Facts Versus History
Even at the dawn of the third decade of the new millennium—a half-century following the apex of the Black Panther movement—just the very name of the group is enough to strike fear and terror in some quarters. The term Black Panthers is inextricably tied to the concept of bloodthirsty, anarchic black militants out to kill every white person in America in the minds of a good many people still alive—not to mention millions who died over the course of that half century. The history of Black Panther movement is one thing while the facts of the case as laid out in this tome are proven to be something considerably different. The story within is a textbook example of how history and fact are not necessarily identical. Facts are what happened while history is merely the way those facts are presented.
Systemic Racism in American Law Enforcement
Even in the events following the public murder of George Floyd and other equally horrific killings of unarmed black men by white police officers, many still refused to admit that racism is systemic in the law enforcement in America. Hard as that is to believe, even more so is that some of those people also refuse to admit that there has ever at any time been systemic racism in American law enforcement. That the Federal Bureau of Investigation under the originating leadership of J. Edgar Hoover in the twilight of his career purposely targeted the Black Panthers in an attempt to destroy it all—the good with the bad—on simple grounds of racist policy is both history and fact.
Fear and Respect
The history of the Black Panthers inspired fear in white people literally hundreds of miles away from the nearest member by constructing a vision of the typical representative of the organization: big, very black, thick-muscled, heavily armed and, above all else, male. The facts diverge somewhat from this historical recollection: at least two-thirds of the rank-and-file membership of the Panthers were women. This is not an observation intended to suggest that those women would be incapable of inspiring fear any more than it is an observation that they would be incapable of inspiring respect. It is instead merely intended to raise the possibility that if the history had been more factual, perhaps the fear many white people were taught to feel might instead have been transformed into respect of the Black Panthers as a whole for what they actually attempting to do.
