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Black Panther Party letter about Operation Shut Down
Date: c. August 1966
Caption: Organizers of the recently-founded Harlem branch of the Black Panther Party described their focus on education and announced Operation Shut Down.
The Black Panther Party’s Harlem Branch, founded in 1966, defined Black Power as “having the right to self-determination or the power to decide what should go down in our community,” and “being the decision makers, the policy makers.”1
Harlem’s Black Panther Party emphasized self-determination in education, as you can see in this letter announcing the party and its planned protest about education in the neighborhood.
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Black Panther Party, Harlem Branch, “Black Panther and Black Power,” Black Panther Party Harlem Branch Files, Box 1, Folder 9, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, https://archives.nypl.org/scm/20948. ↩︎
Categories: K-12 organizing, Manhattan, community activism
Tags: Harlem, self-determination, Black people, protest, curriculum, North and South, multiracial organizing, Asian American people, organizing
This item is part of "The Black Panthers" in "Boycotting New York’s Segregated Schools"
Item Details
Date: c. August 1966
Creator: Black Panther Party Harlem Branch
Copyright: Public domain
How to cite: “Black Panther Party letter about Operation Shut Down,” Black Panther Party Harlem Branch, in New York City Civil Rights History Project, Accessed: [Month Day, Year], https://nyccivilrightshistory.org/gallery/black-panthers-2.
Questions to Consider
- Why was education important to the Black Panther Party?
- George Miller signed the letter “yours for unity, power, and self determination.” How do you see these themes reflected in the text of the letter?
- Why do you think the party chose a “shut down,” or a boycott, of schools as their form of protest?
References
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