Ten-Point Program (Black Panther Party)
The Ten-Point Program is a set of guidelines to the Black Panther Party that states their ideals and ways of operation, a "combination of the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.
"What We Believe" expands on the first section, making demands of what will be deemed sufficient payment for the injustices committed against the Black Community.
For example, one section states that, "We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules.
Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as a restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people".
The ten-point platform was important for the Black Panther Party because it laid out the "physical needs and all the philosophical principles" they expected and that could be understood by everyone.
When Huey Newton talked about the platform, he stated that these things were not something new but something that "black people have been voicing all along for over 100 years since the Emancipation Proclamation and even before that."
Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people.
We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us.
We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventative medical programs to guarantee our future survival.
We want freedom for all black and poor oppressed people now held in U.S. federal, state, county, city and military prisons and jails.
We believe that the many black and poor oppressed people now held in U.S. prisons and jails have not received fair and impartial trials under a racist and fascist judicial system and should be free from incarceration.
We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people’s community control of modern technology.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
"[2] In 1970, Newton shifted the focus of his political activities from Black Nationalism to "intercommunalism," seeking to unite and empower all disenfranchised groups.
In 1972 the Ten Point Program was modified to reflect this changing focus—for instance, adding a demand for completely free health care — leading to tension within the party.
The Ten-Point Program was ultimately unsuccessful, though it played a meaningful role in the development of the civil rights movement in the United States during the 1960s.
