Though the Black Panther Party had experienced its most influential years in San Francisco and Oakland between 1967 and 1972, a lack of census data from non-decennial from NHGIS narrowed my quantitative GIS analysis solely to 1970. Despite this small window of information, the metadata I had applied as layers within ArcMap had provided me with a surprising amount of insight to the racial and economic landscape of Panther activities at the height of their potency as well as at the height of COINTELPRO’s most aggressive tactics taken against the Party.
In ArcMap I had first applied NHGIS data that signified 1970 housing tenure by race, measured by white and black occupied units and divided by State--County census tracts. Within this dataset …show more content…
In 1970, the poverty threshold was determined by a number of dependent classifications defined by the sex of the head of household, the size of the family, the number of children residing in the household, and whether or not the unit was a farm or nonfarm residence. Because of these multiple distinctions, the accepted level of poverty in urban areas like the Bay Area in 1970 ranged anywhere from $1,885 of annual income to $7,065 of annual income depending on the gender of the household head and amount of people living there. This classification method of poverty threshold is no longer used today. From here I selected the codes within the NHGIS table data to represent only those families underneath the poverty threshold as expressed by a ratio where anything below 1.0 is considered to be below the poverty level. I decided that symbolizing this data set through dot density– with three different colored value fields, .75 - .99, .50 - .74, and under .50– would effectively display poverty on my map as it allows us to visually apprehend the actual density and intensity of poverty throughout Oakland and San Francisco. The dot value also changes accordingly depending on the scale of the map. What I had found is that within the four census tracts that contained Panther FBCPs alone, 904 families existed below the poverty level in 1970. Moreover, by measuring the …show more content…
Feeding an estimated 10,000 children free breakfast everyday by the summer of 1969 , the FBCPs gave Party members meaningful daily duties, boosted Party support and morale, offered an effective and community-sustained solution to ghetto impoverishment, and sharply exposed the stark spatial inequalities originating from racially charged exclusion and persecution that existed in the Bay Area. When paired with quantitative GIS analysis displaying the actual scale of de-facto segregation and the concentration of poverty within areas of notable Panther activity, the manifestation of virulent racism can be visualized within Oakland and San Francisco in 1970. Likewise, within such impoverished conditions, the significance and necessity for Panther community survival programs like the FBCPs can be realized, as these neighborhoods were very much devoid of both white people and federal assistance, yet were also continuously plagued by abusive police practices and racially motivated police brutality. In such context, the extensive measures organized by the FBI’s COINTELPRO can be criticized on many different levels. Rather than supporting Panther initiatives to feed impoverished and hungry children, the U.S. government did everything in its power to underhandedly and systematically sabotage political activity supposedly protected by the U.S.
In ArcMap I had first applied NHGIS data that signified 1970 housing tenure by race, measured by white and black occupied units and divided by State--County census tracts. Within this dataset …show more content…
In 1970, the poverty threshold was determined by a number of dependent classifications defined by the sex of the head of household, the size of the family, the number of children residing in the household, and whether or not the unit was a farm or nonfarm residence. Because of these multiple distinctions, the accepted level of poverty in urban areas like the Bay Area in 1970 ranged anywhere from $1,885 of annual income to $7,065 of annual income depending on the gender of the household head and amount of people living there. This classification method of poverty threshold is no longer used today. From here I selected the codes within the NHGIS table data to represent only those families underneath the poverty threshold as expressed by a ratio where anything below 1.0 is considered to be below the poverty level. I decided that symbolizing this data set through dot density– with three different colored value fields, .75 - .99, .50 - .74, and under .50– would effectively display poverty on my map as it allows us to visually apprehend the actual density and intensity of poverty throughout Oakland and San Francisco. The dot value also changes accordingly depending on the scale of the map. What I had found is that within the four census tracts that contained Panther FBCPs alone, 904 families existed below the poverty level in 1970. Moreover, by measuring the …show more content…
Feeding an estimated 10,000 children free breakfast everyday by the summer of 1969 , the FBCPs gave Party members meaningful daily duties, boosted Party support and morale, offered an effective and community-sustained solution to ghetto impoverishment, and sharply exposed the stark spatial inequalities originating from racially charged exclusion and persecution that existed in the Bay Area. When paired with quantitative GIS analysis displaying the actual scale of de-facto segregation and the concentration of poverty within areas of notable Panther activity, the manifestation of virulent racism can be visualized within Oakland and San Francisco in 1970. Likewise, within such impoverished conditions, the significance and necessity for Panther community survival programs like the FBCPs can be realized, as these neighborhoods were very much devoid of both white people and federal assistance, yet were also continuously plagued by abusive police practices and racially motivated police brutality. In such context, the extensive measures organized by the FBI’s COINTELPRO can be criticized on many different levels. Rather than supporting Panther initiatives to feed impoverished and hungry children, the U.S. government did everything in its power to underhandedly and systematically sabotage political activity supposedly protected by the U.S.