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

the Panthen: in an essay entitled `"fhe Original Vision of the Black Panther Party,"
published as a thin pamphlet in 1973 . `"fhe original vision of the Black Panther Party,"
he explained, "was to serve the needs of the oppressed people in our communities and
defend them against their oppressors ." In this document, Newton presented the Ten Point
Program as an expression of revolution, which is itself a process; therefore, he explained,
he had designed the Program as an evolutionary document which would change and adapt
to the people's needs, rather than as a manifesto.~ e
The rhetoric of the pamphlet, like that of many Panther speeches, was wooden and
doctrinal . It referred to oppressed blacks in typically Marxist terminology as the
"lumpenproletariat," and decried taxes, war, ethnocentric education, malnutrition,
poverty, and sickle cell anemia, among a host of other ills plaguing blacks in Oakland.
But it also revealed much about how Newton wanted the Panthers to be rcmember+ed . He
noted that democracy in America "means nothing more than the domination of the
majority over the minority"; upsetting this power balance was an appropriate response for
any minority . In response to such activism, Newton wrote that he and Seale "exported
repression" from the government ; accordingly, they prepared to meet force with force.
Newton delineated the causes ofthe evils afflicting Afro-Americans . Since all
institutions were aligned against him, a black man has a right to arm himself for self-
~gHuey Newton, The Original Vision of the Black Panther Party (Oakland, CA : Black
Panther Party, 1973), pamphlet, Bancroft Collection on Social Protest Movements,
Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley . In actuality, the Ten Point Program contained twenty
points, with practice expressed in the cation "What We Want" and theory expressed in
"What We Believe:'
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