Panther Women Look Back
Published: Feb. 25, 2016
By Ang Li for NYCityLens
This Black History Month marks the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party. The controversial organization was a radical political group in the 1960s and 1970s. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover accused group members as terrorists and carried out a counterintelligence program, commonly known as COINTELPRO, to destroy the Party.
The men in the Black Panthers often got most of the attention, and sometimes still do, but women, too, played a major role. To flesh out that story, Ang Li of NY City Lens located and interviewed four Black Panther women. Here are their stories— about what they did five decades ago and what they are doing now: