THE
BLACK PANTHER PARTY
Platform & Program
October 1966
WHAT WE WANT
WHAT WE BELIEVE
1. WE WANT freedom. We want power to
determine the destiny of our Black Community.
WE BELIEVE that black people will not be
free until we are able to determine our destiny.
2. WE WANT full employment for our people.
WE BELIEVE that the federal government is
responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a
guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American
businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of
production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in
the community so that the people of the community can organize
and employ all of its people and give a high standard of
living.
3. WE WANT an end to the robbery by the
CAPITALIST of our Black Community.
WE BELIEVE that this racist government has
robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty
acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised
100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder
of black people. We will accept the payment in currency which
will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are
now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish
people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American
racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million
black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand
that we make.
4. WE WANT decent housing, fit for the
shelter of human beings.
WE BELIEVE that if the white landlords will
not give decent housing to our black community, then the
housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that
our community, with government aid, can build and make decent
housing for its people.
5. WE WANT education for our people that
exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We
want education that teaches us our true history and our role
in the present-day society.
WE BELIEVE in an educational system that
will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not
have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the
world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.
6. WE WANT all black men to be exempt from
military service.
WE BELIEVE that Black people should not be
forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist
government that does not protect us. We will not fight and
kill other people of color in the world who, like black
people, are being victimized by the white racist government of
America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence
of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever
means necessary.
7. WE WANT an immediate end to POLICE
BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.
WE BELIEVE we can end police brutality in
our black community by organizing black self-defense groups
that are dedicated to defending our black community from
racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment
to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear
arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm
themselves for self- defense.
8. WE WANT freedom for all black men held in
federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.
WE BELIEVE that all black people should be
released from the many jails and prisons because they have not
received a fair and impartial trial.
9. WE WANT all black people when brought to
trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or
people from their black communities, as defined by the
Constitution of the United States.
WE BELIEVE that the courts should follow the
United States Constitution so that black people will receive
fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives
a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a
person from a similar economic, social, religious,
geographical, environmental, historical and racial background.
To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the
black community from which the black defendant came. We have
been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no
understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the
black community.
10. WE WANT land, bread, housing, education,
clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political
objective, a United Nations supervised plebiscite to be held
throughout the black colony in which only black colonial
subjects will be allowed to participate, for the purpose of
determining the will of black people as to their national
destiny.
WHEN, in the course of human events, it
becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political
bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume,
among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station
to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a
decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they
should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
WE HOLD these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. **That, to secure
these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed; that,
whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it,
and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on
such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to
them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and
happiness.** Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments
long established should not be changed for light and transient
causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown, that
mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are
sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms
to which they are accustomed. **But, when a long train of
abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object,
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it
is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
government, and to provide new guards for their future
security.**
Republished in 1995 by the Maoist
Internationalist Movement (MIM). Reprint and redistribute
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Revolutionary Nationalism on the Communist Road," which
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Related Links:
Hillary
and the Lynch Mob
Two Controversial Cases in New Haven
History: The Amistad Affair (1839) and The Black Panther
Trials (1970)
