Harlem, the Black Panthers, and the Return of “Power to the People”
The echoes of 1960s Harlem—free breakfasts, Black Panther patrols, school protests and strikes—returned as I watched modern Black Panthers confront ICE outside Philadelphia City Hall. A late-January 2026 documentary from Radio-Canada followed their patrols and confrontations with officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The report brought back memories of the movement’s heyday in the 1960s, when I was an honorary member.
The history of the Black Panthers is deeply tied to protests for civil and political rights, particularly for Black Americans, but also for other marginalized communities. Founded in 1966, the original Black Panther Party sought to challenge systemic racism, police brutality, and economic injustice while providing essential community programs such as free breakfasts for children, health clinics, and educational initiatives. Their work was a direct response to the failures of official institutions to ensure basic living standards—housing, employment, education, medical care, and public safety—which disproportionately affected Black neighborhoods, such as Harlem, then home to one of the largest Black urban communities in the United States.
There were leaders who defined the era, their images posted everywhere in the ‘hood. John Carlos and Tommie Smith raising their fists in the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics. Cassius Clay, later Muhammad Ali, refusing induction into the army during the Vietnam War, declaring, “No Vietcong ever called me nigger.” Huey P. Newton co-founder with Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, leading armed patrols in Oakland. Malcolm X, champion of Black empowerment and the role of Islam in the community, addressing a rally, fist raised, demanding freedom and respect for Black Americans.
And my honorary membership? My own connection to that movement began not through activism, but through teaching. My membership was a recognition of shared commitment to uplift and protect a community that was officially overlooked. Having failed to qualify as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War because I swore to defend my mother if she was attacked—at the time, both pacifism and religious affiliation were required for conscientious objector status—I volunteered to teach in a public school in New York City as an unofficial form of alternate service. For three years, I worked in an elementary school in Harlem in the experimental I.S. 201 Community Control School District. As part of a decentralization initiative, the New York City Board of Education designated two districts to be run by local communities, operating with reduced oversight from the central board and outside some teachers’ union rules. Many of the schools received support from the Ford Foundation. At the time, the experiment was unusual and politically controversial.
Most of my fourth-grade pupils participated in Black Panther after-school activities, and I am sure many of their parents were members as well. Through my activities outside the classroom—rent strikes, demonstrations against Harlem Hospital, trips around New York City and beyond, visits with students and families to the Apollo Theater, lots of basketball after school—I became as integrated into the community as much as a young white college graduate could be.
I was often greeted early in the morning on my way to school by a chorus of locals waiting for the grocery store to open by: “A visitor from another planet,” as I stepped off the subway at 125th Street.
One of my students suggested that I become an honorary member of the Black Panthers. There was no formal ceremony—no medal or certificate—but it was understood and acknowledged that I was part of a community trying to ensure that the people in the Harlem neighborhood where I taught could live with dignity. The official institutions responsible for basic living standards—housing, employment, security, medical care, and religious support—had largely given up on achieving these goals.
It was up to the community members—which was the entire idea behind having a school district run by the community—to take care of themselves. That is why the Black Panther slogan, “Power to the People,” resonated so strongly at the time. It represented self-defense and self-governance in response to the neglect (cops sleeping on duty), police brutality and inter-community violence, or the downright corruption of the given power structures.
This ethos is well shown in the Canadian documentary. Modern Black Panthers ride the subways to protect passengers and patrol streets where crimes have been committed. “We patrol to defend citizens against police violence,” said the group’s spokesperson, Paul Birdsong, in the context of the Radio-Canada piece. He added, “We never attack first. But if you shoot at us once, then I’ll shoot at you thirty times.” In one scene in the documentary, police officers step back as a group of armed Panthers enter a subway car carrying weapons to protect vulnerable passengers.
Watching modern Black Panthers patrol Philadelphia in 2026 revived that sense of continuity. The principles I witnessed and embraced as an honorary member decades ago are alive today in new forms. Panther-inspired groups now operate in several American cities besides Philadelphia—including Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, and Chicago—showing that the movement’s language of community self-defense and empowerment continues to resonate decades after the original party’s decline. While these groups draw on the symbolism and community principles of the original Panthers, they operate independently and vary widely in tactics and structure.
The slogan “Power to the People” remains relevant: it is not merely a chant, but a call to action, a reminder that when institutions fail, communities must organize to protect themselves.
Is mine a misplaced nostalgia? The revival of protest culture is not limited to street patrols. Recently, protesters demonstrated for cultural freedom outside the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. As reported by The Guardian, Jane Fonda spoke, Joan Baez joined singer Maggie Rogers for a rendition of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” followed by a cappella performance of the civil-rights anthem “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ’Round.” Moments like this suggest that the cultural voice of protest, which once energized movements in the 1960s, still echoes today, however faint and limited.
What happened to the Black Panthers after the 1960s? By the mid-1970s, the original Black Panther Party had largely disbanded, due to intense government repression, internal conflicts, and sustained surveillance and disruption by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program. Many members faced imprisonment, exile, or violent attacks; key leaders like Fred Hampton were killed in police raids, and chapters across the country struggled to sustain their community programs amid legal and political pressure.
Despite this, the ideas and initiatives of the Black Panthers—self-defense, community empowerment, and social justice—left a lasting legacy, inspiring subsequent generations of activists. Seeing the modern Black Panthers in Philadelphia in 2026 patrolling neighborhoods and subways to protect citizens from ICE and violence, makes clear that the spirit of the movement endures. The organization itself may have been suppressed, but its central demand remains. When institutions fail, communities still insist on the same principle the Black Panthers proclaimed sixty years ago: Power to the People.
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