The Black Panther Party
Above & Beyond Assignment
Directions: Read the tenth point from the Black Panther Party's Platform and answer the corresponding questions. Turn these in no later then Monday, September 15th.
Point Ten from the Black Panther Party Platform
We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace, and people’s community
control of modern technology.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are most disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpation, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
1) Why would the Panthers include this statement? In other words, what's the purpose?
2) How would it (Point 10) apply to the African-American community?
3) How might the inclusion of this portion of the Declaration of Independence influence readers'
perception of the Ten Point Program?
4) What connections to Thomas Jefferson and the so-called "Founding Fathers" are the Panthers
trying to make?
