More than the official news organ of the Black Panther Party, the Party’s newspaper, known first as the BLACK PANTHER Community News Service and, ultimately the BLACK PANTHER Intercommunal News Service (“BPINS”), gave voice to the black masses. Adapting the communications slogan of FRELIMO (the Mozambican liberation organization that led the ouster of the Portuguese), the BPINS dedicated itself to reporting news and information in words the People could understand. Broadly, the BPINS reported on the condition of blacks inside the United States and throughout the African Diaspora as well as on liberation struggles of oppressed people throughout the world.
As significantly, the BPINS published the Party’s various political positions, providing historical documentation of its ideology and philosophy, its stances on contemporaneous issues, its internal and external activities. For example, after French playwright Jean Genet came to the United States in 1970 to visit with Party officials, urging the Party to consider that the oppressed status of homosexuals had parallels with that of blacks, Huey P. Newton, the then-imprisoned leader and chief ideologue of the Party, issued a position paper that the Party supported the “gay liberation” struggle as part of the broad struggle of blacks and all oppressed people for freedom. This position paper was circulated widely through publication in the BPINS. Similarly, the Party’s singular position as the only black organization of the time in support of “women’s liberation” as a part of the black liberation struggle was published in the BPINS. Other exemplary policies of the Party, erased in standard texts, are memorialized in the BPINS, including the Party’s recognition of the relation between black oppression and the marginalization of elders, which spawned the Gray Panthers; its joint struggle with the Center for Independent Living for the rights of handicapped persons, and the Party’s partnership with the Trust for Public Land in creating its “gardens in the ghetto” program to address the role of environmental racism in the freedom struggle.
With the contributions of numerous writers, the reporting of Party members themselves from across the country and the editing by, among others, Eldridge Cleaver, Elaine Brown, David DuBois, and Michael Fultz, the BPINS became, as it remains, the chief source for information regarding the Party’s “Survival Programs”, those various social programs the Party developed and instituted to educate and serve the basic needs of people in poor and otherwise exploited communities. Starting with the Party’s celebrated Free Breakfast for Children Program, the BPINS informed readers of the existence, meaning, and availability of these pro-grams, operating under the slogan “Survival Pending Revolution.” Thus, there is the record that thousands upon thousands of people without medical care could and did benefit from the Party’s Free Clinics, as the hungry benefited from the Party’s Free Food Programs, as still others were assisted by the Party’s Free Shoe, Free Legal Aid, Free Busing to Prisons, Free Pest Control Programs, and the more than 30 other Survival Programs the Party proffered the people over the years, including its model elementary school, the Oakland Community Learning Center.
In the BPINS, readers learned of the Party’s coalitions with other freedom fighting organizations, including the American Indian Movement (AIM), the Brown Berets, the Young Lords, the Young Patriots, the Red Guard, forming what Illinois Chapter Party leader Fred Hampton named the Rainbow Coalition. Beyond the United States, the Party’s relations with and the activities of liberation organizations on the African continent were reported in the BPINS. David Sibeko, a leading member of the PAC (Pan Africanist Congress) of South Africa (Azania), had a regular column in the BPINS. Reports regarding the Party’s meeting with FRELIMO leader Samora Machal and the success of the independence struggle there were frequent in the BPINS. The Party’s support for the Zimbabwean African National Union (ZANU), the NLF (National Liberation Front) in Algeria, the development of Tanzania under the leadership of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, all provided black and oppressed people inside the United States with important news and information about the African continent unavailable in the dominant press. There was news about activities in the People’s Republic of China and the Party’s official visits there, as well as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Party’s opposition to the Vietnam war and support for the Viet Minh and Viet Cong. In addition, there were the reports about the Party’s support for the IRA (Irish Republican Army) and for Sinn Féin and Bernadette Devlin, Northern Ireland’s first member of the British Parliament. The BPINS informed its worldwide subscribers of the Party’s support for the Baathist Party in Iraq, for the PLO in Palestine, for the ongoing revolutionary struggle of the Cuban people under the leadership of Party ally Fidel Castro, for the Shining Path in Peru, the Tupamaros in Uruguay, and the support for the Party by affiliates in Europe, Scandavia and, even, Israel.
The writings of important voices like George Jackson, who became the Field Marshal of the Party, were published in the BPINS, as were those of David DuBois, son of W.E.B. DuBois, who became an editor of the BPINS for several years. The famous political cartoons and other art of Party Minister of Culture Emory Douglas, giving satiric punctuation to the Party’s positions, appeared in every issue of the newspaper, along with the poetry of Ericka Huggins and others. The Party’s campaigns for political office, initiated in reportage on the joint campaign of Party Chairman Bobby Seale for mayor and Elaine Brown for city council of Oakland, as well as the Party’s successful campaign to elect Lionel Wilson the first black mayor of Oakland, were reported in the BPINS. Reportage of the activities of the Party’s chapters, of the assassinations and arrests of Party members by the police and FBI, of the Party’s internal struggles and infamous expulsions, including notably, of Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver, Geronimo Pratt and the “New York 21,” provide the only authentic record of the Party’s developments, its membership, and its leaders.
The BPINS was distributed worldwide every week for 13 years, sold in small stores in black communities, through subscriptions, and, mostly, on the streets of the United States by dedicated Party members. Nine hundred subscriptions went to the People’s Republic of China alone! While early issues were only a few pages, by the early 1970s, the newspaper settled at 32 pages, often with full-color inserts, along with special inserts highlighting the Party’s latest strategic moves, such as the “Oakland, a Base of Operations” series, its views on relevant aspects of popular culture, like the multipart discussion on the Melvin Van Peebles film Sweet Sweetback…; and its important analyses, particularly Newton’s critical theory on the globalization of the black liberation struggle, called “Intercommunalism.”
Significantly, the BPINS came to be printed on the Party’s own printing press, which the Party built and operated. On the other hand, there was the cost, in terms of life and limb, of distributing the newspaper. Party members and others were assaulted, arrested, and even killed in connection with distribution of the Party’s newspaper. Among those murdered were, notably, Sam Napier, the Circulation Manager of the BPINS, killed in the Party’s New York City office, and Sylvester Bell and John Savage, shot to death on the streets of San Diego while selling the newspaper. FBI agents and local police delayed air and ground carriers transporting the newspaper, arrested Party members and supporters selling newspapers on the streets, raided and destroyed the presses of contract printers in the days before the Party had its own press, watered down and burned newspapers in distribution boxes, and otherwise did everything possible to delay or destroy distribution of the Party’s news organ. Still, there was never one week in its 13-year history that the BPINS was not published and distributed.
Becoming one of the most powerful independent black newspapers in the history of the black press in the United States, the BPIN’s distribution reached, at its height, several hundred thousand per week. The Black Panther Party’s official newspaper, then, provides a powerful record of its time, a true history of the Black Panther Party, and an important chronicle of the freedom struggle of black people in the United States and the liberation struggles of oppressed people all over the world.
Elaine Brown
