Black Panther Party’s members are protecting its legacy
When Lanny Smith, founder of the athleisure company Actively Black, wanted permission to use the Black Panther Party’s famous logo in a limited edition line of sportswear celebrating the party’s legacy, he had to travel from Texas to Oakland to get one person’s blessing: Fredrika Newton. Newton is the 71-year-old widow of the party’s co-founder, Huey P. Newton, a former member herself and the holder of the intellectual property rights of a revolutionary organization that existed for a finite period of time and whose legacy still is being written four decades after the party disbanded.
After weeks of phone calls and video meetings, Newton invited Smith on a tour of Oakland to meet some of the people the party helped through its pioneering free breakfast programs and health clinics, and to see some of the local landmarks that nod to that history.
“Fredrika makes you earn her trust and respect if you’re going to represent the Black Panther Party or be associated with it,” Smith told me. “It didn’t happen overnight.”
While Newton could increase the amount of money she brings in through these licensing agreements by greenlighting more of them, the founder and co-president of the Huey P. Newton Foundation is more gatekeeper than she is rainmaker. “When it comes to the Panther ‘brand,’ it’s quite simple,” she said. “We never want to see it exploited as it is so deeply tied to the history and legacy of the Black Panther Party.”
For the baby-faced teenagers who were there for the party’s formative years and are now gray-haired elders in the country’s social justice movement, time has bestowed on them the responsibility of gatekeeping the past to protect the future.
There aren’t many former members left to embrace the role, Saturu Ned said.
“There are about 20 to 30 of us original members who are active now in educating people about the party’s history,” he said. At its peak, the party had more than 2,000 members.
This public education work comes at a critical time. Florida banned an Advanced Placement course on African American studies in January. Now, at least four other states with Republican-led legislatures are exploring the possibility of doing the same. And let’s not forget that the nonprofit College Board that oversees the AP program last month bowed to the pressure by stripping its curriculum of some modern Black writers and issues like Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ+ culture and the Black feminist movement.
Close-minded conservative politicians recognize what many surviving ex-members of the Black Panther Party have known for decades: that a firm grasp of Black activism’s historical influence is essential to the success of future Black and brown social justice movements.
Black Panther Party alums are choosing their own paths to spread and correct the party’s story.
Ned launched the online Black Panther Party Alumni Legacy Network two years ago because he realized the passage of time was working against any efforts to preserve an honest account of the party from the individuals who lived it. Ned also educates the public about the Black Panther Party through walking tours in Oakland.
“It’s really incredible to see all of the things members are doing in their own ways to keep the party’s legacy going,” former member Billy X Jennings told me.
Along with his own alumni website ItsAboutTimeBPP.com, Jennings maintains a physical archive of party-related memorabilia at his Sacramento home. When we spoke, he was traveling to Florida, where he had volunteered to speak at an event about activism and organizing.
When I mentioned to Ned and Jennings my concern about former members getting older, each said that the Black Panther Party isn’t just the people who were there at the beginning and are still alive today. They consider the children of Black Panthers to be members.
This includes people like Fani Willis, the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney who is investigating whether former President Donald Trump broke the law by lobbying state officials to overturn his 2020 election loss, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, the acclaimed writer and intellectual behind works such as “Between the World and Me.”
“When you think about it that way, we number in the thousands,” Ned told me. “That’s all of the Black Panther Party family.”
After being founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland in 1966, the Black Panther Party grew to more than 2,000 members across the country. By 1970, a Time Magazine poll showed that 64% of Black people in America felt the party gave them “a sense of pride.”
The party existed for only 16 years, thanks in part to the FBI’s unrelenting counterintelligence program Cointelpro, which sabotaged the party from the inside and played a role in the deaths and false convictions of its members. The party’s ultimate demise was hastened by its own internal conflict and a decline in membership.
Only recently has a more accurate view of the Black Panther Party emerged, thanks to Oscar-winning films like “Judas and the Black Messiah” and a renewed mainstream interest in the Black Panther Party behind Marvel’s “Black Panther” franchise, even though the comic book character and the real-life movement are in no way related.
Fredrika Newton envisions the party shaping movements for decades to come.
Proceeds from Actively Black’s “All Power to the People” line will flow through Newton’s apparel venture of the same name, which she runs with Oakland businesswoman and designer Rachel Konte. The money will be used to help fund the Dr. Huey P. Newton Center for Research and Action, a $5 million building in downtown Oakland opening this year that will serve as a museum for the Black Panther Party and a training ground for new activists.
“The original members, in their own ways, are all trying to grow the Black Panther Party family,” Jennings said. “It’s an important role and one that we’re careful with.”