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Decades before Black Lives Matter, there were the Black Panthers in Oakland | Los Angeles Times
by Robin Abcarian
December 02, 2016
The corner of Market and 55th streets in Oakland is unremarkable in many ways. Rush hour traffic whizzes by modest homes that have become mostly unaffordable for the working class African Americans who once defined the place.
But this intersection holds a unique place in California history. It is the site of the first important social action by the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, the revolutionary black power movement founded 50 years ago by Merritt College students Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in response to rampant police brutality.
On The Black Panthers 50th Anniversary, We Checked in With One of the Group’s Former Leaders | Mother Jones
Ericka Huggins on police shootings, Colin Kaepernick, and more. | by Brandon E. Patterson
October 14, 2016
If the group were still around, this Saturday, October 15, would mark the Black Panther Party’s 50th birthday. The historical influence of the Panthers, perhaps best known for their early militant posture toward police violence, has been apparent recently in pop culture. In February, Beyonce rolled out a Panther-themed performance at that most all-American of events, the Super Bowl halftime show. A week later, the documentary Black Panthers: Vanguard of a Revolution introduced the group to a new generation of Americans. But the Panthers’ active legacy is undeniable, too. Many leaders from the Black Lives Matter movement cite the Panthers’ influence on the work they do around police violence.
Fifty years later, America still can’t understand the Black Panthers | The Washington Post
by Alyssa Rosenberg
February 16, 2016
At the beginning of Stanley Nelson’s “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,” former party member Ericka Huggins tells the story of the blind men and the elephant. Each man touches a different part of the creature and comes away with a different impression of what he’s dealing with: a warm wall, a snake, a sharp weapon.
“That is quite often what happens with our descriptions of the Black Panther Party,” Huggins says. “We know the party we were in and not the entire thing. We were making history, and it wasn’t nice and clean. It wasn’t easy. It was complex.”
The Truth You DON'T Know About the Black Panthers, As Told From a Former Party Member | Teen Vogue
Protesting Beyoncé's performance is a show of ignorance. | by Bené Viera
February 12, 2016
Beyoncé has the kind of star power that shifts conversation, influences culture, and conjures up emotions strong enough to make the Black Panther Party the center of discussion on race relations in America in 2016.
Since the biggest pop star in the world dropped her black power themed video for “Formation,” the Internet has been in a haze of think-piece frenzy. The Super Bowl performance a day later had folks clutching their pearls at her audacity to center blackness. Donned in black berets atop their fluffy ‘fros, Beyoncé’s dancers helped pay homage to the Black Panther Party in honor of its 50th Anniversary. That means 111.9 million viewers heard Beyoncé sing about how much she likes her “Negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils” while watching her all-black female dancers get in an X formation, likely a nod to Malcolm X, and slay the field dressed as the iconic women of the BPP. That has made some people very, very angry.