Women, power, and revolution

Abstract

Abstract

The relevant way to understand gender dynamics inside the Black Panther Party starts with this question: “How could a young black woman raised during the 1950s find someplace to take collective action against the repressive social conditions she faced and bring about revolutionary change?” The conventional assumption that somehow being part of a revolutionary movement was in conflict with appropriate conduct for a woman has grown more sophisticated; now the assumption most gender questions voice is that feminist concerns could not have been addressed within an armed, black revolutionary organization. In reality, the women who filled the ranks of our organization did not have specifically designated sex roles. According to a survey Bobby Seale conducted in 1969, two‐thirds of the members of the Black Panther Party were women. What I think is distinctive about gender relations within the Black Panther Party is not how they duplicated what was going on in the misogynous and authoritarian larger world, but how it positioned women to contest discrimination, abuse, and sexism. The Black Panther Party continued to struggle for the rights and freedom that our people have demanded for over a century, stated in post‐Civil War conventions, in civil rights protests, and African liberation struggles against colonial domination. This is what the women who flocked into the Black Panther Party were fighting to achieve, and it must be in this context that gender dynamics are discussed, placing Black Panther women within the tradition of freedom fighters who insisted that their gender, their race, and their humanity all be respected at the same time.

Notes

This is a revised version of a speech given at Howard University's Mooreland‐Springarn Library on October 16, 1998 during a symposium for the book, the Black Panther Party [Reconsidered], edited by Charles Jones (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998).