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

not own any Isnd. He does not represent economic or industrial power because
Black people do not own the means of production . The only way he can become
political is to represent what is commonly called a military power--which the
BLACK PANTHER PARTY FOR SELF-DEFENSE calls Self-Defense Power.
Black people can develop Self-Defense Power by arming themselves from house
to house, block to block, community to community, throughout the nation . Then
we will choose a political representative and he will state to the power structure
the desire of the Black masses . If the desires are met, the power structure will
eeceive a political consequence.~~
The "political consequence" to which Newton refereed was force, or what he called "Self-
Defense Power," which offered blacks political leverage . In this way, the Black Panther
Party politicized the issue of self-defense at the same time as it made self-defense a
matter for public, not private, concern .
In some sense, claiming self-defense against police aggression as a black person
was revolutionary, particularly considering the state of affairs in Oakland; however, self-
defense generally requires some element of innocence, if not an absence of wrongdoing,
and the Panthers' public personas was far from pristine. Their aggressive rhetoric,
specifically, gained them little sympathy in the public eye . Certain slogans, such as "Off
the pig" and "Guns baby guns" did little to ingratiate them to the white public, and the
use of coarse language also offended many whites . David Hilliard alarmed and
frightened many when he announced that the Panthers would "kill Richard Nixon" if he
"stood in the way of our freedom: 'n
~~The Black Panther (January 17, 1969).
~2Hilliard, quoted in "The Hlack Panther Party: Its Origin and Development as
Reflected in Its Official Weekly NewspaperThe Black Panther Black Community News
wire ," A Staff Study by the Committee on Internal Security, U.S . Congress, House of
Representatives, 91st Congress, Saond Session, October 6, 1971 (Washington, D.C . :
U.S . Government Printing Office, 1971), 17. For more on this incident, see "U.S . Agents
17 8