The Power Of The Black Panther Party Will Never Be Forgotten

By Malaika Jabali · Updated December 5, 2022

Legendary Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton was assassinated by law enforcement on December 4, 1969 in Chicago.

Federal agents and local police authorities, who worked together to kill Hampton in his home, had hoped to stifle a movement. Law enforcement agents surveilled and targeted Black civil rights and Black power activists for many years, working to contain their calls for freedom and economic justice.

Still, Hampton, and the Black Panther Party, have continued to be idolized generations after their rise, when they were at the forefront of a more radical movement for Black liberation.

We’re looking back at their history and are reminded of Hampton’s famous quote: “you can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail a revolution…you might murder a freedom fighter, but you can’t murder freedom fighting.”

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Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) before he joined the Panthers, when he urged Martin Luther King, Jr. to embrace the Black Power movement

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The Panthers wanted to uplift Black people in multiple ways, including by instilling pride in their Blackness

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Kathleen Cleaver, now a lecturer at Emory Law School, joined her Black Panther peers in being a staunch critic of capitalism

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The Black Panthers at the California State Capitol in 1967, boldly embracing their right to bear arms

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A woman outside Harlem’s Black Panther Party headquarters, joined by an iconic image of co-founder Huey Newton

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The Black Panther Party was adamant about providing services to their community, like this free clothing drive in New Haven, Conn.

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Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton on the Yale University campus

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Kwame Ture– a graduate of Howard University (you know!)– at the Mississippi Freedom March

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The Black Panther Party didn’t back down from confronting police power and abuse in the United Sates

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A demonstration outside the New York County Criminal Court, protesting the “Panther 21” trial

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Eldridge Cleaver, husband of Kathleen Cleaver, outside the party’s headquarters in Oakland– where it was founded– after two police officers shot at it

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Eldridge Cleaver and the party’s resident artist Emory Douglas at UC Berkeley

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Afrocentrism was growing as Black freedom movements embraced more radical ideas

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The art of Emory Douglas, who illustrated the group’s newspaper covers as its Minister of Culture, live on