Event to focus on Black Panther Party

The OKPOP Museum will sponsor “Power to the People: The Black Panther Party and the Civil Rights Movement in Oklahoma,” a screening of the acclaimed documentary “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” on Feb. 1 at the Oklahoma History Center, 800 Nazih Zuhdi Drive.

Doors will open at 5:30 p.m., and the film will begin at 6 p.m. A panel discussion will follow the screening.

“The Black Panthers” is a 75-minute PBS documentary on the Black Panther Party and its impact on American culture. The hourlong panel discussion after the screening will be about the impact of the group and race relations in America today.

The event also will feature a small poster exhibit, highlighting Oklahoma civil rights activists that may not be well known.

The panel will consist of historian Bruce Fisher, journalist Joyce Jackson and police Maj. Dexter Nelson.

The discussion will center on the three choices many blacks recognized in the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s: Follow Martin Luther King Jr. and his philosophy of nonviolence, join or convert to the Nation of Islam and follow Malcom X or sign up with the Black Panther Party.

“Power to the People: The Black Panther Party and the Civil Rights Movement in Oklahoma” is free and open to the public.

The Oklahoma History Center and OKPOP, which will open in Tulsa in 2020, are divisions of the Oklahoma Historical Society. For more information, go to www.ok history.org.