New Black Panther Party facts for kids

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Quick facts for kids New Black Panther Party

Chairperson	Krystal Muhammad
Founder	Aaron Michaels
Founded	1992; 32 years ago (1992)
Headquarters	Dallas, Texas
Ideology	Anti-capitalism Anti-imperialism Black nationalism Black separatism
Colors	Black Red and Green
Slogan	"Freedom or Death"
Party flag

Politics of United States Political parties

The New Black Panther Party (NBPP) is an American black nationalist organization founded in Dallas, Texas, in 1989. Despite its name, the NBPP is not an official successor to the Black Panther Party. Members of the original Black Panther Party have insisted that the new party has no legitimacy and "there is no new Black Panther Party".

The New Black Panther Party traces its origins to the Black Panther Militia created in 1990 by original Panther Michael McGee in Milwaukee. However, as McGee expanded his organisation, it later came under the control of Aaron Michaels in Dallas. In turn, Aaron Michaels lost control of the leadership of the group to Khalid Abdul Muhammad, a former leading member of the Nation of Islam, who proceeded to fill the ranks of the New Panthers with ex-Nation of Islam members and other Black Muslims. Under Muhammad and his successors' leadership, the New Panthers shifted radically from the ideology of the original Black Panther Party towards an extremist form of Black nationalism.

The New Black Panther Party is currently led by Krystal Muhammad. Malik Zulu Shabazz announced on an October 14, 2013 online radio broadcast that he was stepping down and that Hashim Nzinga, then national chief of staff, would replace him. This move created a schism within the group. A vote was held and Krystal Muhammad was elected leader of the group. However, those loyal to Nzinga left and formed a splinter group called the "New Black Panther Party for Self Defence" or "NBPP SD".

The Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights consider the New Black Panthers to be a hate group, accusing it and its leaders of racism, antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

History
Ideology
Organisation
Criticism
See also

History

In 1987, Michael McGee, an alderman in Milwaukee, threatened to disrupt white events throughout the city unless more jobs were created for black people. He held a "state of the inner city" press conference in 1990 at City Hall to announce the creation of the Black Panther Militia. Aaron Michaels, a community activist and radio producer in Dallas, Texas established a chapter of the Black Panther Militia in 1992, but choose to refer to his chapter as "The New Black Panther Party".

Over time, McGee lost influence over the overall groups while Michaels' grew, and eventually, it would be Aaron Michaels who took overall leadership of the Panthers groups, now using "New Black Panther Party" as their banner. Michaels became more and more radical, and so too did the group.

In 1994, Khalid Abdul Muhammad, a prominent member of the Nation of Islam, survived an assassination attempt from a former member of that group. Following the attempt on his life, Muhammad left the Nation of Islam and went to Dallas to recover, and it was during this time that Muhammad became aligned to Aaron Michaels, and subsequently joined the NBPP. By 1998 Muhammad had seized entire control of the NBPP from Michaels by filling with former members of the Nation of Islam and other Black Muslims. In 2012, Michaels claimed it was at this point he departed from the NBPP.

In 1997, the New Black Panther Party held a "Panther Submit", inviting other "Panther-like" organisations to meet them and discuss ways to create a national Panther movement out of the various Panther groups which had sprung up during the 1990s. The submit successfully convinced the New African American Vanguard Movement of Los Angeles, led by former panther B. Kwaku Duren, to change their name to New Panther Vanguard Movement. It also led to the various chapters of the Black Panther Militia in Milwaukee and Dallas formally merging into the New Black Panther Party.

In 1998, Khalid Abdul Muhammad brought the organization into the national spotlight when he led an armed group of NBPP members to provide armed protection to the family of James Byrd Jr., who had just been murdered in Jasper, Texas by three white supremacists. Events escalated into a confrontation between the NBPP and the Ku Klux Klan. Muhammad continued to seek out high profile and confrontational events, and that same year sought to organise a "Million Youth March" in Harlem, New York City. On the surface, the purpose of the march was to build solidarity amongst the black youth of America but Muhammad also sought to march into the heartland of Nation of Islam support and demonstrate he had a group to compete for their support. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani sought to block the march but was overruled by a federal judge. The March went ahead on 5 September 1998 and Muhammad gave a racist and anti-semitic speech to an audience of 6,000. When the police attempted to end the march at the designated end time, Muhammad encouraged those in attendance to physically confront them, leading to a riot. It was in this same time period that Muhammad and the NBPP featured in an episode of Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends entitled "Black Nationalism".

Khalid Muhammad died of a brain aneurysm on February 17, 2002, and succeeded by Malik Zulu Shabazz, a protege of Muhammad's as well as his personal attorney. Like Muhammad, Shabazz continued to push the NBPP in more and more of an anti-Semitic and racial segregationist direction. Under Shabazz's leadership, the group would continue to appear across America during instances of racial tension and conflict, however, Shabazz was never able to return the group to the high profile it had in the media and public's mind during Muhammad's time.

Ideology

The New Black Panther Party identifies with the original Black Panther Party and it claims to uphold its legacy. It also says that many others see the organization similarly. The NBPP is largely seen by both the general public and prominent members of the original party as illegitimate. Huey Newton Foundation members, containing a significant number of the original party's leaders, once successfully sued the group; their ultimate objective in doing so—to prevent the NBPP from using the Panther name—appears to have been unsuccessful. In response to the suit, Aaron Michaels branded the original Panthers "has-been wannabe Panthers", adding: "Nobody can tell us who we can call ourselves."

Although the NBPP says it sees capitalism as the fundamental problem with the world and revolution as the solution, the new party does not draw its influences from Marxism or Maoism as the original party did. Instead, it promotes the Kawaida theory of Maulana Karenga, which includes black unity, collective action, and cooperative economics. The NBPP says it fights the oppression of black and brown people and that its members are on top of current issues facing black communities across the world. Also, it notes that not all of its members are members of the Nation of Islam, although the group acknowledges universal spirituality practices within the organization.

Over time, many groups subscribing to varying degrees of radicalism have called for the "right to self-determination" for black people, particularly US blacks. Critics of the NBPP say that the group's politics represent a dangerous departure from the original intent of black nationalism; specifically, that they are starkly anti-white, and also antisemitic. The group blames the September 11 attacks on Jews. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the NBPP as a black separatist hate group and says that its leaders "have advocated the killing of Jews and white people".

Organisation

Membership size

As of 2009, the NBPP claimed a few thousand members organized in 45 chapters, while independent estimates by the Anti-Defamation League suggest that the group is much smaller but is nevertheless able to attract a large turnout of non-members to its events by focusing on specific issues of local interest.

French Wing

In April 2010, Malik Zulu Shabazz appointed French Black leader Kémi Séba as the representative of the movement in France. However, Séba left the position in 2011.

2013 schism

In October 2013, Malik Zulu Shabazz announced he was stepping down as leader of the organisation. He attempted to place Hashim Nzinga as his main successor. However, this move prompted a body of the group to gather for a meeting, where they elected Krystal Muhammad as their new chairperson. These events prompted a split of the organisation into two competing factions. Muhammad's faction retained the name "New Black Panther Party", while the Nzinga faction dubbed themselves "The New Black Panther Party for Self Defence" or "NBPP SD". The two groups remain at odds, each attempting to control the name recognition of "The New Panthers".

Criticism

Criticism by former members of the original Black Panther Party

The Huey P. Newton Foundation issued a news release denouncing the New Black Panther Party. Its release read in part:

As guardian of the true history of the Black Panther Party, the Foundation, which includes former leading members of the Party, denounces this group's exploitation of the Party's name and history. Failing to find its own legitimacy in the black community, this band would graft the Party's name upon itself, which we condemn. ... [T]hey denigrate the Party's name by promoting concepts absolutely counter to the revolutionary principles on which the Party was founded. ... The Black Panthers were never a group of angry young militants full of fury toward the "white establishment." The Party operated on love for black people, not hatred of white people.

Bobby Seale, one of the co-founding members of the Black Panther Party, also spoke out against the New Black Panther Party. In a 2010 interview, he called the group's rhetoric xenophobic and described its leaders' remarks as "absurd, racial, [and] categorical".

[W]e will never, ever stoop to the low level of the mentality of a racist to just hate another person because of the color of their skin or ethnicity. We don't do that. That's not the goal objective. The goal objective is human liberation. The goal objective is the greater community cooperation of humanism. The goal objective is to get rid of institutionalized racism.

Reacting to a video of two NBPP members positioned outside of a polling place on Election Day in 2008 in Philadelphia, Seale agreed with CNN Newsroom anchor Kyra Phillips "to some degree" that the incident was voter intimidation. He also described what he saw as significant differences between the original Black Panthers and the New Black Panthers, particularly between their respective Ten-Point Programs.

2002 intimidation of original Panthers

In April 2002, an event was held in Washington, D.C. to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the creation of the Black Panther Party. Ron Scott, a co-founder of the Detroit chapter of the Panthers, was a guest speaker, and many in attendance were also original members of the Black Panther Party. During the course of the night, the event was interrupted by 30 members of the New Black Panther Party dressed in motorcycle helmets and steel-capped boots, led by Malik Zulu Shabazz. Shabazz and his NBPP member seized control of the event and ordered under threat of violence that the original Panthers cease criticism of the New Panthers.

2015 assault of Dhoruba Bin Wahad

On August 19, 2015, Dhoruba Bin Wahad (a member of the original Black Panther Party) and an associate were assaulted by a faction of the New Black Panther Party. Bin Wahad had been attending a conference in Atlanta, Georgia held by the Nzinga faction of the "New" Panthers. Bin Wahad confronted the group about their adoption of the Black Panther name and their rhetoric. The two were ordered to leave but when they refused, Bin Wahad was assaulted. Wahad was left with a concussion, a broken jaw and lacerations from the attack. The event led founding member of the original Black Panthers, Elbert "Big Man" Howard, to denounce the group as "reactionaries" and "thugs".