Page 85 - 1619 Project Curriculum
P. 85
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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