Maeve First Five

The Black Panther Party’s response to mass imprisonment of Black people focused on the dehumanization of Black people during law enforcement encounters. Their Ten-Point plan reflects the Party’s belief that many Black people were imprisoned simply because they were black – the Party held that sentencing was far too often based on racism rather than actual violation of law. Further, the Panthers sought to address the way imprisonment had the potential to cut off prisoners from their families and sense of close connection via the Free Buses to Prison program.

In Huey Newton’s first draft of his essay, “Prison, Where is Thy Victory?” he describes his time spent in the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, California. His description centers in great part on his experience interacting with the prison guards. Importantly, Newton reports rejecting the power dynamic that they attempted to impose upon him. The title of the essay reflects Newton’s sentiment that he emerged undefeated and more committed than ever to the revolutionary struggle of the Black Panthers – as he put it “prison walls…cannot contain the spirit and will of the people”[1]. Newton’s account of his time in prison reflects several factors that influenced his experience: the anti-prison program of the Panthers, the exploitive nature of the prison guard-inmate relationship, and Newton’s own sense that liberation from prison is a community victory rather than an individual one.

One of the Black Panther Party’s points in its ten-point program states the belief that “all Black people should be released from the many jails and prisons” because there could be no such thing as a fair and impartial trial in the US[2]. That idea follows naturally from the prevailing understanding of civil disobedience: that unjust laws or unjust implementation of laws justifies, and requires, disobedience of those laws. In his essay, Newton explains why more specifically “political prisoners” are imprisoned directly because of an unjust society. Newton’s own imprisonment reflected a political imprisonment by his definition, which is a vital factor in his understanding of his experience in prison – that it was designed to subjugate his goals and to punish him explicitly for his “beliefs that threaten the privileged status of those who profit” from the exploitation of Black people. Prison was a concentrated microcosm of those attempts at exploitation that Newton observed in every day American life, in which guards attempted to have total control.

The most explicit exploitive measure that Newton experienced was prison guards’ attempts to force him to work for wages that were far below minimum. Newton’s response was reflective of Panther Party stances at large: he refused to work for below minimum wage, or to accept minimum wage unless all other working inmates were compensated at minimum wage as well. Newton’s refusal reflects, I think, the Panthers’ larger emphasis on re-humanizing incarcerated people. The Free Buses to Prison program important Panther initiative developed under David Hilliard that sought to “help incarcerated Blacks stay connected to their families”[3]. The need for the Buses program reflects the fear that prison was deeply dehumanizing because of its implicit goals of isolation and reduced agency among inmates. The Buses program and Newton’s speech reflect a deeply-seated belief that community is the cornerstone of liberation. Newton says his resistance to subjugation in prison was “only possible because of your strong support and faith in me”. Newton’s view that the power of the collective in liberating the prisoner refers to his understanding of political prisoners: political prisoners are put in prison as a means of cutting them off from their communities, because it is through their communities that they find support and liberation. To that end, the community is the largest threat to the “imperialist” forces of subjugation – namely capitalism and the American police state – because of its capacity to empower individuals to resist.

That belief of Newton’s and larger tenet of the Party’s illuminates the Party’s program of community support and development. It is evident in Newton’s statement in the essay that the people’s goal “must be to liberate every political prisoner”; to imprison one person is to cut them off from that which strengthens them most, their community.

While this interpretation of Newton’s writing and the Panther Party’s agenda might certainly not seem revelatory, closely considering the dynamic between incarceration and community is vital to understanding the way prison so strongly violates the goals of the Party as well as other liberation movements. The totalizing nature of the environment creates greater violence against those who have already experienced struggle, and it prevents individuals from connecting to that which empowers them most – community. The Ten-Point Plan explicit states the demand for “power to determine the destiny of our Black community”; I argue that prison very specifically violates that demand for collective self-determination[4].

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[1] Huey P. Newton, “Prison, Where is Thy Victory?”

[2] Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin, Black Against Empire. University of California Press, 2013. 70-71.

[3] Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin, Black Against Empire. 190

[4] An important note here – other items addressed by the Panther party also directly violate self-determination, like lack of education and sufficient housing, etc, but I plan to advance prison as a specific disenfranchisement of the most politically active members of the movement

Outline:

-       Introduction: contexting of mass-incarceration and profiling trends that affect Black people as well as LGBTQ people

-       BPP references to community

o   The Ten Points

o   Elaine Brown’s writing

o   Huey Newton’s writing

-       How prison specifically violates the “power to determine the destiny of our Black community”

-       Why did LGBTQ movements borrow from BPP rhetoric?

o   Some similar goals but also not the same – the gay community might not have been asking for reparations, etc

o   Unjust law enforcement, and thereby incarceration, was a prominent issue shared by both Black and LGBTQ communities

-       And why did many BPP leaders embrace LGBTQ liberation movements?

-       Shared issue of profiling – not shared by all LGBTQ members but definitely shared by many

o   Issue of exposure to violence in prison