50th Anniv. Black Panther Party Seattle Chapter

   I went to see the exhibit All Power Visual Legacies of The Black Panther Party Movement at  PhotoCenter NW in Seattle.  The photographs are " drawn from a book of the same name and showcases a select group of contemporary black artists, including emerging and internationally acclaimed practitioners, women and men spanning twenty-two to seventy years of age, who have been informed or influenced by The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.
Formed in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, two students at Laney College in Oakland, California, and active for less than twenty years (1966–1982), the Panthers indelibly pierced the public consciousness through its visual code and social platforms. 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Seattle chapter, the first outside of California, and PCNW’s presentation is timed to that."  I found the exhibit very compelling and remember, living in Detroit in the early seventies, that the Black Panthers rans several programs for the poor and many for specifially poor children in the city ...like their free breakfast program.  It seemed to me that the leaders were much maligned and accused of violence and of being terrorists because they began carrying guns....which scared whites and, ironically led to some much strictor gun laws and banning of some guns!!!  All these laws have since been undone as the Black Panther leaders were mostly imprisoned or many shot. 
 "49 years ago a group of 30 Black Panthers walked into the California State Capitol Building carrying shot guns, rifles, and immediately the national headlines began to erupt calling them criminals, terrorists, and disrupters of the federal government. No this is not to compare the objectives of the Black Panthers with those of Ammon Bundy. They fought for different causes and garnered different reactions. On the one hand the one group was fighting to keep the government out of its business (Bundy). The other group fought to make certain that the government would take care of its business (Panthers). Yet the response has been vastly different. As a result of the Black Panthers’ protest at the federal building in California, Don Mulford, a GOP assemblyman representing Oakland, California at the time, responded to this protest by introducing a bill to strip Californians of the right to openly carry firearms. It was known as the “Panthers Bill” and it passed with the support of the National Rifle Association. Then California Governor Ronald Regan, later campaigning for President, as a steadfast defender of the Second Amendment, signed the bill into law. From that point on, the Black Panther Party was noted simply as a group of terrorists, radicals, and disrupters of our system of government. Very little discussion was ever made of their breakfast programs, educational programs, and health care assistance to poor communities which helped propel them as an organization. No I am not a Black Panther. I simply believe in justice for all.'

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