THE
ORIGINAL
BLACK PANTHER PARTY
ESSAY BY COMRADE LISTER/OPTIMUS PRIME

...The goal of this essay is to provide and expound on the founding history and legacy of the Black Panther Party, its politics, ideology of the Black Panther and mission and goals in progressing all negroes towards historic economic revolution against the oppression exploitation from capitalist imperialism/police brutality.

In 1966 the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was started by founders Huey P. Newton (M.O.D.) and Bobby Seale (Chairman) in taking confrontational politics to its highest level during the 60's. Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton was a street devoter to Malcolm X's theories and practice. In fact, the entire Black Panther Party for Self Defense was created in the self/spirit of Malcolm X after Malcolm was brutally gunned down by Cointelpro counter intelligence program by J. Edgar Hoover (Government). Huey decided to confront the racist Police Forces in Oakland whenever they pulled over black people and tried to brutalize them. Unlike the community patrol/Org. that just took pics of random acts of police brutality that operated at the time in L.A., Huey took it a step further by patrolling the police while openly brandishing shotguns because it was still legal to do so in the State of California.

This was also a small scale adoption of Malcolm X's late night confrontation at the New York Police station. Huey learned from Malcolm X that the racist authorities could be effectively challenged and confronted with BLACK POWER against WHITE POWER approach. As long as a group maintained a disciplined and legal posture, then the police could check their illegal brutality and murder of Black People. Huey and Bobby also began to call the police "PIGS" on their patrols because it was also a legal thing to do. Huey understood that such a serious act of confronting a deadly tentacle of our oppression in a militant way would ensure Brothers and Sisters from off the block to join the struggle for Black Liberation.

Out on these patrols forcing/facing down the "PIGS" while openly displaying their shotguns helped the Panthers capture the hearts and minds of the Black Community. When recruits from off the block began to stream into the Panthers, Huey and Bobby took the confrontations to an even higher level by being armed openly, confrontations/confronting an entire police station after the savage police murder of Denzel Dowel. Many Black Orgs. at that time began to criticize the Black Panthers for being what they referred to as the Panthers being "Prematurely Paramilitary" and thought the Panthers should have kept their activities underground.

Huey responded to their absurd critiques by writing an article called "The Correct Handling of a Revolution". He pointed out that it was impossible to mobilize the community in a significant manner if the Black revolutionaries did not openly confront the racist enemy to educate the people to resistance. Huey correctly analyzed that those parasitic groups that tried to criticize them were impostors and fake revolutionaries because they wanted the people of the community, to bear the pressure of the police retaliation for such resistance while the so-called revolutionaries who did nothing but talk and were too afraid to draw the oppression/oppressor's blood. Huey wrote that any true revolutionaries organization existence and desire to help liberate the people and make them feel that the Panthers were some type of crazy fanatical violent group out to harm the community.

Huey wrote that a revolutionary group must start out above ground but eventually has to go underground once the oppressor began to target a group in an extreme manner. By then the revolutionary group would have already won the respect of the people and would have created conditions for underground operations to be carried out successfully with the protection of the community. Eventually Huey's analysis of the struggle would be proven right, but practice of the Panthers took a strategic sharp turn from the position. J. Edgar Hoover's Cointelpro sent out a directive to the California State Governor to pass a law to effectively strip the Panthers of their right to openly carry guns in public by creating the -MULFORD ACT- in 1967. The Black Panthers marched on the State Capitol building openly armed with guns, while the politicians were in the process of passing the MULFORD ACT, and started the media into helping the Panthers Organization. But the MULFORD ACT was passed, stripping the community's 'Right to Bear Arms', and eliminated the Panthers patrolling the police with guns.

This was the critical point in Panther history, when they began confuse mandatory separation necessary for above ground and underground operational activities. Their "LEGAL" confrontational politics discovered into launching offensive strikes in the public arena when Huey carried a concealed handgun in a hollowed out legal book, he carried around on the night of his shootout with Oakland Pigs.

This one event was concealed from most people for over 40 years until "Will You Die With Me?" by Flores "Fly" Forbes was published. In the book, Fly exposes the truth about the death of an officer Huey was accused of killing which resulted into a Free Huey Movement that saved him from the gas chamber and got Huey released. Fly was a high-ranking Panther Security Official and personal bodyguard for Huey.

When MOI Eldridge Cleaver took it upon himself... took it upon himself to attempt to register an offensive retaliation against the system and openly shot cops in full Panther Uniform after Martin Luther King Jr. The Panthers were put permanently on a course of confusion towards the proper practice and balance between above ground and underground operations. This provided the government a convenient way to continue to convince the public that the Panthers were crazed fanatics in need of extermination and was deemed Public Enemy #1!

Eventually the Panthers were manipulated by J. Edgar Hoover's counterintelligence program into violently feuding factions in a tragic episode known as "the split" in the Black Panther Org. Incorrectly thought of as the East Coast vs. the West Coast chapters, it was more accurately a division between those Panthers who wanted to stay above ground faction sided with Huey and the underground sided with Eldridge. They were all oblivious of the government's cointelpro had set them all up and used a divide and conquer strategy on them with manufactured precise handwritten letters and signatures of both Huey and Eldridge's handwriting stating Eldridge intended to do serious harm to Huey. The other letter was written to Eldridge by the government in Huey's handwriting stating that Huey intended to shoot Eldridge. This divide and conquer strategy led to the demise of the Black Panther Party, and highly advanced Black Org. of the 1960's for black people trapped in the hells of AmeriKKKa. All this could have been avoided if the Panthers would of adhered to a strict line of above ground armed self defense and an under armed struggle. Out of this unfortunate disaster of the most effective groups of Panther Elders from that period who embody a pessimistic (PTSD) Post-Traumatic Stress Defeatism. There are a few Elders from that era who still have faith in the struggle for freedom so there are some exceptions to the rule, but most Elders from back then took to criticizing the youth for their lack of knowledge of self, fighting each other, and political ways. These parasitic Elders (holier-than-thou), self-righteous elders drop the torch and failed to take responsibility for being manipulated by J. Edgar Hoover's cointelpro into Black (Panther) on Black (Panther) violence themselves.

Instead of being brave and properly educating the youth, the youth inherited the Black on Black violence from these Elders. Some even go as far as to still be foolish enough to feud with each other to this day at different Panther reunions and rallies for political prisoners who are still locked down from back then.

We as Panthers must not allow pride, egoism, factionalism, individualism, commandism and the glamorization of gangsterism and Willie Lynch divide and conquer strategy keep us in bondage. We must communicate to educate, to liberate the poor and oppressed people in our communities and those behind the razor wire. Education will show us how to distinguish correct from incorrect ideology and political line. Revolutionary Education will enable us to build unity and correct the trajectory of our nation, it will enable us to build a united front with other street nations/revolutionaries as part of an overall united Front against this fascist, imperialistic, capitalist system. All Panthers, street tribes and revolutionaries must unite! WE MUST COMBAT ALL STRATAGEMS INTENDED TO DIVIDE US!

UNITE AND TEACH EVERY BROTHER AND SISTER YOU COME ACROSS!!

"ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE NOW AND THEN"!!!

Comrade Optimus Prime,
UNITED LOVE,
PANTHER LOVE,

OLIVER LISTER II
#1279183
B.P.P./N.A.B.P.P.-N.A.S.O.-PC
W.J. Estelle Unit
264 FM 3478
Huntsville, Texas 77320