The Black Panther, 1966-2016

Political Education

As documented in the pages throughout The Black Panther, the Party was well aware of the state’s attempts to monitor children that benefitted from BPP social services, especially the daughters and sons of Party members. As part of the organization’s efforts to educate local residents and Party members about how to protect themselves and their communities from unlawful police harassment, many children of Panther families, and students of the Party’s liberation schools closely studied the U.S. Constitution. One article in a November 1969 issue of the Party’s newspaper perfectly captures one particular instance when this constitutional knowledge came in handy. When two FBI agents interrogated a nine-year-old student of the Party’s Peekskill, NY liberation school about her thoughts on the school, her reply was simple and unapologetic: “Five Pig.” When they probed her for clarification, she replied, “Your [sic] not doing your job if you don’t know what the 5th Amendment is.” 

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