Did You Know?
- The group’s original name was The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.
- Two-thirds of Black Panther Party members were women.
- The Panthers’ Ten-Point Platform articulated a vision for a just future for Americans of all backgrounds.
- The Panthers’ Free Breakfast for Schoolchildren program fed thousands of children every day in cities across the country.
- The Panthers founded People’s Free Medical Clinics nationwide. Their health care advocacy inspired the federal government to invest in widespread sickle-cell anemia screening and research.
- The FBI launched an elaborate counterintelligence program designed to target, discredit and destroy Black activists like the Panthers.
Ten-Point Platform and Program
The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Platform and Program offers an overview of the broad scope of their work. Beginning in December 2020, we’ll focus on one point per month for each of the next ten months, counting down to the book release of Revolution in Our Time.
credit: Roz Payne Archive
The Music of a Movement
For the Panthers, everything was political, including art and entertainment. Music offered an important outlet for expressing the realities of Black Americans’ despair as well as capturing the hope of the movement. Click here for background notes about the songs on the Revolution in Our Time playlist.
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- credit: Pirkle Jones
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- credit: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
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- credit: Pirkle Jones
About the Author
Kekla Magoon’s The Rock and the River was the first mainstream novel for young people to feature the Black Panther Party. Writing that novel and its companion, Fire in the Streets, inspired Kekla to begin the research process for Revolution in Our Time. She has visited museums, archives, and historical sites across the country over the past ten years, in addition to reading, watching films, meeting former Panthers, and attending Panther legacy events. Throughout 2021, she will blog about the Panthers and her research process and share recommended resources for teaching this history.
Kekla is the award-winning author of over a dozen books for young readers, including The Season of Styx Malone, How It Went Down, Light It Up, and X: A Novel, co-written with Ilyasah Shabazz. She has received the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the NAACP Image Award, and three Coretta Scott King Honors for her work, as well as being longlisted for the National Book Award. Kekla grew up in Indiana, was a longtime NYC resident, and now lives in Vermont, where she serves on the faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts. To learn about other aspects of Kekla’s work, visit her author site.