BOBBY SEALE
One of the founders of the Black Panthers, in Oakland, California, in 1966, Bobby Seale helped formulate the organization’s charter. Although the official Ten Points of the Black Panthers’s Platform and Program have been published and are widely available, the following version is Seale’s summary, as given in a speech in 1968.
Now, when we first organized the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, Huey said, “Bobby, we’re going to draw up a basic platform….
Huey said, “First we want freedom, we want power to determine the destiny of our black communities.
“Number two: We want full employment for our people.
“Number three: We want housing fit for shelter of human beings.
“Number four: We want all black men to be exempt from military service.
“Number five: We want decent education for our black people in our communities that teaches us the true nature of this decadent, racist society that teaches black people and our young black brothers and sisters their place in the society, for if they don’t know their place in society and in the world, they can’t relate to anything else.
“Number six: We want an end to the robbery by the white racist businessmen of black people in their community.
“Number seven: We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people.
“Number eight: We want all black men held in city, county, state, and Federal jails to be released because they have not had a fair trial because they’ve been tried by all-white juries, and that’s just like being tried in Nazi Germany, being a Jew.
“Number nine: We want black people when brought to trial to be tried by members of their peer group, and a peer being one who comes from the same economic, social, religious, historical and racial background … they would have to choose black people from the black community to sit up on the jury….
And number ten: Huey said, let’s summarize it: “We want land, we want bread, we want housing, we want clothing, we want education, we want justice, and we want peace.”
From Gene Marine, The Black Panthers (New York: New American Library, 1969), pp. 35–36.
Posted By: DAVID JOHNSON
Sunday, January 13th 2013 at 11:11PM
You can also
click
here to view all posts by this author...
