![]() It then operated as the Oakland Community School from 1974 until 1982, earning acclaim from the California Department of Education and the governor of California (Gore, Theoharis & Woodard, 2009). Initially a combined day-care and home school known as the Children's House in 1970, the school changed to become the Intercommunal Youth Institute in 1971. One particular site is the Oakland Community School (OCS), the Black Panther Party's full-time day school. While much attention has been paid to the freedom schools, educational sites run by Black revolutionary nationalists have received less attention. More recently, the interdisciplinary field of Black Power studies has increased investigation into Afrocentric pedagogy and Black politically-engaged education after World War II (Rickford, 2016). African-American historians of education have problematized this narrative. In United States conversations about progressive pedagogy and alternative forms of education, the longstanding models that scholars used were predominantly white. Providing a panoramic view of the Party's organization over its sixteen-year history, The Revolution Has Come shows how the Black Panthers embodied Black Power through the party's international activism, interracial alliances, commitment to address state violence, and desire to foster self-determination in Oakland's black communities. Spencer also centers gender politics and the experiences of women and their contributions to the Panthers and the Black Power movement as a whole. She shows how the Panthers' members interpreted, implemented, and influenced party ideology and programs initiated dialogues about gender politics highlighted ambiguities in the Panthers' armed stance and criticized organizational priorities. Challenging the belief that the Panthers were a projection of the leadership, Spencer draws on interviews with rank-and-file members, FBI files, and archival materials to examine the impact the organization's internal politics and COINTELPRO's political repression had on its evolution and dissolution. Spencer traces the Black Panther Party's organizational evolution in Oakland, California, where hundreds of young people came to political awareness and journeyed to adulthood as members. Our focus on the IYI, OCS and OCLC spans the 1971-1982 time frame of BPP history and presents the case for the need to continue exploring BPP activism beyond 1974. ![]() By looking at the lives of individual males and exploring the educational and community spaces they occupied and worked within, we shed light on individuals who had a tremendous impact on the lives of BPP members and broader communities, both nationally and internationally. The authors utilize a range of primary and secondary sources, including oral interviews and unpublished photographs, to present a nuanced history of men in the BPP. The article also explores BPP men’s activities in various spaces such as the Intercommunal Youth Institute (IYI)/Oakland Community School (OCS), the Oakland Community Learning Center (OCLC), and the BPP newspaper, in particular, and their activist involvement in the broader community. ![]() Reshaping a dominant narrative of men in the BPP as hypermasculine violent figures, this essay centers on male members who are often overlooked, including John Huggins, Emory Douglas, Austin Allen, and Steve McCutchen. Popular media images throughout decades have distorted the complete reality of who many BPP male members were and strove to be: community activists, teachers, and caretakers. A large percentage of them were husbands, fathers, brothers, and friends. Indeed, a clear and undeniable argument can be made that men in the BPP have been presented in an incomplete light because they were more than angry activists. ![]() Women at one time formed a large portion of the BPP and many members had children while they were in the BPP. Historical research already has disproven that the BPP was all male and all angry. The mention of three words, “Black Panther Party,” (BPP) continues to evoke mental images of black berets, black leather jackets, black shades and black men with scowling black faces. ![]()
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