The first official BPP statement in 1970 by proclaimed, “ We support the Palestinian’s just struggle for liberation one hundred percent. The party issued at least three official statements on Palestine and the “Middle East” in 1970, 1974, and 1980, besides anonymous Black Panther articles promoting Palestinian liberation as well as assorted PLO editorials in The Black Panther Intercommunal New Service, a periodical with a global circulation of several hundred thousand copies weekly in its run from Apto September 1980. This was the same collection of poems seized from the cell of George Jackson (Black Panther Field Marshal), after his assassination by San Quentin prison guards on August 21, 1971: “Enemy of the Sun” by Samih al-Qasim was even mysteriously published in the Black Panther newspaper under “Comrade George’s” name in a magical “mistake” that would cement a certain Black/Palestinian connection for decades to come.Ĭondemning Zionist imperialism and white colonial liberalism led to no crisis for the Black Panther Party, for it was revolutionary rather than a reformist organization from its inception. Nonetheless, it was a number of ex-SNCC radicals who published Enemy of the Sun: Poetry of Palestinian Resistance in 1970 - after they had formed Drum & Spear Press in Washington D.C., and after that book project co-edited by Naseer Aruri and Edmund Ghareeb had been rejected by a dozen other publishing houses. Historically, like all Black people who refuse to support “Jewish” Euro-imperialism, it would be represented as a band of ungrateful savages – “anti-Semitic” and “racist in reverse,” in other words – insofar as it would refused to put white and “Jewish” interests before its own Black nationalist and internationalist interests in North America and the world at large. Its economic patronage by white liberalism in general and white ‘Jewish’ liberalism in particular came to a screeching halt. The text of SNCC’s statement was co-drafted by Stokely Carmichael, who would go on to make history as a revolutionary icon of “Black Power” and Pan-African movements for liberation. Relatedly, by 1967, when the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) began to transform itself from a liberal civil rights organization into a radical Black nationalist organization that would rename itself the Student National Coordinating Committee, it also took a bold position in support of Palestine. Neither Zionism nor “Americanism” would escape the wrath of these anti-colonialist/anti-racist/anti-imperialist Black Panthers, an organization founded in 1966 as the “Black Panther Party for Self-Defense” in Oakland, California. Newton once wrote, “Israel was created by Western imperialism and is maintained by Western firepower.” He likewise said that ‘America’ must die so that the world can live. The leader of the Black Panther Party (BPP), Huey P. )ĭownload the original Arabic issue of Ittijah here:

(Handwritten copies of the poems where originally misattributed to Jackson, in what Thomas refers to as a “magical mistake” born of “radical kinship” between liberation movements. prisoners’ movements, letters of solidarity between Palestinian and American prisoners, letters from Jackson and coverage of his life and death, photos of Palestinian art from the Apartheid Wall, and other artifacts tying the movements together.” It is named for Black Panther and Soledad Brother George Jackson, murdered in 1971 in a claimed “escape attempt ” poetry by the Palestinian leader and poet, Samih al-Qasim, including “Enemy of the Sun” and “I Defy,” was found in his cell after his death.

The exhibition “includes drawings, woodcuts, political posters and other art tied to Jackson’s life and the Palestinian and U.S.

Greg Thomas is Associate Professor of Black Studies & English Literature at Tufts University, who crafted the exhibition, displayed first at the Abu Jihad Museum in occupied Palestine and then in Oakland and in several other US locations. The following article by Greg Thomas, the curator of “ George Jackson in the Sun of Palestine ,” was published in Ittijah, a new Arabic-language publication by Palestinian youth issued by Nabd, the Palestinian Youth Forum.

Huey newton