A POP CULTURE MOMENT (DAY 4)

The past few days we've had a look at hippies and the counterculture through the pages of 1960's era underground newspapers. Yet another current that ran strong through these times was the political movement called Black Power. Proponents of this civil rights-fueled political force were considerably more militant than the predominantly middle and upper class white hippy "flower children".

Huey Newton, Malcom X, Eldridge Cleaver, Stokely Carmichael and others were all voices that cut sharply through the political turmoil of the decade. One group that became notorious was The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Founded in Oakland in October 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the Black Panthers have been alternately called criminals and champions of social justice. In any event, notwithstanding the white militant group, The Weathermen, the Students For a Democratic Society (SDS), and the Yippies, the Black Panther Party was one the most notorious revolutionary political movements of the 1960's, adopting black berets and leather as emblematic clothing. It was not uncommon to see Black Panthers walking the streets armed with rifles slung over their shoulders in a defiant statement of their legal rights until then President Reagan passed a law disallowing the ownership of guns to Black Panther party members, as well as prohibiting the public carrying of firearms. 

The Black Panthers began publishing their own, eponymous, "Black Community News Service" in the form of a 4-page newsletter in 1967 that soon evolved into a full-sized newspaper. It was largely a forum to express the Panthers' ideology and rail against the "pigs".

By 1969, over half the membership of the Black Panthers were women. Judy Juanita was the editor of the paper in the late 1960's. In her autobiographical novel she talks much about the influential woman that worked behind the scenes under the shadow of Newton and Seale.

The Black Panthers were often involved in violent confrontations with police. Newton was accused of killing a police officer in 1967, and Eldridge Cleaver was the leader behind the ambush of Oakland police in 1968, in which member/treasurer Bobby Hutton was killed by police. The Black Power movement also suffered fatal casualties when Malcom X was assassinated in 1965 and Huey Newton was murdered 20 years later. Both were killed by black men.

NOTE: Scans are from the Daniel D. Teoli Archival Collection.