Analysis Of The Black Panther Party

A unifying figure for both the Panthers and the hippies, according to Brown, was one of the most interesting characters in the trajectory of the Black Panther Party: Huey Newton. Brown discusses at length the sort of spell Newton was able to cast over the people he met; he was an enigma of sorts, but he was also a strong and powerful leader, who was determined to make changes and be effective in terms of galvanizing racial hierarchies in America while simultaneously presenting himself as kind, loving and warm to his comrades. The event Brown discusses specifically occurred in 1970, and played an important role in the government perception of both the Panthers and the hippies going forward. Brown notes that “the domestic threat that caused

At one point in her memoir, Brown discusses how the hippie counterculture stemmed from black roots, specifically revolving around music. She notes how at the time, “ordinary Americans were titillated by the sounds of new music, that had originated in the darkest Africa.” Although it seemed that the styles of music that were so crucial to hippie culture were fresh and new and unique, they did have a certain lineage: not only did it extend back to the Beats, but also it continued, as Brown writes, to black roots. In this way, hippiedom stemmed from a sort of process by which black culture was re-appropriated and aestheticized. If this is true, then it is somewhat understandable how the notion of a black hippie simply did not make much sense in the context of the 1960s. The Civil Rights Movement and groups like the Black Panther Party existed in a space in which black Americans were, on a most fundamental, attempting to ingratiate themselves into white American culture to achieve a sort of status-quo in terms of racial equality. If this is true, then the galvanization of American societal norms sought by Civil Rights leaders in the 1960s was not necessarily a new concept entirely, but rather was an issue of inclusion and access above most other notions. Further, this would mean that it simply may not have made sense for a black man or woman to want to join the hippie counterculture, which was attempting to disassociate itself from the entirety of American society through the dissolution of post-war consumer culture, rather than attempting to create access for those who may not have the same opportunities within that existing structure based upon the unchangeable qualities of a person