When you think of the Black Panthers, you think of protests, violence, and intimidating young men and women. However, The Panthers were shown in the book Fire in the Streets by Kekla Magoon as charitable activists, organizing a plethora of programs to help the poor such as free breakfasts, political education classes, and free health clinics. The reader gets a glimpse at their hospitable, kinder side. However, all of their platforms make the reader wonder if the group was as generous as the author paints it out to be. In the novel Fire in the Streets, the author uses history by including factual details about the Black Panthers and what programs they started for their community to bring attention to their activism in the Civil Rights era.
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A woman named Angela Davis, mentioned in the Britannica article Black Panther Party, lead political education classes. She was not an official member of the organization, but she was close with the group and thus taught the classes. As the article quotes, “Davis did, however, have strong connections with the party and taught political education classes for it.” The Free Breakfast program was an apparently thriving part of the Black Panther’s programs, spreading far and wide. National Geographic’s article “The Black Panthers: Revolutionaries, Free Breakfast Pioneers” talks all about the breakfasts, saying, “Born in their Oakland, California headquarters in 1968, it was one of the first organized school breakfast food programs in the country… by the end of 1969, the Black Panthers were serving full free breakfasts to 20,000 school aged children in 19 cities around the country, and in 23 local affiliates every school day.” The program got funding from grocery stores and churches. The clinics were very real and popular as well. They were meant to give free healthcare to their community, as listed in the Columbia University article “The Black Panther Party Stands for Health”, reading, “In 1972, the Panthers’ Ten Point Program was formally amended to make health an explicit part of its mission. The new platform called on the government to ‘provide, free of charge, for the people, health
A woman named Angela Davis, mentioned in the Britannica article Black Panther Party, lead political education classes. She was not an official member of the organization, but she was close with the group and thus taught the classes. As the article quotes, “Davis did, however, have strong connections with the party and taught political education classes for it.” The Free Breakfast program was an apparently thriving part of the Black Panther’s programs, spreading far and wide. National Geographic’s article “The Black Panthers: Revolutionaries, Free Breakfast Pioneers” talks all about the breakfasts, saying, “Born in their Oakland, California headquarters in 1968, it was one of the first organized school breakfast food programs in the country… by the end of 1969, the Black Panthers were serving full free breakfasts to 20,000 school aged children in 19 cities around the country, and in 23 local affiliates every school day.” The program got funding from grocery stores and churches. The clinics were very real and popular as well. They were meant to give free healthcare to their community, as listed in the Columbia University article “The Black Panther Party Stands for Health”, reading, “In 1972, the Panthers’ Ten Point Program was formally amended to make health an explicit part of its mission. The new platform called on the government to ‘provide, free of charge, for the people, health