3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

were not really saying anything new. In their belief in self-defense, the Panthers were
much more evolutionary than revolutionary . 3 ~
The founding members of the Black Panther Party also heeded Malcolm X, who
encouraged black people to arm themselves to thwart racist police brutality . Bobby Seale
envisioned "a black community group" of some kind "to teach brothers like Malcolm X
said" ; that is, "to righteously defend themselves from racists ."3Z Seale later recalled his
friend, Isaac, who was anxious about Seale's yelling at a policeman . "What you did back
there, hollering at that cop ;' Isaac moaned . `"they'll put us in jail . They'll kill us ." Seale
responded by cursing and flipping through the pages of a pamphlet "trying to find where
Malcolm said every man had a right to keep a shotgun in his home ." 3~ Newton
considered Malcolm's influence "ever-present" in the existence of the BPP, and
~~Afro-Americans had traditionally canied weapons (usually in anticipation of attack
by other blacks), but the Panthers were the i'irst to carry weapons in anticipation of attack
by~~. "In essence," explained John Howard, "[the Panthers have simply taken over
the `self-defense' position advocated by Robert Williams a decade earlier. Most whites
would view the Panthers as revolutionary because they choose to arm themselves, but
many of their goals arc distinctly nonrevolutionary." McCord et . al ., Life Styles in the
Black Ghetto, 24l . Reginald Major recognized the Panthers as "a logical development of
earlier black revolutionary programs, particularly that of Robert Williams, the Muslims,
Malcolm X, and the more activist civil rights organizations like SNCC." See Reginald
Major, A Panther is a Black Cat , (New York: William Morrow & Co . Inc ., 1971), 63 .
Clayborne Carson has argued that while Newton and Seale claimed to have been inspired
by SNCC's accomplishments in the Deep South, "their evolving attitudes about SNCC
revealed little understanding of its history." Carson,~, 278 .
32Seale, A Lonely, 151 .
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