Page 85 - 1619 Project Curriculum
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August 18, 2019


                                                                         against African-Americans,

          ⬤ Oct. 15, 1966: In response to police brutality


                                                         Newton and Bobby Seale create the Black Panther
          the Merritt College students Huey

          Party
                  for Self-Defense. The organization, declared an enemy of the government by




              J. Edgar Hoover’s F.B.I., holds that ending the economic exploitation of black people
              is central to achieving racial equity.

































                                                                            With   a line from Tavia Nyong’o



                                          Anything that   wants to be can be a panther. The black lion
                                          or ocelot, the black cheetah or cornrowed uptown girl sprinting
                                          up her neighborhood block just like one, in dogged pursuit

                                          of the future   world. In this frame, I imagine Huey and Bobby

                                          as boys in the sense of gender and genre alike, an unbroken
                                                                    for the other. Before black berets

                                          line reading: my life is an armor
                                          or free breakfasts, then, there is friendship. Before gun laws
                                          shifting in the wake of organized strength, leather jackets
                                          shimmering like gypsum in the Northern California twilight —
                                          or else magazine covers running the world over, compelling
                                          everyday ordinary   people across the spectrum of context
                                          or color to sing   who wants to be a panther ought to be he can be it




                                          — there is love.   The panther is a virtual animal. The panther



                                          strikes only   when it has been assailed. The panther is a human
                                          vision, interminable refusal, our common call to adore ourselves


                                          as   what we are and live and die on terms we fashioned from the earth
                                          like this. Our precious metal metonym. Our   style of fire and stone.



          By Joshua       Bennett
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