Talking Aboriginal design activism — liberation organizations & their emblems (Part 2: Australia’s Black Panther Party)

By Callum Clayton-Dixon: We can trace the origins of the Aboriginal Panther Party’s emblem back to an armed Black political party in Alabama. Both organizations stood for self-defense, self-determination, and fought for the liberation of Black people.

5 min readMay 12, 2020

“In Australia the ‘Black Power movement’ emerged as a loose coalition of young Indigenous activists active in Redfern, Fitzroy and South Brisbane in the period immediately after Charles Perkins’ ‘Freedom Ride’ of 1965.” — Professor Gary Foley (2001, p2)

The Australian Black Panther Party was established in 1971, at a time when our own Black Power movement was in full swing (see Professor Gary Foley’s 2001 paper ‘Black Power in Redfern 1968–1972’). They looked to and took on the ideology, platform, and rhetoric of their American counterpart, set up in Oakland, California five years earlier, adapting it to our people’s context; the issue of Aboriginal land rights was certainly high on the Australian BPP’s agenda (Tribune, 08/12/1971, p12; Post-Courier, 19/01/1972, p6; 01/03/1972, p7). Names synonymous with this militant Aboriginal organization include the late Denis Walker (1947–2017) and Sam Watson (1952–2019), founding members of the Brisbane Chapter. While the Aboriginal Panthers were only in operation for a relatively short period of time, they played an important role in galvanizing a new generation of freedom fighters. Their staunch politics and militancy has continued to inspire young Aboriginal people even to the present day.

**‘Aborigines take lead in Sydney demo’, Tribune newspaper, 08/12/1971, p10**

Rather than trying to tell any more of the Australian BPP’s story in this blog post, I’ve pulled together a list of resources for readers to learn more, all accessible online:

You will notice that several of these are archival newspaper and magazine articles, found on the National Library of Australia’s Trove database (an extremely useful and user-friendly tool for research). If you haven’t already tried it out, give Trove searching a go! Prepare yourself for going down a few rabbit holes though. There are also a number of academic papers which examine the Australian BPP in some depth:

Then there’s Alyssa Trometter’s PhD thesis, titled ‘The Fire in the Belly’: Aboriginal Black Power and the rise of Australian Black Panther Party, 1967–1972, but it doesn’t appear to be available on the internet.

**‘Aborigines: a year of militancy?’, *The Bulletin*, 08/01/1972, p9**

Now to the origins of the Aboriginal Panthers’ emblem, a design synonymous with the international Black Power movement of the 60s and 70s, and recognized around the world as a symbol of anti-colonial resistance. As well as adopting the name and politics of Huey Newton’s and Bobby Seale’s organization, the Australian BPP also took on the stylized black Panther graphic as their emblem.

But the emblem’s story doesn’t begin with Newton and Seale in California; it starts with the much lesser-known Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) in Alabama — the original Black Panther Party — founded in 1965. I learnt this while reading ‘Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael [Kwame Ture]’, hands down one of my favorite books. Ture was among the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) activists who assisted the local Black community in Lowndes County to set up their own independent political party:

“We chose for the emblem a black panther, a beautiful black animal which symbolizes the strength and dignity of black people, an animal that never strikes back until he’s back so far into the wall, he’s got nothing to do but spring out. And when he springs he does not stop.” — Kwame Ture, October 1966 (Black Power speech at University of California)

“It said that we would fight back if we had to do it. When we chose that symbol, many of the peoples in our county started saying we were a violent group who is going to start killing white folks. But it wasn’t that, it was a political that we was here to stay and we were going to do whatever needed to be done to survive.” — John Hulett, first Chairperson of the LCFO (quoted in ‘Ready for Revolution’, 2003, p464)

Several SNCC activists were involved in designing the LCFO’s logo, including Jennifer Lawson, Ruth Howard, and Dorothy Zellner (Ture, 2003, p463; Cushing, 2018). In reading about the original Black Panther Party, something I found to be quite interesting and admirable was the attitude taken to ‘ownership’ of the symbol:

“…we received a very correct letter from Huey, respectful and eloquent, formally requesting permission to use the Black Panther as the name and symbol of a revolutionary party they planned to organize…What we said was that since we didn’t own the symbol (who’d heard of intellectual property rights in those days?), it really belonged to the people, so they didn’t need our permission.” — Kwame Ture (Ready for Revolution, 2003, p477)

So, we can trace the origins of the Aboriginal Panther Party’s emblem back to an armed Black political party in Alabama. Both organizations stood for self-defense, self-determination, and fought for the liberation of Black people.

In Part 3 of ‘liberation organizations & their emblems’, we step forward again to take a look at the symbols adopted by a contemporary group, Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (est. 2014).

Uyidiga lanabura (let’s speak soon)

REFERENCES (in addition to resource list)

Aboriginal gun plan. (1972, March 1). Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, p. 7.

Cushing, L. (2018, February 1). The Women Behind the Black Panther Party Logo. Design Observer.

Foley, G. (2001). Black Power in Redfern 1968–1972.

Militancy on land issue. (1971, December 8). Tribune, p. 12.

‘Panthers’ formed in Australia. (1972, January 19). Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, p. 6.

Ture, K. (2003). Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael [Kwame Ture]. New York, NY: Scribner.

Talking Aboriginal design activism — liberation organizations & their emblems (Part 2: Australia’s Black Panther Party)

By Callum Clayton-Dixon: We can trace the origins of the Aboriginal Panther Party’s emblem back to an armed Black political party in Alabama. Both organizations stood for self-defense, self-determination, and fought for the liberation of Black people.

REFERENCES (in addition to resource list)

Written by Indigenous Research Synergies