- Also called:
- Black Panther Ten-Point Platform
Black Panther Ten-Point Program
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What was the Black Panther Ten-Point Program?
The Black Panther Ten-Point Program, created in 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, served as the Black Panther Party's platform and is one of the most influential documents of the Black nationalist movement in the United States.
The program was published in the Black Panther Party's newspaper, The Black Panther, and was initially presented as two lists: "What We Want Now" and "What We Believe." Later, the lists were combined into a single document titled "What We Want What We Believe".
The original "What We Want Now" list included demands for freedom:
* Full employment
* An end to the exploitation of the Black community
* Decent housing and education that accurately reflects Black history
* Exemption from military service
* An end to police brutality
* Freedom for incarcerated Black men
* Jury trials composed of members of the Black community
* Land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace1 Britannica SourceCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
Who created the Ten-Point Program and for what purpose?
The Black Panther Party's Ten-Point Program was created in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. It was first published on May 15, 1967, in The Black Panther, the party's newspaper.
The Ten-Point Program served as the party's platform and one of the most influential documents of the Black nationalist movement in the United States. The program's goals were to initiate national African American community survival projects and to forge alliances with progressive white radicals and other organizations of people of color. The Black Panther Party ultimately sought to protect African American residents from acts of police brutality.
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What are some examples of the points or demands listed in the program?
The Black Panther Party created the Black Panther Ten-Point Program in 1966. The program, a key document of the Black nationalist movement, originally appeared as two lists titled "What We Want Now" and "What We Believe".
Points and demands featured in the "What We Want Now" list included:
- Freedom and power for Black communities to determine their own destiny.
- Full employment for Black people.
- An end to the exploitation of the Black community by white individuals.
- Decent housing fit for human beings.
- Education that exposes the true nature of American society and teaches the true history and role of Black people.
- Exemption of all Black men from military service.
- An immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black people.
- Freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county, and city prisons and jails.
- All Black people on trial to be tried by a jury of their peer group from their Black communities.
- Land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace.
The Black Panther Party modified the Ten-Point Program in 1972 to reflect a more inclusive Marxist ideology.
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How did the Ten-Point Program address issues like racism and police brutality?
The Black Panther Party's Ten-Point Program addressed racism and police brutality through demands for freedom and power to determine the destiny of the Black community, as well as an immediate end to police brutality and the murder of Black people.
Additionally, the program sought to address the root causes of racial inequality by advocating for full employment, decent housing, education that exposed the true nature of American society, and justice for Black people in the courts. The Ten-Point Program underwent revisions in 1972 to be more inclusive, calling for freedom for all Black and oppressed people and an end to the robbery by the capitalist of Black and oppressed communities.
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How did the Ten-Point Program influence the Black Panther Party's activities and goals?
The Black Panther Ten-Point Program, crafted in 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, served as the Black Panther Party's core platform. Published in The Black Panther newspaper, it gained widespread influence during the height of the paper's circulation from 1968 to 1971. The program, a blend of a Bill of Rights and a Declaration of Independence, outlined the party's goals and demands, including freedom, full employment, and decent housing. It called for education reform, exemption from military service, an end to police brutality, and freedom for incarcerated Black individuals. In 1972, the program was revised to reflect a more inclusive Marxist ideology known as intercommunalism.
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What impact did the Ten-Point Program have on American society and later social movements?
The Black Panther Party's Ten-Point Program, first published in 1967, advocated for freedom, employment, and an end to economic exploitation, police brutality, and unjust incarceration of Black people. It demanded decent housing, education that accurately reflects Black history, and Black people's right to trial by a jury of their peers.
Rooted in Marxism, the program aimed to be accessible to all, advocating for the abolition of capitalism as a precondition for social justice. The Black Panther Party's ideology influenced later civil rights movements like Black Lives Matter, as well as other liberation movements.
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Black Panther Ten-Point Program, document first published on May 15, 1967, in the second issue of The Black Panther, the newspaper of the militant Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Composed in October 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, the cofounders of the Black Panther Party, the Ten-Point Program essentially served as the party’s platform, appearing at or near the end of issues of The Black Panther and often taking up a full page. The program was most widely disseminated at the height of the paper’s popularity between 1968 and 1971 (weekly circulation topped 300,000 during these years). Described by the party’s cofounders as a “combination of a Bill of Rights and a Declaration of Independence,” the Ten-Point Program became one of the most influential documents of the Black nationalist movement in the United States.
The Ten-Point Program first appeared in early issues of The Black Panther as a pair of lists titled “What We Want Now” and “What We Believe.” Each item in the former list expressed a goal or demand of the Black Panther Party in one or two brief declarative sentences, and each item in the latter provided a corresponding explanation and justification at greater length. In later issues the two lists were combined in a single document titled “What We Want What We Believe.” An iconic and highly symbolic photo of Newton, seated in a large rattan chair and holding a shotgun in one hand and a spear in the other, often appeared alongside the Ten-Point Program.
The “What We Want Now” list of the Ten-Point Program published in the May 15, 1967, edition of The Black Panther reads as follows:
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- We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black community.
- We want full employment for our people.
- We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our Black community.
- We want decent housing, fit for shelter [of] human beings.
- 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 want all Black men to be exempt from military service.
- We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black people.
- We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county, and city prisons and jails.
- We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Black communities. As defined by the Constitution of the United States.
- We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.
The Ten-Point Program’s text, though philosophically rooted in Marxism, was plainly written with the express purpose of making its points widely accessible. Seale and Newton wanted all people, including the semiliterate, to be able to understand and become inspired by their arguments.
The Ten-Point Program underwent its only significant change in 1972, as a result of Newton’s philosophical evolution. Still the primary theorist and political strategist of the Black Panther Party, Newton sought a general shift in the party’s priorities, and he began to emphasize a more inclusive Marxist ideology, which he called intercommunalism, in place of the party’s Black nationalism. Intercommunalist thought essentially deemed nationalism as outmoded, as all countries and their citizens had become the victims of corporate imperialism and a “ruling circle” of global capitalists. For oppressed populations to be truly liberated, all communities must be encouraged to join together in the revolution. Under this new philosophy, the leadership of the Black Panther Party revised the language of the Ten-Point Program. For example:
- the third item in the “What We Want” list was changed to “an end to the robbery by the capitalist of our Black and oppressed communities”;
- the sixth item was changed to a demand for “free health care for all Black and oppressed people”;
- the eighth item was changed to a demand for “an immediate end to all wars of aggression”; and
- the ninth item was changed to a call for “freedom for all Black and poor oppressed people now held in U.S. federal, state, county, city and military prisons and jails. We want trials by a jury of peers for all persons charged with so-called crimes under the laws of this country.”