Symposium on The Black Panther Party

To Mark The Publication of Our Newest Book and the Formal Announcement of the Panther Archives at Howard University’s Moorland Spingarn Research Center.

With the turbulence of the 1960s as its birth mother, the Black Panther Party developed into one of America’s most storied and controversial political groups. Were they heroic Black revolutionaries or self destructive, heavily armed street thugs? More than 30 years later their significance in America’s urban revolutionary politics still remains a topic of spirited debate.

On October 16, 1998, the debate transforms into a symposium on the Howard University campus where the significance of the Panther experience will be discussed. The symposium, presented by The Moorland Spingarn Research Center at Howard University and Black Classic Press, publisher of The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, brings together former Panthers and scholars.

Kathleen Cleaver, an early leader of the Panthers and a former member of the Central Committee, will discuss gender issues within the Party on a panel that includes Dr. Acklyn Lynch and former Panther Lynn French. Dr. Charles E. Jones, editor of The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, will present an overview and retrospective of the Party. Dr. Ronald Walters, Audrea Dunham and Dr. Donn Davis join him in the discussion.

To complete the new volume on the Black Panther Party, Dr. Jones and his contributors, with great difficulty, researched scattered and fragmented organizational records, newspapers, documents from the government’s counterintelligence programs (COINTELPRO) and other government publications. They also interviewed numerous former Panthers.

Surveying Panther history will now be easier. The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center has been designated as the archives for the manuscripts and papers of the Black Panther Party by former Panthers. A formal announcement of the archives will be made at the symposium.

The Research Center is one of the oldest repositories of works about people of African descent. With a collection of hundreds of thousands of books, manuscripts and printed materials, it ranks as one of the largest repositories of its kind in the world. Within its collections are the papers of notable figures such as Paul Robeson, Amiri Baraka, Kwame Nkrumah and former Congressman Charles Diggs.

The symposium will be held on Friday, October 16, 1998, beginning at 10:00 a.m. in the School of Business Auditorium, Howard University. A book signing and reception will follow at 5:00 p.m. in the Blackburn Center. For more information or to order your copy of The Black Panther Party Reconsidered call 410-358-0980

Black Classic Press
bcp@charm.net
P.O. Box 13414
Baltimore, MD 21203