Black History Month Series: Detroit’s Black Power Movement
Methods of Mobilization During Detroit’s Black Power Movement
How Detroit’s Black Power activists supported their communities toward self-determination.
The first point in the Black Panther Party’s 10 Point Program called for freedom and “the power to determine the destiny of [the] Black community.” Other points included full employment, decent housing, and education. These points aligned with Black Power activists’ goals of economic justice and self-determination. In contrast, the city’s “tough on crime” approach to community issues, which rarely considered Black residents’ opinions, resulted in heavier policing in their communities and the demolition of historic neighborhoods in the name of “slum removal.” Much of Detroit’s working-class Black population grew tired of judgmental outsiders deciding what their communities needed.
Black Power activists sought to meet residents’ basic needs, which city officials had failed to recognize. Revolutionary news outlets, protests, education programs, and community survival programs increased public awareness, built solidarity, and challenged the individualistic tendencies of mainstream American living.
Newspapers: 1965–1970
Activists wanted a convenient way to deliver revolutionary news, thought, and education to people’s doorsteps. Inner City Voice, an entirely Black-owned and operated community newspaper, sought to do just that. The paper published news and ideas about local, national, and international events. First published on October 20th, 1967, issues came out monthly until July 15, 1970.
The paper’s two original slogans were “Detroit’s Black Community Newspaper” and “The Voice of the Revolution.” Publishers and staff intentionally uplifted the most marginalized. For example, the first issue had three front-page stories concerning living and working conditions in Detroit. In 1970, the slogan changed to “The Official Organ of the Revolutionary League of Black Workers.”
We The People
Around the same time, the Adult Community Movement for Equality started a biweekly publication called We the People. Their name showed a determination to provide a platform for Black residents who had previously gone unheard. The newsletter also included current political news and education.
Amplifying Experiences
Most Black and low-income residents in East Village, a neighborhood on Detroit’s East Side and home to ACME’s headquarters on Kercheval Ave, reported significant concerns about the current police-community interactions. ACME printed and distributed card-sized surveys regarding police interactions throughout the community to learn about these needs directly from the residents.
Results were shocking: 51 percent of residents reported an officer illegally arresting them, 71 percent had been stopped and searched by police on the street or in their car without being arrested, 29 percent had been hit or beaten by a policeman, and 51 percent of residents had received a ticket for jay-walking; these were only a few examples of the answers they received from their police brutality cards. On July 1, 1965, they published the results in We the People.
Protests: 1971–1973
Since its implementation in 1971, Detroit Police Department’s infamous STRESS unit–an acronym for “Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets”–fueled community outrage. The STRESS unit was a specialized police tactical unit that deployed undercover officers to specific “high crime” areas–usually predominantly Black neighborhoods–to arrest people in the act of committing a crime. Officer discretion, of course, determined who the suspects and “criminals” were, meaning racial profiling was commonplace. To maintain the public perception that militarized policing reduced crime, DPD boasted about their arrest numbers and alleged drops in crime since the unit’s creation.
In reality, officers arrested far more people than they ever prosecuted or convicted. City officials and law enforcement officers framed STRESS as a means of protecting law-abiding Black residents, identified as the prime victims of street crime. But the data revealed another story: Between 1971 and 1973, DPD killed at least 108 people–a higher number of civilians per capita than any other city in the nation. Victims were almost entirely young Black males, and most were unarmed. Community outrage grew during the program’s second and third years of operation and contributed to the anti-STRESS movement’s growth.
The Radical Labor Defense Coalition’s unity coalition, the State of Emergency Committee, played a prominent role in building the anti-STRESS movement. Organizations like the LDC organized rallies and launched petitions, such as their “Abolish STRESS!” rally at the University of Detroit on March 26, 1972. They also released a petition demanding for the unit’s abolition. Organizations like the Detroit Black Panther Party, Southern Black Caucus, and Malcolm X Black Hand Society sponsored the rally. The event drew a predominantly Black crowd of 5,000 people.
Political Education
Rallies and petitions attracted public attention to activists’ work. Radical activists understood that the work had to extend beyond protests in order to effect sustained change. To help the community contextualize their issues and invest in long-term solutions, organizations published and distributed educational materials. The anti-STRESS campaign, for example, distributed leaflets calling for the unit’s abolition:
Black Power activists, including the Black Panther Party, shared the belief that community education was a critical step in the fight for Black liberation. The fifth demand in the Panthers’ 10 Point Program was “education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society.” The Detroit Panthers followed other chapters’ lead and started weekly political education classes. Discussions mainly served to generate community-based solutions to issues raised by residents.
Education meetings were well-attended, drawing as many as 50 people. Discussions generally revolved around articles from the Black Panther newspaper, the party’s 10 Point Program, or relevant issues within the community. Occasionally, they’d discuss works from political theorists, like Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book.
Thomas Amar Casey, a member of the Black Student Union at the University of Michigan, volunteered with the Panthers in the early ’70s and said the political education classes were transformative:
“There were brothers who, when they initially started participating in the P.E. [political education] classes, were functional illiterates, but over time learned to read; not just your basic stuff, but advanced material. Brothers who literally couldn’t read when I first met them were reading and understanding sophisticated Marxist-Leninist principles several months later… The growth in literacy was astounding.” (On the Ground)
Panthers aimed to instill an early sense of pride and appreciation for their culture in Black children. With the help of local Black Student Unions, the Panthers extended their Black history education programs to children by opening a liberation school at their West Side office during the summer. The liberation school aimed to empower children to aspire to heights that previously seemed unattainable. Each morning, around twenty to twenty-five eager children showed up to learn about Black history.
Community survival programs
Detroit had a strong network of organizations doing revolutionary work, but few assisted residents quite as much as the Detroit Black Panthers. Like BPP chapters across the country, the Detroit chapter opened community survival programs in the city. Survival programs sought to “improve the conditions of the people” and meet the community’s most basic needs.
In 1969, the Detroit Panthers opened their most famous survival program, the Free Breakfast Program. At multiple locations across the city, up to fifty children per location showed up each morning before school to receive a healthy breakfast. All children were welcome, no matter their socioeconomic status. Local and chain grocery stores, mom-and-pop restaurants, and other local establishments helped supply the program with donations. Brothers Market, for example, was reportedly very receptive to Panther requests, according to former member Lorene Johnson in On the Ground.
Each morning before school, as many as fifty children per location would come to get a hearty breakfast–usually consisting of eggs, sausage, orange juice, milk, and sometimes grits and pancakes. Volunteers also took the opportunity to teach the party’s Ten Point Program and later, walk the kids safely to school.
Panthers didn’t stop there: they also organized a service that bussed residents to visit incarcerated family members and assembled care packages for incarcerated people. They started the program in 1972 out of their West Side office.
Former Panther Tracy Wilson recalled in On the Ground:
“We ran two buses every other week to Joliet Prison [in Joliet, Illinois] and Jackson State Prison. . . . The program was so popular that the buses were always filled to capacity, sometimes we had to turn people away. Initially, there were bus trips every week, but that became too expensive, so we settled on every other week.”
Survival Day: 1972
Panthers also held their first “Survival Day” on May 20, 1972, designed to provide relief for the nearby Jeffries Projects residents. Panthers also had the 1973 mayoral election on their radar, endorsing candidate Coleman A. Young. If elected, Young promised to immediately abolish STRESS and fire John Nichols, the existing DPD commissioner and Young’s mayoral opponent.
The event featured free grocery distribution, sickle-cell anemia testing, voter registration booths, musical entertainment, and speakers throughout the day, and volunteers registered over 100 voters. An article in the Black Panther newspaper reported that 1,500 people showed up, and volunteers gave away 1,000 bags of free groceries “with a chicken in every bag.”
“Once again, the importance of unifying all oppressed peoples around our survival was demonstrated. It will be through this kind of unity that our complete liberation can be won. ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE.”
Mayor Young eventually became Detroit’s first Black mayor, and it’s likely the Panthers’ voter registration efforts and political classes played a significant role in his success. Six weeks into his term, Mayor Young released a reform plan for the Detroit Police Department which included the immediate abolition of STRESS.
While white city officials implemented policies that subjected Black Detroiters to police violence and neighborhood removal in the name of public safety, Black Power activists sought to empower their community to fight against these oppressive systems. In particular, the Black Panther Party changed community organizing as we know it. Through protests, education, and community survival programs, Detroit’s Black activists worked to build their communities’ resources and capacity for self-determination. Their legacy lives on in contemporary efforts, from Black Lives Matter to mutual aid networks’ insistence that “we keep us safe.” Studying our radical history is an opportunity to both learn from our predecessors’ experiences and recognize the threads of continuity in our shared struggle for liberation.
