February is black history month. There’s a lot of it around here. This is a tiny sample. The Black Panther Party Museum opened in January of 2024. It showcases the Oakland-grown party’s numerous community projects like free breakfast for kids, escorting seniors to banks to deposit money and providing food to families, along with publishing a newspaper. They started a nation-wide screening program for sickle cell anemia, a disease largely ignored by mainstream medicine since it affected mostly those of African descent.
J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI targeted the party for subversiveness (along with SDS, the American Indian Movement and United Farm Workers) resulting in false imprisonment and assassinations. According to the museum show, Hoover was most threatened by the free breakfast program! It was interesting to me to learn about all the social programs. When I think of Black Panthers, what first comes to mind is the posed photos of them holding guns.
I also remember the iconic photo of Newton sitting in that peacock chair. The chair makes everyone feel regal sitting in it. Apparently, it’s still quite popular and connected to modern day Black culture! It’s featured in the Black Liberation Mural on San Pablo Avenue, painted in 2021.
Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, who met at Oakland’s Merritt College, formed the party in 1966. Seale ran for mayor of Oakland in 1973 and last year had an intersection named for him, Bobby Seale Way. Newton also has a commemorative intersection near the spot he was murdered in 1989. Across the way, on Mandela Parkway, a bronze bust of Newton was unveiled in 2021.
At the other end of the block is a mural of Women of the Black Panther Party painted on the entire side of a local Black activist’s house. Women apparently were 60% or more of party members. I didn’t find specific information about it, but it seems these new murals and museum came about in response to the wave of police violence against Blacks including victims Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
My last stop was meant to be a treat, but sadly the It’s All Good Bakery permanently closed last month unexpectedly. I was hoping for pecan pie, but I also visited because the building housed the first headquarters of the Black Panther Party in Oakland. It’s potentially going to be redeveloped as apartments but that’s been held up partly because its historic relevance needs to be evaluated.