Black Panther Party T-shirts

Pay homage to the first and powerful black movement against White supremacy and oppression with the black panther party t-shirts

This collection is for those who is keen on totally resisting oppression in the society and promoting black unity against racial discrimination

Founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was the era’s most influential militant black power organization. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, young political activists in Oakland, California, were disappointed in the failure of the civil rights movement to improve the condition of blacks outside the South. They saw brutality against civil rights protesters as part of a long tradition of police violence and state oppression. They immersed themselves in the history of blacks in America. In 1966 they organized young, poor, disenfranchised African Americans into the Black Panther Party.

Its members confronted politicians, challenged the police, and protected black citizens from brutality. The party’s community service programs - called “survival programs” - provided food, clothing, and transportation. Rather than integrating American society, members wanted to change it fundamentally. For them, black power was a global revolution.

Like Malcolm X, the Black Panthers believed that nonviolent protests could not truly liberate black Americans or give them power over their own lives. They linked the African American liberation movement with liberation movements in Africa and Southeast Asia.

The BPP’s philosophy was influenced by the speeches of Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam, the teachings of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung of the Communist Party of China, and the anti-colonialist book The Wretched of the Earth (Les Damnés de la Terre, 1961) by the Martiniquan psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. The BPP’s practice of armed self-defense was influenced by African American activist Robert Williams, who advocated this practice against anti-black aggression by the Ku Klux Klan in his book Negroes with Guns (1962). Newton and Seale canvassed their community asking residents about issues of concern. They compiled the responses and created the Ten Point Platform and Program that served as the foundation of the Black Panther Party.

The Panthers’ campaign for African American equality had a lasting impact on black empowerment, and its influence continues to be felt in such current social movements as Black Lives Matter. In addition, the group inspired other minority groups worldwide to pursue their own causes. For instance, the low-caste Dalits in India emulated the rhetoric of the Black Panthers.

The Black Panther Party came into the national spotlight in May 1967 when a small group of its members, led by its chair, Seale, marched fully armed into the California state legislature in Sacramento. Emboldened by the view that African Americans had a constitutional right to bear arms (based on the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution), the Black Panther Party marched on the body as a protest against the pending Mulford Act. The Black Panther Party viewed the legislation, a gun control bill, as a political maneuver to thwart the organization’s effort to combat police brutality in the Oakland community. The images of gun-toting Black Panthers entering the Capitol were supplemented, later that year, with news of Newton’s arrest after a shoot-out with police in which an officer was killed. With this newfound publicity, the Black Panther Party grew from an Oakland-based organization into an international one with chapters in 48 states in North America and support groups in Japan, China, France, England, Germany, Sweden, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uruguay, and elsewhere.