“All Power to the People”: The Black Panther Party’s Pedagogy of Liberation

In 1969, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale opened the first branch of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) in Oakland, California. The party was based on a Ten-Point Program with community education as a central tenet.

The program states: “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.”

For the BPP, theory and praxis had to go hand in hand. To achieve this goal, they implemented several community programs, including breakfast for schoolchildren, community schools, voter registration, and medical clinics.

In the handbook for the Oakland Community School, Newton writes on the first page: “What is it that cannot be taught or learned. It is a realization. One can have knowledge without understanding. But there is no understanding without knowledge.”

In this workshop, we will not only learn more about the BPP’s pedagogy of liberation and its relevance for today, but will also put it into practice.

Suggested reading: an extract from The Black Panther Party Service to the People Programs.