Community First: The Roots of Black Panther Schooling

• In Event: "We the People": Collaboration and Community Empowerment

Abstract

In 1969, the Black Panther Party (BPP) began its youth-specific educational programs. The following year, it had its first full-time home school, and by 1971, it began its first official full-time day school. Citing secondary sources, traditional archives, and digital archival material, this paper asserts that while much of the Black Panther Party’s education historiography focuses on the school’s three iterations, less attention is paid to Black Power and Oakland-specific educational endeavors. Just as the larger BPP historiography argues that Oakland’s history of organizing paved the way for the BPP’s activist gains, this paper asserts that Black educational advocacy in the larger national terrain, and more specifically in the Oakland context, prepared the way for the Oakland Community School’s success.

Author

• Robert P. Robinson, John Jay College