Ode to Our Feminist Foremothers: The Intersectional Black Panther Party History Project on Collaborative Praxis and Fifty Years of Panther History

Abstract

This roundtable describes the creation and evolution of the Intersectional Black Panther Party (BPP) History Project, a feminist collective created by Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Tracye A. Matthews, Mary Phillips, and Robyn C. Spencer, four Black women historians who have spent decades researching and writing about Panther women’s lives. Our discussion centers around the intellectual legacy of the Combahee River Collective to explore the utility of Black feminist methodologies in studying the BPP; the state of the field; silences in the historiography around queer identities, pleasure, and gendering men; and the impact of the crisis facing Black women in the larger society on our work as scholar-activists.

Keywords::

• Black feminism
• Black Panther party
• Black power
• Black women
• Combahee River Collective
• gender
• intersectionality
• sexuality

Notes

Combahee River Collective, “Combahee River Collective. A Black Feminist Statement,” in Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought, edited by Beverly Guy-Sheftall (New York: The New Press, 1995), 233.

Barbara Smith, in Ain’t Gonna let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith, edited by Alethia Jones and Virginia Eubanks with Barbara Smith (New York: SUNY Press, 2014), 282.

Khaleeli Homa, “#Say: Why Kimberle’ Crenshaw is Fighting for Forgotten Women,” The Guardian.com, May 30, 2016.

Toni C. King, Lenora Barnes-Wright, Nancy E. Gibson, Lakesia D. Johnson, Valerie Lee, Betty M. Lovelace, Sonya Turner, and Durene I. Wheeler, “Andrea’s Third Shift: The Invisible Work of African-American Women in Higher Education,” in This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa, and Ana Louise Keating (New York: Routledge, 2002), 405.

Combahee River Collective, 238.

Elsa Barkley Brown, “Polyrhythms and Improvisation: Lessons for Women’s History,” History Workshop 31 (1991): 85–90.

Barbara Smith, Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith (New York: State University of New York, 2014), 241–42.

Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Tracye A. Matthews, Mary Phillips, and Robyn C. Spencer, “A Look Back at the Black Panther Women Amid the Party’s 50th Anniversary,” Vibe Magazine, https://www.vibe.com/2016/11/impact-of-black-panther-women/ (accessed August 28, 2017), Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Tracye A. Matthews, Mary Phillips, and Robyn C. Spencer, “#Sayhername: A Black Feminist Guide to the Black Panther Party’s 50th Anniversary Conference and Gala,” Black Youth Project, http://blackyouthproject.com/sayhername-a-black-feminist-guide-to-the-black-panther-partys-50th-anniversary-conference-and-gala/ (accessed August 28, 2017), Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Tracye A. Matthews, Mary Phillips, and Robyn C. Spencer, “Love Liberation: A Black Feminist Guide to the 50th Anniversary Conference and Gala in Oakland, CA,” Black Youth Project, http://blackyouthproject.com/love-liberation-a-black-feminist-guide-to-the-black-panther-partys-50th-anniversary-conference-and-gala/ (accessed August 28, 2017); Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Tracye A. Matthews, Mary Phillips, and Robyn C. Spencer, “Women of the Black Panther Party Reflect on Today’s Struggle, Staying Engaged, and Why Trump’s Win Might be a Good Thing,” Colorlines, https://www.colorlines.com/articles/women-black-panther-party-reflect-todays-struggle-staying-engaged-and-why-trumps-win-might (accessed August 28, 2017); Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Tracye A. Matthews, Mary Phillips, and Robyn C. Spencer, “From Boom Boxes to Writing Panther History: Our Collective Soundtrack,” NewBlackMan (in Exile), http://www.newblackmaninexile.net/2017/05/from-boom-boxes-to-writing-panther.html (accessed August 28, 2017); Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Tracye A. Matthews, Mary Phillips, and Robyn C. Spencer, “Herstories: Writing Black Panther Women’s History,” Black Perspectives, http://www.aaihs.org/herstories-writing-black-panther-womens-history/ (accessed August 28, 2017).

Stephanie Camp, “The Pleasures of Resistance: Enslaved Women and Body Politics in the Plantation South, 1830–1861,” The Journal of Southern History 68.3 (2002): 533–72.

Some examples of the literature on Panther women: Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, “‘The Most Qualified Person to Handle the Job’: Black Panther Party Women, 1966–1982,” in The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, edited by Charles Jones (Black Classic Press, 1998), 305–334; Ericka Huggins and Angela LeBlanc-Ernest, “Revolutionary Women, Revolutionary Education: The Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School,” in Want to Start a Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle, edited by Dayo F. Gore, Jeanne Theoharis, and Komozi Woodard (New York: New York University Press, 2009): 161–84; L. A. Lumsden, “Good Mothers with Guns: Framing Black Womanhood in the Black Panther, 1968–1980,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 86, no. 4 (2009): 900–22; Tracye Matthews, “Gender Politics and Leadership in the Black Panther Party,” in Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Panther Movement, edited by Bettye Collier-Thomas and V. P. Franklin (New York: New York University Press, 2001); Tracye Matthews, “‘No One Ever Asks, What a Man’s Role in the Revolution Is’: Gender and the Politics of The Black Panther Party,” in The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, edited by Charles Jones (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998), 267–304; Mary Phillips and Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, “The Hidden Narratives: Recovering and (Re)Visioning the Community Activism of Men in the Black Panther Party,” Spectrum: Journal on Black Men 5, no. 1 (2016, October): 63–89; Mary Phillips, “The Power of the First-Person Narrative: Ericka Huggins and the Black Panther Party,” Women’s Studies Quarterly: The 1970’s 43, no. 3–4 (2015, Fall/Winter): 33–51; Mary Phillips, “The Feminist Leadership of Ericka Huggins in the Black Panther Party,” Black Diaspora Review 4, no. 1 (2014): 187–218; Robyn Ceanne Spencer, “Engendering the Black Freedom Struggle: Revolutionary Black Womanhood and the Black Panther Party in the Bay Area, California,” Journal of Women’s History 20, no. 1 (2008): 90–113; Joy James, “Framing the Panther: Assata Shakur and Black Female Agency,” in Want to Start a Revolution?: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle, edited by Dayo F. Gore, Jeanne Theoharis, and Komozi Woodard (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 138–60; Jakobi Williams, “‘Don’t no Woman have to do Nothing She Don’t Want to do’: Gender, Activism, and the Illinois Black Panther Party,” Black Women, Gender + Families 6, no. 2 (2012): 29; Robyn C. Spencer, The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender and the Black Panther Party in Oakland (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016); Jane Rhodes, “Black Radicalism in 1960s California: Women in the Black Panther Party,” in African American Women Confront the West: 1600–2000, edited by Quintard Taylor and Shirley Ann Wilson Moore (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003): 346–62; Amy Washburn, “The Pen of the Panther: Barriers and Freedom in the Prison Poetry of Ericka Huggins,” Journal of Radicalism, 8, no. 2 (2014): 51–78; Rhonda Y. Williams, “Revolution, Struggle, and Resilience: Women in the Black Panther Party,” in The Black Panthers: Portraits from an Unfinished Revolution, edited by Bryan Shih and Yohuru Williams (New York: Nation Books, 2016): 102–10; Antwanisha Alameen-Shavers, “The Woman Question: Gender Dynamics within the Black Panther Party,” Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men 5, no. 1 (2016): 33–62; Lisa Rofel and Jeremy Tai, “A Conversation with Ericka Huggins,” Feminist Studies 42, no. 1 (2016): 236–48.

Nevline Nnaji, Reflections Unheard: Black Women in Civil Rights (2013) digital video, http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c877.shtml and “Comrade Sister: Voices of Women in the Black Panther Party,” unreleased documentary, 1995 are important exceptions to this.

Combahee River Collective, 237.

Akoto Ofori-Atta, “The Root Interview: Beverly Guy-Shefthall on Black Feminism,” The Root.com, http://www.theroot.com/the-root-interview-beverly-guy-sheftall-on-Black-femin-1790881726 (accessed August 28, 2017).

Stanley Nelson, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Firelight Films, Inc. (Arlington, VA: PBS Distribution, 2016).

Dexter Thomas, “Why Everyone’s Saying ‘Black Girls are Magic?’” Los Angeles Times, September 9, 2015, http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-everyones-saying-black-girls-are-magic-20150909-htmlstory.html

Letter From Dale To Huey, October 4, 1977. Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation Inc. Collection, M0864. Dept. of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA.

Salamishah Tillet, “The Panthers Revolutionary Feminism,” The New York Times, October 2, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/movies/the-panthers-revolutionary-feminism.html.

Panther Sisters on Women’s Liberation, September 1969, http://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC513_scans/BPP_Women/513.BPP.women.panther.sisters.womens.liberation.1969.pdf.

Combahee River Collective, 235.

Kathleen Cleaver, “Women, Power and Revolution,” in Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and their Legacy, edited by Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas (New York: Routledge, 2001), 123–27.

Some examples include: Dayo F. Gore, Jeanne Theoharis, and Komozi Woodard, eds., Want to Start a Revolution: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle (New York: NYU Press 2009); Premilla Nadasen, Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States (New York: Routledge, 2005); Williams, “Black Women, Urban Politics, and Engendering Black Power”; and Stephen Ward, “The Third World Women’s Alliance: Black Feminist Radicalism and Black Power Politics,” in The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights—Black Power Era, edited by Peniel Joseph (New York: Routledge, 2006); Kimberly Springer, ed., Still Lifting, Still Climbing: African American Women’s Contemporary Activism (New York: NYU Press, 1999); Sherie M. Randolph, Florynce “Flo” Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

Jennifer C. Nash, “Theorizing Pleasure: New Directions in Black Feminist Studies,” Feminist Studies 38, no. 2 (2012): 514. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23269198.

Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1987), 37.

William L. Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); John H Bracey, Sonia Sanchez, and James Smethurst Amherst, SOS—Calling All Black People: A Black Arts Movement Reader (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014); Lisa Gail Collins and Margo Natalie Crawford, eds., New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers, The State University, 2006).

Stephen Shames, The Black Panthers: Photographs by Stephen Shames (New York: Aperture, 2006).

Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones, The Vanguard. A Photographic Essay on the Black Panthers (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970); Joe Louis Moore, The Legacy of the Panthers: A Photographic Exhibition (Berkeley: Inkworks Press, 1995); Suzun Lucia Lamaina, Revolutionary Grain: Celebrating the Spirit of the Black Panthers in Portraits and Stories (Lincoln: Infusionmedia, 2016); Bryan Shih and Yohuru R. Williams, The Black Panthers: Portraits from an Unfinished Revolution (New York: Nation Books, 2016); Stephen Shames, Eric Himmel, and Bobby Seale, Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers (New York: Abrams, 2016).

Rickey Vincent and Boots Riley, Party Music: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers’ Band and How Black Power Transformed Soul Music (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2013); William Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: Black Power and American Culture, 1965–1975 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).

Assorted Son of Man Temple Fliers in the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation Inc. collection, M0864. Dept. of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.

Ericka Huggins interview Mary Phillips, April 16, 2010.

Sam Durant, ed., Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2014).

Katherine Campbell, Interview by Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest. Tape Recording, San Francisco, January 25, 1992. Campbell also was a graphic design student before joining the Black Panther Party.

Melvin Van Peebles, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. DVD. Directed by Melvin Van Peebles (Santa Monica: Xenon Pictures, 1971).

Huey P. Newton, “He Won’t Bleed Me: A Revolutionary Analysis of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, June 19, 1971,” in To Die for the People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton, edited by Toni Morrison (New York: Writers and Readers Publishing, Inc., 1995), 112–47.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall, “Epilogue: Reflections on Black Manhood,” in Traps: African American Men on Gender and Sexuality, edited by Rudolph Byrd and Beverly Guy-Sheftall (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001), 342.

Combahee River Collective, 235.

Mary Phillips and Angela LeBlanc-Ernest, “The Hidden Narratives: Recovering and (Re)Visioning the Community Activism of Men in the Black Panther Party,” Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men 5.1 (Fall 2016): 63–89.

For photographs, see, for example, Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones, Black Panthers: 1968 (Los Angeles: Greybull Press, 2002).

Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (Oakland: University of California Press, 2013).

Stanley Nelson, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution. DVD. Directed by Stanley Nelson (Firelight Films, 2015).

Combahee River Collective, 232.

Ibid., 234.

Cathy Cohen. “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 3, no. 4 (1997): 438.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, ed., How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017). In 2017, the theme for the National Women’s Studies Association’s annual meeting centered around the Combahee River Collective and this same year, Barnard Center for Research on Women hosted the “Combahee River Collective Mixtape: Black Feminist Sonic Dissent Then & Now” at Barnard College.

Comments on the panel, “Love Liberation: 50 Years of Black Panther Party History,” December 5, 2016, University of Chicago, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAPbog2PbY0 (accessed August 28, 2017).

Quote taken from the “BPP Ten Point Platform and Program: What We Want, What We Believe.” Bobby Seale, Seize the Time (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 68.

Kirsten West Savali, “Sean Spicer, Joe Walsh, and Bill O’Reilly: Your Hatred For Black Women is Showing,” The Root.com, http://www.theroot.com/sean-spicer-joe-walsh-and-bill-o-reilly-your-hatred-f-1793747707?rev=1490811707269 (accessed March 29, 2017).

Combahee River Collective, 232.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mary Phillips

Mary Phillips is an assistant professor of Africana Studies at Lehman College/CUNY and author of a forthcoming biography of Panther leader Ericka Huggins, A Spirit on a Sword: Ericka Huggins’ Life as a Panther, Educator, and Activist. Her research explores the modern Black Freedom struggle, Black feminism, and 20th-century African American women’s history.

Robyn C. Spencer

Robyn C. Spencer is an associate professor of History at Lehman College/CUNY and author of The Revolution has Come: Black Power, Gender and the Black Panther Party in Oakland. Her research interests are centered around Black radicalism, gender, and post- World War II social movements.

Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest

Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest is a Houston-based independent scholar and filmmaker working on a film, Point 5: The Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School. Her research interests include 20th-century social movements, women’s history, and the community-based organizing programs of the Black Panther Party.

Tracye A. Matthews

Tracye A. Matthews is a curator, documentary filmmaker, and associate director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago. She recently produced the film ’63 Boycott with Kartemquin Films and is completing a semi-autobiographical, experimental documentary on adoption in Black communities. Her research interests include race, gender, and sexuality in 20th-century Black Freedom movements; Black publics and archives; and the role of scholars in social justice movements.