Black Panther Party's Legacy: Empowering Education for Black Youth

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense turned 58 this October. Its Ten-point Platform and Program, written by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, is as vital as ever.  

As a Black man who grew up as one of the Children of the Struggle, with parents and cousins in the Black Panther Party (BPP), attended schools founded by our people, and was raised by Panthers, I feel deeply the connection to each of the demands in the list of 10.  

As a Black male educator, I naturally gravitate to #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 you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in society and the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.”

This demand for truth in education and knowledge of self directly informs my work at the Center for Black Educator Development. It is foundational as my team, and I work not just to get more Black folks into teaching but to equip them with the skills and abilities they need to build a positive racial identity and, more broadly, build the agency of the students they teach. 

It’s also front of mind for me as I see how far we have to go to actually deliver the kind of empowering, truthful, and just public education that the Ten-Point Platform called for.  

This spirit is close at hand for this month, particularly as October is recognized as Black Male Educator Month in my home city of Philadelphia.  

We continue to live in a nation of radical failure, epic injustice, and destitute disparity for Black and brown people. But we cannot let that slow us down or dissuade us from our continued pursuit of creating the kind of educational opportunity articulated by the BPP’s Ten-Point Platform. 

We have seen through history how authentic grassroots solutions can be co-opted and toxified when they are “taken to scale” or, more accurately, pulled from the hands of those who created them to be absorbed into the web of influence and control of the powers that be.  

Take, for example, what attracted my mother to join the BPP: the remarkably successful Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast for School Children Program.  

Before the world of academia published peer-reviewed studies demonstrating the connection between good nutrition and academic outcomes, the Party elders knew that a hungry child can’t learn. Not wanting to let a good idea go unpunished, the Feds eventually got into the school breakfast game and neutralized the revolutionary act. 

Now, instead of the fresh fruits and wholesome sustenance that was the norm of the Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast for School Children Program, schools make do with limited financial resources, and the menu is often less than healthy, appetizing, or sustaining. 

It’s not so far afield from what we see in the public education sector writ large. The creation of Liberation Schools premised on the ideals that undergird Point #5 directly informed the creation of many Black-led schools in cities across the country. Today, in place of our dozens of independent Black schools, there are often Black-led public charter schools that are independently managed and can be positioned to do the work with love and care for the whole Black child.  

Unfortunately, many of these schools were swept up into the hostility towards Black culture, taken over, or outright closed for not delivering the kinds of “results'' that the education establishment said should take primacy over building a positive racial identity. 

Fortunately, some Black, brown, and indigenous-led public and independent schools and organizations like the National Charter Collaborative, the Diverse Charter Schools Coalition, and others still support them.  They remain a precious piece and essential partners in our shared pursuit of the more just educational vision articulated by the party nearly 6 decades ago. 

So let us reflect on all that is right, all that is left to make right, and all that cannot be left as it is for Black people here in the U.S. and beyond. Our forebears knew the transformative power of education, which affirms the racial identity of Black children and tells them the truth about the world around them. As a Black man and as a Black educator, that remains my North Star. 

We will continue to do the work, emboldened and empowered. The BPP gave us much to learn from and build on.