We Can’t Stop Looking at These Unforgettable Images of the Black Panthers – Mark Murrmann / Mother Jones
1971 - Oakland, California, USA: Black Panther children in a classroom at the Intercommunal Youth Institute, the Black Panther school. (Stephen Shames/Polaris)
The Children's House, The Intercommunal Youth Institute and the Oakland Community School. In 1970, in Oakland, David Hilliard created the idea for the first full time liberation day school. This school, and its attendant dormitories in Oakland and Berkeley, was simply called the Children’s House. This school concept, directed by Majeda Smith and a team of BPP members became the way in which sons and daughters of BPP members were educated. Staff and instructors were Black Panther Party members.
In 1971 this school moved into a large building in Berkeley and then to the Fruitvale area of Oakland. The Children’s House was eventually renamed the Intercommunal Youth Institute (IYI). Under the leadership of Brenda Bay, the IYI served BPP families and a few nearby families in the Fruitvale area, maintaining a day school program and dormitory with 50 children, for two years.
The Black Panther Party was one of the most influential responses to racism and inequality in American history. The Panthers advocated armed self-defense to counter police brutality, and initiated a program of patrolling the police with guns and law books. Their enduring legacy is their programs, like Free Breakfast for Children, which helped to inspire a national movement of community organizing for economic independence, education, nutrition, and health care. Seale believed that “no kid should be running around hungry in school,” a simple credo that lead FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to call the breakfast program, “the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for.”
For the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party, two exceptional new books take on the legacy and history of one of the most powerful and controversial community empowerment movements in America. One book offers a succinct but in-depth history of the party at its peak. The other scratches the itch that always surfaces around anniversaries like this, asking, “Where are they now?”
Dr. Ronald J. Sheehy, molecular biologist, retired university administrator, a frequent contributor to Salon, is the author of numerous articles on race, and a memoir, Possibilities: A Search for Personal Liberation.
For the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party, two exceptional new books take on the legacy and history of one of the most powerful and controversial community empowerment movements in America. One book offers a succinct but in-depth history of the party at its peak. The other scratches the itch that always surfaces around anniversaries like this, asking, “Where are they now?”
