An interview ofDr. Phyllis Jackson

went to the conference by myselfand the one night Bobby Sealegave his keynote address. ..hesaid towards the end "And toall you college students. ..wouldyou please come home. Thewhite man is not going to teachyou anything about how to freeyour people on those collegecampuses." That didn't makeme join the party. It did makeme want to get a little moreinvolved so the next week I wentin the national headquartersoffice which was located inBerkeleyon Shattuck Ave at thetime. While the party started inOakland, when I started in 1969,the headquarters had moved toBerkeley. I went in to volunteersome time. They put me to workright away on the communitycontrol police petition. I madethe decision that I was not goingto go back to Washington andthat I was going to join the BlackPanther Party.

the party in 1969, 50 percentof the people in the party werewomen. The majority of thepeople in leadership were men,but there were lots of women inthe party and even more as timewent on. Rather than it being agender based issue, it was moreof a skilled based issue. If youcame to the party and you hadskills such as' typing, driving,photography, the party used youbased on the skills you had.

Written by Mzuri Pambeli

There was no notion that arevolutionary needed to be eithera male or a female. It was aboutthe person willing to stand upagainst injustice and capitalism.The party did not target either.It was a program of attractionnot promotion. The focus wason attracting people to the workof the party. It was about raisingpeople's consciousness so thatthey could choose to makedecisions on their own. To makedecisions to get involved or notget involved to bring about amore just society.

Sis Phyllis Jackson is a professorat Pomona College and formermember of the Black PantherParty. Through this interview,we better understand why thissister and many people joinedthe struggle, gave their lives forthe struggle of liberation andcame out better for it. So many of the women who

joined the party came from thecampus, they often had moreskills than the brothers andso many were used to write ordevelop the newspaper.

you join the

Party?

I joined the party in July of1969. I joined in OaklandCalifornia. Actually, I wasn'tfrom Oakland but was fromTacoma VVashington. I was inOakland for the summer aftermy first year of college. I wasgoing to college in AllensburgVVashington where there wasonly 42 people Black people inthe whole town. I decided tovisit my sister in Oakland andon the streets I met a man sellingBlack Panther newspapers.They were advertising in thatissue for a conference that wasgoing to be held July 17-19,called the United Front AgainstFacism conference. I had gotteninvolved in the BSU in collegeand was becoming politicallyaware. I had gone to college asa colored girl but I left a Blackwoman. I was completely andtotally apolitical. I joined theParty in 1969 as a result of theUnited Front Against Facism. I

't thereinWhen women and men came

into the party, they receivedthe same training and sametreatment. It wasn't about maleor female, in 1969. When Ijoined When Ijoined there was already

a sister in Boston running theparty there. Depending uponwhere you were in the partygeographically, the ratio of mento women was different. Andthe way in which the genderpolitics played out, that hadsome impact.

Ijoined at the central hub of theparty in Oakland and thus party

practices, policy and strategywas followed more stringently.

When I joined, it was about dayto day work, during the height

of the breakfast program.

Also, the party had a structurecalled democratic centralism

Panther Women Continued on page 8

March-April 2007 .Positive Action 3

up arms. It was completelyopposite from what was taughtin this society. The partyideology changed all of that.

~

Probably the most important partwas to see myself as a politicalagent for change and having agoal beyond being a mother andhousewife. Having agency andvision that was beyond my ownpersonal wellbeing but that wasbroader than I and my familyopened me up to know what itmeant to work for the collectiveagenda and the collectiveconcerns and needs of Blackpeople in America. And to dothat in a way that was principled,studied and informed, andto understand that as a Blackwoman, there was nothing thatI couldn't do. To have no fearsas a Black woman, that changedme from this shy persongrowing up to this. fearlesswoman. As a woman, I shedmany of those inhibitions thatwere socialized in us to pretendto make ourselves small, tomake ourselves acceptable fora man. In many ways, being inthe Black Panther Party gaveme a different notion aboutwhat women should do and be.The party really changed mein that way and you might saythe party made what we call afeminist today.

the BPP

.life as an

Woman?

I grew up in a working classfamily. My father worked twofull time jobs. Part of that wasthat although they were workingclass, they had middle classaspirations. I was in the churchand choir. I was a really goodgirl. I never skipped school,never broke the rules. But itwas that first year of collegeand taking a black studiescourse that for the first timeI heard of black leaders likeW.E.B. Dubois and Malcolm X.

story and that brother was foundfully out of line and in need ofmethods of correction. So inmy very first meeting, I becamereally clear that sexism was notallowed inside of the Party. Thatwasn't other people's experience.That was mine. But with thatmindset, I knew I didn't haveto take it from anybody becauseour party had principles toguide us. It really dependson the individuals where youorganized or the locality. Therewas no way the party did notrecruit folks with chauvinismbecause we recruited from themasses and the people broughtall of that stuff with them intothe party. The difference wasthat we had a structure withwhich to deal with it and a setof principles to go by. At thispoint, the party was reallymodeling itself with revolutionsaround the global. Whetherit was revolutions againstcolonialism like in Vietnam orthe revolutions in China or Cubaor across the continent of Africa,one of the things I always heardwas that there was no differencebetween the revolutionary,man and a woman. The womanlike the man in Vietnam waspicking up arms, just like thewomen in amerika had to pick

I still thought of myself in verytraditional ways. The goalduring that day was to go tocollege and find a boyfriendand get married. But to insteadmarry the revolution and theParty changed my life in ways Ican't even enumerate.

Panther Women

If you are inspired by what youhave read and are interested inlearning more about or joiningthe A-APRP, then fill out thisform and send it to us.

male: inside the

D I want to join the A-APRP.

D I want more information. Please contact me.

There was an incident where onesister was selling newspaperswith a brother and this brotherhit the sister and he might havecalled her a name too. That issuewas discussed at a meeting,they both gave their side of the

State Zip

Name

Address

City

Phone Email

Mail to: A-APRP, P.O. Box 2810 Berkeley, CA 94702

(Continuedfrom page 3)

which means they had centralcommittee leadership. Peoplelike Bobby Seale, Huey Newton,Donald Cox, Albert Howard,Emory Douglas. Towardsthe end of 69 and 70, womenstarted rising to higher levelpositions. Paper (assigned to thenewspaper) cadre had men andwomen on it. There was a sensepublicly that women weren'ton leadership, but that was nottrue. Chapters and braches werere configured all the time. Youstarted to see women takingon more of a leadership role.Elaine Brown being transferredto Northern California fromLos Angeles eventually becamethe editor of the paper and onleadership. It was about theskills you had.