Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-One

…they came out of the hard okie/arkie white trash Hell’s Angels- dominated mean streets of Oakland, Oakland out in sunny California at the end of the American continental line. The place where the staccato faux -Spanish style (speaking unknowingly of earlier conquistador invasions) was to close out dreams, dreams of plenty, dreams of an ocean’s worth of good times.  They came out of the cop- infested army of occupation on those dark 1960s negro streets (the streets that they wanted to make black, proud black, devouring old Spanish negro alien word, and deed). They came out of the mid-1960s hard reality that while their brothers and sisters in Selma, Montgomery, Lake Charles, Albany (GA), Greenwood, and all points south, south of the American slick democracy had gained something, something worth fighting (and dying) for that they, Oakland, Watts, Harlem, Cleveland, Newark, and all points North and West, north and west of American slick democracy, had been left behind. That they too had to face down their own copper nightmare, their own ghetto-imposed wanting habits nightmare, wanting some decent sweat-less non-grinding job, wanting their own cozy bungalow (white picket fence optional in the laid-back Frisco Bay night), wanting their own take a vacation out in the high Sierras, wanting above all to stop being cop looked at every time they went onto the white streets of  town, hell the black streets too, and to get rid of their own subtle (and maybe not so subtle when they started to rile up the okies and arkies) Mister James Crow.

And so they, okay, okay, Huey and Bobby they, started putting together a little group, a little group of students and the young bucks from the ‘hood  (neighborhood , okay, but who else would you expect to start stuff like that, insurrection kind of stuff, out in sunny blood-stained California, even a California by that freaking fog-bound bay ), corner boys really, under a simple proposition-voting and the such might have been okay in that all point south night down in America but in land’s end that didn’t mean jack. What meant jack was to get that damn down presser man, the guys in blues, the almost totally white guys in blue off their backs, and let the brothers and sisters breath.  And so they, black proud, and black smart, decided after looking at history a little, fog-bound black history as fogged as that rusted colored golden gate bridge once Mister Whitey got through with it, that the only time that Mister Whitey paid attention was when proud black warrior-savants pressed the issue, defended themselves against that slave market and jim crow night. And so they looked to the mighty 200,000 strong of the Union black army, and the mighty southern struggle Robert F. Williams over across the land in Monroe, North Carolina just a few years back and said enough. So they righteously armed themselves. And said in some small recess of the brain they knew that this too was worth dying for.                      

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Marxist History: USA: Black Panther Party

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The Ten-Point Program

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We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine

The Destiny Of Our Black Community.

1. 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.
   We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the White American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
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.
   We believe that if the White Landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.
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 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 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.
    When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

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Written: October 15, 1966
Source: War Against the Panthers, by Huey P. Newton, 1980
Transcription/Markup & corrections: MIM/Brian Baggins
Online Version: Marxist History Archive (marxists.org) 2001

Note: Corrections to the MIM transcription have been made in this version. The MIM version had some errors, most notably point ten contained a fabrication of unknown origin, describing the parties "Major Political Objective, A United Nations Supervised Plebiscite". This has been removed. The present version is checked word for word according to the version found in War Against the Panthers, by Huey P. Newton, 1980.