On October 15, 1966, Oakland-based activists Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton drafted a roadmap to Black freedom. Originally known as the Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Platform and Program, the document articulated 10 demands and 10 beliefs that formed the basis of the organization. “Black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny,” wrote Seale and Newton. Among the Panthers’ demands were an “education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society” and “an immediate end to police brutality and the murder of Black people.”
“That was over 50 years ago. And what has changed?” Colin Kaepernick asks. “Oscar Grant, Rekia Boyd, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice. What has changed? Laquan McDonald, Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray. The Panthers’ demands are still alive today because the police are still killing us today.”
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