The Black Panther (newspaper)

The Black Panther
Front page for the first issue on April 25, 1967
FormatTabloid
Founders
PublisherBlack Panther Party
FoundedApril 25, 1967 (1967-04-25)
Ceased publicationSeptember 16, 1980 (1980-09-16)
Political alignment
LanguageEnglish
HeadquartersOakland, California
CountryUnited States
ISSN0523-7238
OCLC number32411926

The Black Panther (also called The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, Black Panther Black Community News Service, and Black Community News Service) was the official newspaper of the Black Panther Party. It began as a four-page newsletter in Oakland, California, in 1967, and was founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.[1] It was the main publication of the Party and was soon sold in several large cities across the United States, as well as having an international readership. The newspaper distributed information about the party's activities, and expressed through articles the ideology of the Black Panther Party, focusing on both international revolutions as inspiration and contemporary racial struggles of African Americans across the United States.[2] It remained in circulation until the dissolution of the Party in 1980.

Foundation

The Black Panther Party maintained a commitment to community service, including various "survival programs" developed by individual chapters that, by 1969, became part of the national party's "serve the people program" to connect their commitments to basic social services with community organizing and consciousness raising.[3] The Black Panther Party Newspaper was a critical part of the Party's consciousness-raising program.[4]

The first issue was published on April 25, 1967 in response to the killing of 22-year old Denzil Dowell by police in North Richmond, California. Like many stories that would be published by The Black Panther Party Newspaper, the Dowell homicide wasn't covered by the mainstream media, and inspired Newton and Seale to start their own paper.[5] The newspaper was most popular from 1968 to 1972, and during this time, sold a hundred thousand copies a week.[2]

Eldridge Cleaver was the party’s Minister of Information and became the newspaper’s first editor. Cleaver was a major influence to the paper’s language and style, while artist Emory Douglas, “shaped the visual content of the paper through his cartoons and graphics.”[6] Emory Douglas studied at the City College of San Francisco, and became Minister of Culture for the party. He defined his images as “revolutionary art” and would portray the Panthers as warriors with massive armament, police officers as pigs, and made an omnipresence of the black fist.[6] Working alongside Douglas were Gayle Asali Dickson and Joan Tarika Lewis, who was the first woman to join the Black Panther Party.[7] Its final editor until the dissolution of the Party was JoNina Abron.

An undergraduate student at San Francisco State, Judy Juanita, served as editor of The Black Panther Party Newspaper during the later 1960s.[8] In 1969, two-thirds of Black Panther Party members were women and women were heavily represented among the paper's staff and leadership.[9]

In its later years, the newspaper was used to rally support for members of the party who became political prisoners.

The newspaper is archived at California State University, Dominguez Hills.[10]

Format

"The BPP newspaper grew from a four-page newsletter to a full newspaper in about a year and [537] issues were printed."[11]

Every issue of the newspaper contained the party’s 10 Point Platform and Program, titled “What We Want Now! What We Believe!” The program was a list of the party’s demands that “addressed the needs and interests of the black community.”[12] The 10 point program was revised in 1972, which was followed by a change in the number of images showcased in the issues. From 1967 to 1971, the average was of six per issue and from March of 1972 to 1980, the average was of 2.4 images per issue.[13] After 1972, there was also a decrease in the number of contributing artists.[13]

Circulation

Circulation was national and international.[14] From 1968 to 1971, The Black Panther Party Newspaper was the most widely read Black newspaper in the United States, with a weekly circulation of more than 300,000. It sold for 25 cents, with the party’s national headquarters receiving about “about 12.5 cents for each copy sold.” [6]The newspaper became the party’s most sable income source, and by 1970, it was making a net of $40,000 a month for the party.[6]

Every Panther was required to read and study the newspaper before they could sell it. As it became nationally circulated, The Black Panther Party Newspaper national distribution center was located in San Francisco, with a distribution team led by Andrew Austin, Sam Napier, and Ellis White. Other distribution centers were in Chicago, Kansas, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle.[11]

50th Anniversary Commemorative Issue

In October, 2016, the Oakland Museum of California, in cooperation with about 100 former members of the Black Panther Party, organized an exhibit commemorating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the party.[15] The exhibit ran through February, 2017 and was called " All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50".[16] As part of the commemoration, a 20 page issue of The Black Panther was published.[10]

See also

References

  1. ^ Danky, James Philip; Hady, Maureen E. (1998). African-American newspapers and periodicals : a national bibliography. Mark Graham. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press. p. 93. ISBN 978-0-674-00788-8.
  2. ^ a b Jones, Charles Earl (1998). The Black Panther party (reconsidered). Baltimore: Black Classic Press. ISBN 0933121970. OCLC 39228699.
  3. ^ Dong, Cheryl X. (February 1, 2025). "Revolutionary History". The Public Historian. 47 (1): 40–66. doi:10.1525/tph.2025.47.1.40. ISSN 0272-3433.
  4. ^ Carpini, Michael X. Delli. "Black Panther Party 1966–1982." In James Ciment and Immanuel Ness (eds), Encyclopedia of Third Parties in America, pp. 190–197. Vol. 1, Third Parties in History; Third-Party Maps; American Third Parties A-F. Armonk, NY: Sharpe Reference, 2000. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Retrieved February 25, 2017.
  5. ^ Streitmatter, Rodger (2001). Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-12249-8.
  6. ^ a b c d Rhodes, Jane (December 1, 2001). "The Black Panther Newspaper: Standard-bearer for modern black nationalism". Media History. 7 (2): 151–158. doi:10.1080/13688800120092228. ISSN 1368-8804 – via Taylor & Francis Online.
  7. ^ Khandwala, Anoushka (January 4, 2021). ""The Black Panther Newspaper Wielded the Potency of Design"". elephant.art. Retrieved May 27, 2022.
  8. ^ Tobar, Hector (April 19, 2013). "Judy Juanita and her 'Virgin Soul'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved February 25, 2017.
  9. ^ Cleaver, Kathleen Neal, Women, Power and Revolution, excerpted from Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party. London, England: Routledge, 2001, pp. 123–127.
  10. ^ a b "Collection Title: The Black Panther Newspapers". Online Archive of California. box 12, folder 1: Special Commemorative Issue "50th Anniversary Black Panther Party" October 2016
  11. ^ a b Jennings, Billy X (May 4, 2015). "Remembering the Black Panther Party Newspaper April 25, 1967 – September 1980". San Francisco Bayview. Retrieved February 25, 2017.
  12. ^ Bloom, Joshua; Martin, Waldo E. (2016). Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-29328-1.
  13. ^ a b Macaluso, Michael (December 2021). "The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service and the Politics of Art". Journal of African American Studies. 25 (4): 534–558. doi:10.1007/s12111-021-09558-y. ISSN 1559-1646.
  14. ^ "Freedom Archives".
  15. ^ Medina, Sarah (October 11, 2016). "All Power to the People: OMCA Celebrates 50 Years of the Black Panthers". 7X7. Retrieved February 14, 2025.
  16. ^ "When Bobby met Huey in Oakland, something extraordinary happened". Oakland Museum of California. 2016.

Further reading

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