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The Black Panthers
Not all New York City school boycotters wanted integration. The Harlem Branch of the Black Panther Party organized a boycott of Harlem schools in 1966. They called for changes to the curriculum, and more Black teachers and principals, in keeping with the group’s focus on self-determination – or the power of people to be in control of things that matter in their own lives.
Many stories about the Black Panther Party emphasize only their embrace of armed struggle, and pay more attention to the Oakland, California chapter of the party than the New York chapter. The New York chapter engaged in educational activism, including this 1966 boycott. Across multiple chapters, the party provided important kinds of community service like providing free breakfast for children and operating community health clinics.1
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“The Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast Program, 1969-1980, The Black Past, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/black-panther-partys-free-breakfast-program-1969-1980/, accessed November 10, 2023. See also Alondra Nelson, Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). ↩︎
