YOUNG BLACK PANTHER ORGANISING HER COMMUNITY

In this 1968 clip, a young Black Panther Party member named Joan Tarika Lewis spoke about community organising in Oakland, California. @jtarikalewis is now a 74-year-old visual artist, musician, author and continues to be an activist.

The Black Panther Party, founded in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, transformed Black communities with their Free Breakfast for Children programme and free health clinics, tackling food insecurity and healthcare neglect head-on. These initiatives didn't just improve lives. They inspired a powerful sense of unity and self-reliance among Black communities.

Yet, the US government saw the Panthers' revolutionary spirit and growing influence as a threat. The FBI's Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) aimed to dismantle the party through infiltrating, spreading false information and inciting internal conflicts. The relentless campaign of harassment and arrests sought to weaken the Panthers' leadership and disrupt their vital work, showing the lengths to which authorities would go to suppress the party's influence.

Video credit: Agnès Varda (1928-2019)