The Black Panther's Ten Point Program

BLACK PANTHER PARTY FOR SELF DEFENCE
TEN POINT PROGRAM
Established 1967
 
What We Want Now!
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.
 
2. We want full employment for our people.
 
3. We want an end to the robbery by the white men of our Black Community.
 
4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
 
5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent
American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the
present day society.
 
6. We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.
 
7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people.
 
8. We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and
jails.
 
9. We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer
group or people from their Black Communities, as defined by the Constitution of the
United States.
 
10.We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.
 
What We Believe
1. We believe that Black People will not be free until we are able to determine our own
destiny.
 
2. We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man
employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the White American business
men will not give full employment, the means of production should be taken from the
businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can
organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
 
3. We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the
overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised
100 years ago as redistribution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We
will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities:
the Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for genocide of the Jewish people. The
Germans murdered 6,000,000 Jews. The American racist has taken part in the
slaughter of over 50,000,000 Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest
demand that we make.
 
4. We believe that if the White landlords will not give decent housing to our Black
community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our
community, with government aid, can build and make a decent housing for its people.
 
5. We believe in a educational system that will give our people a knowledge of self. If a
man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then
he has little chance to relate to anything else.
 
6. We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to
defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other
people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the White
racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of
the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.
 
7. We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self
defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police
oppression and brutality. The second Amendment of the Constitution of the United
States gives us the right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should
arm themselves for self-defense.
 
8. We believe that all Black people should be released from the many jails and prisons
because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
 
9. We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that Black
people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S Constitution gives a man
a right to be tried by his peers. A peer is a persons from a similar economic, social,
religious, geographical, environmental, historical, and racial background. To do this the
court will be forced to select a jury from the Black community from which the Black
defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all White juries that have no
understanding of “the average reasoning man” of the Black community.
 
10.When in the course of human events, it become necessary for one people to dissolve
the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the
powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and
nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they
should declare the causes which impel them to separation. We hold these truths to be
self-evident, and that all men are created equal that among these are life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among
men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,--that whenever any
form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to
alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such
principles and organizing its power in a such a form as to them shall seem most likely to
effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long
established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are
sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accused.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object,
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, and their
duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards of their future security.