Black Panthers Quotes

“We don’t think you fight fire with fire best ; we think you fight fire with water best. We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism. We’re stood up and said we’re not going to fight reactionary pigs and reactionary state’s attorneys like this and reactionary state’s attorneys like Hanrahan with any other reactions on our part. We’re going to fight their reactions with all of us people getting together and having an international proletarian revolution.”
― Fred Hampton

“You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can't jail the Revolution.”
― Fred Hampton

“On Slavery: The saddest slap in the face is we have NO monument, no real statues or memorials, no special day of Atonement or Remembrance (NOT ONE), no thanks for 400+ years of free labor, forced servitude across the Trans-Atlantic, ass beatings, buying ourselves and families out of slavery, rape and plunder...but everyone else has monuments, special museums, and even movies. This is what America thinks of black people, so-called black president and all, who has been largely silent on this subject...we'll even celebrate Leprechauns, Easter Bunnies, and Secretary's Day before we acknowledge our history.”
― Brandi L. Bates

“I'm not quite sure what freedom is, but i know damn well what it ain't. How have we gotten so silly, i wonder.”
― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

“First you have free breakfasts, then you have free medical care, then you have free bus rides, and soon you have FREEDOM!”
― Fred Hampton

“...I never once believed what they wanted us to believe - that we as black people are inferior to whites...”
― Darcus Howe

“As much as they were concerned about the police, the Panthers also took seriously the threat of crime and sought to address the fears of the community they served. With this in mind, they organized Seniors Against a Fearful Environment (SAFE), an escort and bussing service in which young Black people accompanied the elderly on their business around the city. In Los Angeles, when the Party opened an office on Central Avenue, they immediately set about running the drug dealers out of the area. And in Philadelphia, neighbors reported a decrease in violent crime after the Party opened their office, and an increase after the office closed. There, the BPP paid particular attention to gang violence, organizing truces and recruiting gang members to help with the survival programs. It may be that the Panthers reduced crime by virtue of their very existence. Crime, and gang violence especially, dropped during the period of their activity, in part (in the estimate of sociologist Lewis Yablonsky) because the BPP and similar groups “channeled young black and Chicano youth who might have participated in gangbanging violence into relatively positive efforts for social change through political activities.”
― Kristian Williams, Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America

“In the white newspapers, they use it against us. They make the Panthers look like we all just want to rip the throats out of some white folks for no good reason. We have good reasons, but we still don't want to do that.”
― Kekla Magoon, Fire in the Streets

“The high point of the struggle against domination was the historic movement of liberation, be it political, sexual or otherwise - a continuous movement, with guiding ideas and visible actors.
But liberation also occurred with exchanges and markets, which brings us to this terrifying paradox: all of the liberation fights against domination only paved the way for hegemony, the reign of general exchange -against which there is no possible revolution, since everything is already liberated.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Agony of Power

“A friend once told me a story about a former Black Panther leader in a Midwest community who in the 1960s had his phone tapped, while federal agents followed him everywhere. Forced to go underground, he later entered the drug trade & eventually got good at it. However, he told my friend, soon after this nobody kept tabs on him--he wasn't followed or harassed. He later became the number one drug dealer in the area. As he said this, my friend noted a breaking in his voice; the pain, perhaps, of being pushed away from being a committed community activist.”
― Luis J. Rodríguez, Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times

“In Oakland, they started a free breakfast program
so that poor kids can have a meal
before starting their school day. Pancakes,”
― Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming

“This is the time our leaders has warned us about! This is the time our black panthers have been waiting for us to unite, until equality, we fight for respect & we never give up until we die trying.”
― F.M. Sogamiah

“The FBI nicknamed the program COINTELPRO, as a shorthand for "counterintelligence program." COINTELPRO originated in the 1950s, to prevent socialist movements from developing in the United States, and the program rose to new heights in the Black Power era. Even prior to Stokely Carmichael's first calls for Black Power in 1966, the FBI was organizing to undermine civil rights movement efforts. The Black organizations they labeled as "militant' included not only Stokely's SNCC but also the Rev. Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a group that never wavered in its dedication to nonviolent civil disobedience. Between 1963 and 1971, the FBI ran nearly three hundred separate COINTELPRO operations against Black nationalist groups, the majority of which targeted the Black Panther Party. The program's major goals were to:
1. Prevent the coalition of militant Black nationalist groups, as there would be strength in unity.
2. Prevent the rise of a "messiah" who could unify and electrify the movement, such as the Rev. Dr. King or Malcolm X.
3. Prevent violence, ideally by neutralizing movement leaders before they could become violent.
4. Prevent Black nationalist leaders from gaining respectability, ideally by discrediting them in the eyes of white people, Black people, and radicals of all races.
5. Prevent young people from joining the groups and increasing their membership base.”
― Kekla Magoon, Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party's Promise to the People

“Thus did African American men at Ionia [Hospital] develop schizophrenia, not because of changes in their clinical presentations, but because of changes in the connections between their clinical presentations and larger, national conversations about race, violence, and insanity. And thus did the men develop schizophrenia not because of symptoms, but because of civil rights.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease