks (later known as Mukasa Dada), both organizers and spokespeople for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. On June 16, 1966, in a speech in Greenwood, Mississippi, during the March Against Fear, Carmichael led the marchers in a chant for black power that was televised nationally. [11]
The organization Nation of Islam began as a Black nationalist movement in the 1930s, inspiring later groups. [12] It was strongly influenced by Pan-Asianism, especially with respect to Japan, believing in a unity between non-white peoples. [13] Kevin Gaines has argued that in the 1950s, an early version of the Black Power movement was restrained due to Cold War tensions. [14] This was done through methods like the restriction of passports. [15] Figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson and Julian Mayfield were part of this and some, including Mayfield, felt forced to emigrate the United States and continue their activism elsewhere, with Mayfield going to Ghana. [16]
Malcolm X is largely credited with the group's dramatic increase in membership between the early 1950s and early 1960s (from 500 to 25,000 by one estimate; from 1,200 to 50,000 or 75,000 by another). [17] [18] In March 1964, Malcolm X left the Nation due to disagreements with Elijah Muhammad; among other things, he cited his interest in working with civil rights leaders, saying that Muhammad had prevented him from doing so. [19] Later, Malcolm X also said Muhammad had engaged in extramarital affairs with young Nation secretaries—a serious violation of the group's teachings. [20] On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was shot and killed while speaking at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights, New York City. [21] Three Nation members were convicted of assassinating him. Despite this, there has long been speculation and suspicion of government involvement. The forty police officers at the scene were instructed to "stand down" by their commanding officers while the shooting took place. [22] [23] [24] [25] [26]
After the Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1965, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee decided to cut ties with the mainstream civil rights movement. They argued that blacks needed to build power of their own, rather than seek accommodations from the power structure in place. SNCC migrated from a philosophy of nonviolence to one of greater militancy after the mid-1960s. [27] The organization established ties with radical groups such as the Students for a Democratic Society.
In late October 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party. In formulating a new politics, they drew on their experiences working with a variety of black power organizations. [28]
The Black Panther Party initially utilized open-carry gun laws to protect party members and local black communities from law enforcement. Party members also recorded incidents of police brutality by distantly following police cars around neighborhoods. [29] Numbers grew slightly starting in February 1967, when the party provided an armed escort at the San Francisco airport for Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X's widow and keynote speaker at a conference held in his honor. [30] By 1967, the SNCC began to fall apart due to policy disputes in its leadership, and many members left for the Black Panthers. [31] Throughout 1967, the Panthers staged rallies and disrupted the California State Assembly with armed marchers. [32] In 1956 the FBI developed COINTELPRO to investigate black nationalist groups and others. [33] [34] By 1969, the Black Panthers and their allies had become primary COINTELPRO targets, singled out in 233 of the 295 authorized "black nationalist" COINTELPRO actions. In 1968, the Republic of New Afrika was founded, a separatist group seeking a black country in the southern United States, only to dissolve by the early 1970s.
By 1968, many Black Panther leaders had been arrested, including founder Huey Newton for the murder of a police officer (Newton's prosecution was eventually dismissed), yet membership surged. Black Panthers later engaged the police in a firefight in a Los Angeles gas station. In the same year, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, creating nationwide riots, the widest wave of social unrest since the American Civil War. [35] In Cleveland, Ohio, the "Republic of New Libya" engaged the police in the Glenville shootout, which was followed by rioting. [36] The year also marked the start of the White Panther Party, a group of whites dedicated to the cause of the Black Panthers. Founders Pun Plamondon and John Sinclair were arrested, but eventually freed, in connection to the bombing of a Central Intelligence Agency office in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that September. [37]
By 1969, the Black Panthers began purging members due to fear of law enforcement infiltration, engaged in multiple gunfights with police and one with a black nationalist organization. The Panthers continued their "Free Huey" campaign internationally. In the spirit of rising militancy, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers was formed in Detroit, which supported labor rights and Black liberation. [38]
In 1970 the Honorary Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party, Stokely Carmichael, traveled to various countries to discuss methods to resist "American imperialism". [39] In Trinidad, the black power Movement had escalated into the Black Power Revolution in which many Afro-Trinidadians forced the government of Trinidad to give into reforms. Later many Panthers visited Algeria to discuss Pan-Africanism and anti-imperialism. In the same year former Black Panthers formed the Black Liberation Army to continue a violent revolution rather than the party's new reform movements. [40] On October 22, 1970, the Black Liberation Army is believed to have planted a bomb in St. Brendan's Church in San Francisco while it was full of mourners attending the funeral of San Francisco police officer Harold Hamilton, who had been killed in the line of duty while responding to a bank robbery. The bomb was detonated, but no one in the church suffered serious injuries. [41]
In 1971, several Panther officials fled the U.S. due to police concerns. This was the only active year of the Black Revolutionary Assault Team, a group that bombed the New York South African consular office in protest of apartheid. On September 20 it placed bombs at the UN Missions of Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa) and the Republic of Malawi. [42] In February 1971, ideological splits within the Black Panther Party between leaders Newton and Eldridge Cleaver led to two factions within the party; the conflict turned violent and four people were killed in a series of assassinations. [43] On May 21, 1971, five Black Liberation Army members participated in the shootings of two New York City police officers, Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones. Those brought to trial for the shootings include Anthony Bottom (also known as Jalil Muntaqim), Albert Washington, Francisco Torres, Gabriel Torres, and Herman Bell.[ citation needed ]
During the jail sentence of White Panther John Sinclair a "Free John" concert took place, including John Lennon and Stevie Wonder. Sinclair was released two days later. On August 29, three BLA members murdered San Francisco police sergeant John Victor Young at his police station. Two days later, the San Francisco Chronicle received a letter signed by the BLA claiming responsibility for the attack.[ citation needed ] Late in the year Huey Newton visited China for meetings on Maoist theory and anti-imperialism. [44] Black power icon George Jackson attempted to escape from prison in August, killing seven hostages only to be killed himself. [45] Jackson's death triggered the Attica Prison uprising which was later ended in a bloody siege. On November 3, Officer James R. Greene of the Atlanta Police Department was shot and killed in his patrol van at a gas station by Black Liberation Army members. [46]
1972 was the year Newton shut down many Black Panther chapters and held a party meeting in Oakland, California. On January 27, the Black Liberation Army assassinated police officers Gregory Foster and Rocco Laurie in New York City. After the killings, a note sent to authorities portrayed the murders as a retaliation for the prisoner deaths during 1971 Attica prison riot. To date no arrests have been made. [47] [ citation needed ] On July 31, five armed BLA members hijacked Delta Air Lines Flight 841, eventually collecting a ransom of $1 million and diverting the plane, after passengers were released, to Algeria. The authorities there seized the ransom but allowed the group to flee. Four were eventually caught by French authorities in Paris, where they were convicted of various crimes, but one—George Wright—remained a fugitive until September 26, 2011, when he was captured in Portugal. [48] After being accused of murdering a prostitute in 1974, Huey Newton fled to Cuba. Elaine Brown became party leader and embarked on an election campaign. [49]
In the late 1970s a rebel group named after the killed prisoner formed the George Jackson Brigade. From March 1975 to December 1977, the Brigade robbed at least seven banks and detonated about 20 pipe bombs—mainly targeting government buildings, electric power facilities, Safeway stores, and companies accused of racism. In 1977, Newton returned from exile in Cuba. Shortly afterward, Elaine Brown resigned from the party and fled to Los Angeles. [50] The Party fell apart, leaving only a few members. [51]
MOVE developed in Philadelphia in 1972 as the "Christian Movement for Life", a communal living group based on Black Liberation principles. When police raided their house in 1978, a firefight broke out; during the shootout, one officer was killed, seven other police officers, five firefighters, three MOVE members, and three bystanders were also injured. [52]
In another high-profile incident of the Black Liberation Army, Assata Shakur, Zayd Shakur and Sundiata Acoli were said to have opened fire on state troopers in New Jersey after being pulled over for a broken taillight. Zayd Shakur and state trooper Werner Foerster were both killed during the exchange. Following her capture, Assata Shakur was tried in six different criminal trials. According to Shakur, she was beaten and tortured during her incarceration in a number of different federal and state prisons. The charges ranged from kidnapping to assault and battery to bank robbery. Assata Shakur was found guilty of the murder of both Foerster and her companion Zayd Shakur, but escaped prison in 1979 and eventually fled to Cuba and received political asylum. Acoli was convicted of killing Foerster and sentenced to life in prison.
In 1978 a group of Black Liberation Army and Weather Underground members formed the May 19th Communist Organization, or M19CO. It also included members of the Black Panthers and the Republic of New Africa. [53] [54] In 1979 three M19CO members walked into the visitor's center at the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women near Clinton, New Jersey. They took two guards hostage and freed Shakur. Several months later M19CO arranged for the escape of William Morales, a member of Puerto Rican separatist group Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña from Bellevue Hospital in New York City, where he was recovering after a bomb he was building exploded in his hands. [53]
Over the 1980s the black power movement continued despite a decline in its popularity and organization memberships. The Black Liberation Army was active in the US until at least 1981 when a Brinks truck robbery, conducted with support from former Weather Underground members Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, left a guard and two police officers dead. Boudin and Gilbert, along with several BLA members, were subsequently arrested. [55] M19CO engaged in a bombing campaign in the 1980s. They targeted a series of government and commercial buildings, including the U.S. Senate. On November 3, 1984, two members of the M19CO, Susan Rosenberg and Timothy Blunk, were arrested at a mini-warehouse they had rented in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Police recovered more than 100 blasting caps, nearly 200 sticks of dynamite, more than 100 cartridges of gel explosive, and 24 bags of blasting agent from the warehouse. The M19CO alliance's last bombing was on February 23, 1985, at the Policemen's Benevolent Association in New York City.
MOVE had relocated to West Philadelphia after the earlier shootout. On May 13, 1985, the police, along with city manager Leo Brooks, arrived with arrest warrants and attempted to clear the MOVE building and arrest the indicted MOVE members. [56] This led to an armed standoff with police, [57] who lobbed tear gas canisters at the building. MOVE members shot at the police, who returned fire with automatic weapons. [58] The police then bombed the house, killing several adults and children, and causing a large fire that destroyed the better part of a city block. [58] [56] [59]
In 1989, well into the waning years of the movement, the New Black Panther Party formed. In the same year on August 22, Huey P. Newton was fatally shot outside by 24-year-old Black Guerilla Family member Tyrone Robinson. [60]
The fifth point of the Black Panther Party's Ten-Point Program called for "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." This sentiment was echoed in many of the other black power organizations; the inadequacy of black education had earlier been remarked on by W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Carter G. Woodson.
With this backdrop, Stokely Carmichael brought political education into his work with SNCC in the rural South. This included get-out-the-vote campaigns [61] and political literacy. Bobby Seale and Huey Newton used education to address the lack of identity in the black community. Seale had worked with youth in an after-school program before starting the Panthers. Through this new education and identity building, they believed they could empower black Americans to claim their freedom.
Just as black power activists focused on community control of schools and politics, the movement took a major interest in creating and controlling its own media institutions. Most famously, the Black Panther Party produced the Black Panther newspaper, which proved to be one of the BPP's most influential tools for disseminating its message and recruiting new members.
WAFR was launched in September 1971 as the first public, community-based black radio station. The Durham, North Carolina, station broadcast until 1976, but influenced later activist radio stations including WPFW in Washington, D.C., and WRFG in Atlanta. [62]
The American black power movement influenced Aboriginal Australian activists from the late 1960s onwards, especially in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. [63] The term became widely known after the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League (AAL), led by Bruce McGuinness and Bob Maza, invited Caribbean activist Roosevelt Brown to give a talk on black power in Melbourne in 1968, causing a media frenzy. The AAL was influenced by the ideas of Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. The Australian "black power movement" had emerged in Redfern in Sydney, Fitzroy, Melbourne, and South Brisbane, following the "Freedom Ride" led by Charles Perkins in 1965. There was a small group of people at the centre of the movement known as the Black Caucus. [64]
Bobbi Sykes defined Australian black power as "The power generated by people who seek to identify their own problems and those of the community as a whole, and who strive to take action in all possible forms to solve those problems", while Paul Coe saw it as the need for Aboriginal people to "take control both of the economical, the political and cultural resources of the people and of the land…so that they themselves have got the power to determine their own future". Activist and later academic Gary Foley later wrote that in Australia, black power "was essentially about the necessity for Black people to define the world in their own terms, and to seek self-determination and independence on their own terms, without white interference". The Aboriginal Legal Service in Redfern grew out of this activism. [64] [65]
After the 1970s the black power movement saw a decline, but not an end. In 1998, the Black Radical Congress was founded, with debatable effects. The Black Riders Liberation Party was created by Bloods and Crips gang members as an attempt to recreate the Black Panther Party in 1996. The group has spread, creating chapters in cities across the United States, and frequently staging paramilitary marches. [66] During the 2008 presidential election New Black Panther Party members were accused of voter intimidation at a polling station in a predominantly black, Democratic voting district of Philadelphia. [67] After the killing of Trayvon Martin black power paramilitaries formed, including the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, African American Defense League, and the New Black Liberation Militia, all staging armed marches and military training.[ citation needed ]
Some have compared the modern movement Black Lives Matter to the black power movement, noting its similarities. [68] The Movement for Black Lives openly promotes black power. [69]
Huey Percy Newton was an African American revolutionary and political activist who founded the Black Panther Party. He ran the party as its first leader and crafted its ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966.
Kwame Ture was an American activist who played a major role in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad in the Caribbean, he grew up in the United States from the age of 11 and became an activist while attending the Bronx High School of Science. He was a key leader in the development of the Black Power movement, first while leading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), then as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party, and last as a leader of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP).
Sundiata Acoli is an American political activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1974 for murdering a New Jersey state trooper. Acoli was granted parole in 2022 at the age of 85.
The May 19th Communist Organization was a US-based far-left revolutionary group formed by members of the Weather Underground Organization. The group was originally known as the New York chapter of the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (PFOC), an organization devoted to promoting the causes of the Weather Underground legally, as part of the Prairie Fire Manifesto's change in Weather Underground Organization strategy, which demanded both aboveground mass movements and clandestine organizations. The role of the clandestine organization would be to build the "consciousness of action" and prepare the way for the development of a people's militia. Concurrently, the role of the mass movement, the above-ground Prairie Fire Collective, would include the support for and the encouragement of armed action. Such an alliance would, according to Weather, "help create the 'sea' for the guerrillas to swim in." The M19CO name was derived from the birthdays of Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X. The May 19 Communist Organization was active from 1978 to 1985. M19CO was a combination of the Black Liberation Army and the Weather Underground. It also included members of the Black Panthers, White Panthers, and the Republic of New Afrika (RNA).
Kuwasi Balagoon, born Donald Weems, was an American political activist, anarchist and member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army. Radicalised by race riots in his home state of Maryland growing up, as well as by his experiences while serving in the US Army, Weems became the black nationalist known as Kuwasi Balagoon in New York City in the late 1960s. First becoming involved in local Afrocentric organisations in Harlem, Balagoon would move on to become involved in the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party, which quickly saw him charged and arrested for criminal behaviour. Balagoon was initially part of the Panther 21 case, in which 21 panthers were accused of planning to bomb several locations in New York City, but although the Panther 21 were later acquitted, Balagoon's case was separated off and he was convicted of a New Jersey bank robbery.
David Hilliard is a former member of the Black Panther Party, having served as Chief of Staff. He became a visiting instructor at the University of New Mexico in 2006. He also is the founder of the Dr. Huey P. Newton foundation.
Kathleen Neal Cleaver is an American law professor and activist, known for her involvement with the Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party, a political and revolutionary.
Various American fugitives in Cuba have found political asylum in Cuba after participating in militant activities in the Black power movement or the Independence movement in Puerto Rico. Other fugitives in Cuba include defected CIA agents and others. The Cuban government formed formal ties with the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, and many fugitive Black Panthers would find political asylum in Cuba, but after their activism was seen being repressed in Cuba many became disillusioned. House Concurrent Resolution 254, passed in 1998, put the number at 90. One estimate, c. 2000, put the number at approximately 100.
Dhoruba al-Mujahid bin Wahad is an American writer and activist, Black Panther Party leader and co-founder of the Black Liberation Army. Dhoruba, in Swahili, means "the storm".
Akinyele Umoja is an American educator and author who specializes in African-American studies. As an activist, he is a founding member of the New Afrikan People's Organization and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. In April 2013, New York University Press published Umoja's book We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. Currently, he is a Professor and Department Chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Georgia State University (GSU).
Black power is a political slogan and a name which is given to various associated ideologies which aim to achieve self-determination for black people. It is primarily, but not exclusively, used by black activists and other proponents of what the slogan entails in the United States. The black power movement was prominent in the late 1960s and early 1970s, emphasizing racial pride and the creation of black political and cultural institutions to nurture, promote and advance what was seen by proponents of the movement as being the collective interests and values of black Americans.
All Power to the People: The Black Panther Party and Beyond is a 1996 documentary directed by Lee Lew-Lee. The film chronicles the history of the Black Panther Party, leadership, and members. The film also briefly chronicles the history of the American Indian Movement and Black Liberation Army. The film covers assassinations and methods used to divide, destroy, and imprison key figures within the party. It is composed primarily of archival footage and interviews of former organization members and government agents. The documentary was broadcast in 24 countries on 12 networks in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia between 1997 and 2000.
The Black Panther Party was a Marxist–Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia. They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria. Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.
Revolutionary Suicide is an autobiography written by Huey P. Newton with assistance from J. Herman Blake originally published in 1973. Newton was a major figure in the American black liberation movement and in the wider 1960s counterculture. He was a co-founder and leader of what was then known as the Black Panther Party (BPP) for Self-Defence with Bobby Seale. The chief ideologue and strategist of the BPP, Newton taught himself how to read during his last year of high school, which led to his enrollment in Merrit College in Oakland in 1966; the same year he formed the BPP. The Party urged members to challenge the status quo with armed patrols of the impoverished streets of Oakland, and to form coalitions with other oppressed groups. The party spread across America and internationally as well, forming coalitions with the Vietnamese, Chinese, and Cubans. This autobiography is an important work that combines political manifesto and political philosophy along with the life story of a young African American revolutionary. The book was not universally well received but has had a lasting influence on the black civil rights movement.
Assata's Daughters is an American black power organization of young radical African-American women and girls in Chicago, which operates through a Black, queer, feminist lens, that focuses on political education, organizing, and revolutionary services. The group is dedicated to radical liberatory activism in the tradition of Assata Shakur, a former member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). The organization is often criticised for this connection, as Assata Shakur was convicted of first-degree murder, armed robbery, and other crimes in 1977 in the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper.
Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) was a Marxist-Leninist, black nationalist organisation which was active from 1962 to 1968. They were the first group to apply the philosophy of Maoism to conditions of black people in the United States and informed the revolutionary politics of the Black Power movement. RAM was the only secular political organization which Malcolm X joined prior to 1964. The group's political formation deeply influenced the politics of Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and many other future influential Black Panther Party founders and members.
The Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention (RPCC) was a conference organized by the Black Panther Party (BPP) that was held in Philadelphia from September 4–7, 1970. The goal of the Convention was to draft a new version of the United States Constitution and to unify factions of the radical left in the United States. The RPCC represented one of the largest gatherings of radical activists across movements and issues in the United States. The Convention was attended by a variety of organizations from the Black Power Movement, Asian American Movement, Chicano Movement, American Indian Movement, Anti-war movement, Women's Liberation, and Gay Liberation movements. Estimates of attendance range from 6,000 to 15,000. Attendees convened in workshops to draft declarations of demands related to various issues, which were ultimately intended to be incorporated into a new constitution which would function as the final vision of those movements. The RPCC also signified a shift in BPP focus from black self-defense to a broader revolutionary agenda. While conflicts did arise during the Philadelphia Convention, the conference was ultimately deemed a success by the Panthers. After the Philadelphia conference, attempts were made to reconvene to finalize and ratify the new constitution in Washington, DC a few months later but ultimately failed due to police interference and Panther disorganization.
Assata: An Autobiography is a 1988 autobiographical book by Assata Shakur. The book was written in Cuba where Shakur currently has political asylum.
The Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), also known as the Lowndes County Freedom Party (LCFP) or Black Panther party, was an American political party founded during 1965 in Lowndes County, Alabama. The independent third party was formed by local African-American citizens led by John Hulett, and by staff members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael.
Intercommunalism is an ideology which was adopted by the Oakland chapter of the Black Panther Party after its turn away from revolutionary nationalism in 1970. Intercommunalists believe that most forms of nationalism are obsolescent, because international corporations and technologically advanced imperialist states have reduced most nations down to a series of discrete communities which exist to supply an imperial center, a situation called reactionary intercommunalism. They also believe this situation can be transformed into revolutionary intercommunalism and eventually communism if communities are able to link "liberated zones" together into a united front against imperialism. According to Huey P. Newton the development of intercommunalism was necessary "because nations have been transformed into communities of the world." Intercommunalism is a lesser-known aspect of the Panthers' legacy as much of its development occurred at the height of the party's suppression and reorientation towards survival programs.
Estimates of the Black Muslim membership vary from a quarter of a million down to fifty thousand. Available evidence indicates that about one hundred thousand Negroes have joined the movement at one time or another, but few objective observers believe that the Black Muslims can muster more than twenty or twenty-five thousand active temple people.
The police said late Friday that an admitted drug dealer had acknowledged killing Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party