Want to Start a Revolution?: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle

7. Revolutionary Women,Revolutionary Education The Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School

161 7 Revolutionary Women, Revolutionary Education The Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School Ericka Huggins and Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest Pride in myself as a [young] black man . . . and pride for all African-Americans and the revolution we are making together by helping one another. . . . See, when my mommy and daddy were growing up, black people didn’t have no educational system to teach them that. . . . The job of a revolutionary is to learn and to teach. I try to do that. I’ve got a lot more learnin’ to do. Keith Taylor, eleven-year-old OCS student, 19771 The Black Panther Party (BPP), a grassroots organization founded in Oakland, California, in 1966, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, grew from the needs of local African American and poor communities . Throughout its sixteen-year history, the organization addressed and took action against police brutality, hunger, inadequate education, poor health, and unemployment in black and poor communities. Community education, specifically education for young people, was central to its vision . The BPP’s original Ten Point Platform and Program emphasized providing an education that, among other things, taught African American and poor people about their true history in the United States (see point 5).2 The Oakland Community School became not only a flagship 162 Ericka Huggins and Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest BPP community program but also a locale for a small but effective group of administrators, educators, and youth who cultivated critical thinking skills to challenge the concept of “uneducable youth.” Their efforts established a replicable model for education that was designed to empower whole communities. The Oakland Community School (OCS) was a ten-year institution that provided an alternative instructional model to Oakland’s public education system, a system in a deepening crisis. When the precursor to the OCS, Intercommunal Youth Institute (IYI), opened in 1971, the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) student population was 62,000 and had a budget of $70.37 million. The district’s student population was 60 percent black and other students of color, almost half of whom lived in conditions of poverty. At this time Oakland was one of the lowest-scoring school districts in California; it was mired in tensions between the Oakland School Board, parents, and concerned community members who desired Teaching as well as culinary, facilities, and administrative staff of the Oakland Community School (OCS), 1977. Standing, third from left: Donna Howell. Standing , back row, fifth from left (with eyeglasses): Ericka Huggins. Standing, fourth from right: Haven Henderson. Standing, third from right: Carol Granison. Photo Donald Cunningham, Black Panther Party Photographer. Revolutionary Women, Revolutionary Education 163 community control of the local schools and a representative voice that counted at the school board meetings. Parents and community members expressed concerns that more money was being spent on administration than on student instruction. Other troubling issues for OUSD included school violence, the use of security guards on school campuses, and the highly contested plan to reduce the number of teachers in the district, resulting in larger class size and high student-teacher ratios.3 Continuing a Tradition of Radical Educators In the face of this citywide education crisis, Oakland Community School administrators followed a tradition of revolutionary educators. Historically , African American women have used academic education and “commonsense ” experiences to combat social injustice. The activism of BPP women who became the OCS teaching staff and administrators during the 1970s and early 1980s was no less significant than that of women who organized and educated black and poor communities in the nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries. Sojourner Truth, Mary McLeod Bethune, Septima Clark, Ella Baker, and particularly the outspoken and defiant Harriet Tubman and Fannie Lou Hamer were activists and leaders who risked their lives as educators during pivotal historical periods in the early and modern African American freedom struggle. In their resistance to racism and sexism, they embodied a stance of dignity and courage that defeated white and male supremacist attempts to humiliate them and those they served. These powerful nineteenth- and twentieth-century women saw the needs of their communities and stepped forward to initiate change.4 In line with this great tradition of resistance, the OCS administrators saw the dire need for quality education and stepped forward to change educational conditions for youth of color. Each administrator was a BPP member at the time she became a school leader, organizing and educating communities, feeding and teaching...