First AAMLO Fellowship Reflection: My Path to the African-American Museum at Oakland

(This is the first piece in a series of reflections about my summer fellowship at the African American Museum and Library at Oakland. Stay tuned for more posts throughout the month of August!)

 

Returning to AAMLO

In 2017, I volunteered for the African American Museum and Library at Oakland (AAMLO), helping library visitors navigate family history resources. I also got involved in the oral history efforts of the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. I volunteered to conduct interviews with LGBTQ+ people in the Bay Area who lived through the AIDS crisis and engaged with the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (also known as the ACT UP movement). My volunteer experiences in both Oakland and San Francisco reignited my passion for history and a desire to take my engagement with the past to the next level. I majored in History in college, but seeing the power of history to empower communities first-hand at local museums in the Bay Area definitely solidified my decision to apply to PhD programs.

After finishing my first year as a PhD student in History at Stanford University, I knew I wanted to spend my summer months in the public history realm. I just didn't know exactly how I could make that happen. I found my answer when I learned that Stanford’s Haas Center for Public Service supports a cohort of graduate students to work with a community partner on mutually beneficial research projects each summer. Since I had volunteered at AAMLO in the past, the Oakland institution immediately came to mind when I was considering submitting an application to the fellowship. I liked the idea of returning to AAMLO, but this time, I could go beyond volunteering and make a deeper impact as a research fellow. Since June, I’ve been supporting museum and library staff in envisioning virtual means of connecting community members to our collections during these socially-distant times.

The Papers the Panthers Left Behind

Through my classes at Stanford, I have developed quite an expansive interest in the history of the African diaspora at large, in the United States but also in Latin America and the Caribbean. The story of Black people has certainly transcended national and continental boundaries. I believe that my research must do so as well. 

I am particularly drawn to stories of Black travelers, writers, intellectuals, artists, and activists whose lives take them across borders and cultures. Ever since I moved to Oakland, I have been captivated by the local history of the Black Panther Party since the organization was founded and headquartered in this city. However, I’ve been equally fascinated by the global dimensions of the Panthers' political vision which often get overlooked both inside and outside academia. The Black Panther Party fostered solidarities and connections with revolutionary movements around the world, throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. 

As a graduate student at Stanford, I naturally came across a collection of papers, photos, and ephemera in the archives that the university received from the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation. The foundation was started by David Hilliard and Fredrika Newton with the aim of supporting “cultural, historical and educational programs and institutions consistent with the theories and teaching of Huey Newton and the philosophy and ideology of the Black Panther Party.” Today, the Foundation’s staff are advocating for the installation of a physical monument in Oakland to honor the legacy of the Black Panther Party. A comprehensive guide of Stanford’s collections from the Foundation can be found through the Online Archive of California.

Coincidentally, staff at AAMLO have also become as interested as I am in illuminating the history of the Black Panther Party and Black activism in the Bay Area generally. I definitely feel like I am in the right city at the right museum at the right time! Since this spring, here in Oakland and around the world, protesters under the banner of Black Lives Matter have taken to the streets to challenge police brutality and racial injustice. Now more than ever, I suspect communities around the country will begin turning to local museums and libraries for resources to understand how previous generations grappled with injustice and organized for social change. It's exciting to see AAMLO step up to meet this moment.

Huey P. Newton (far left at the bottom) as he appears in "A Journey of Promise", a mural of African-American history of Northern California and the Bay Area. The mural is above the main staircase at the the African American Museum and Library in Oakland. Newton was not only an activist but also an intellectual and visionary thinker, sensibilities signaled by his thoughtful pose. He appears under an image of women with grocery bags from the Black Panther Party's People's Free Food Program 
(The mural was commissioned by the City of Oakland Public Art Program and completed in 2003 by artist Daniel Galvez. Read more about the mural here.)

 

Panther History for the Next Generation

Since starting my fellowship at AAMLO, I have asked myself how I can channel my knowledge of the Black freedom struggle in ways that are accessible to the Oakland community. I was put to the test in late July when local Girl Scouts troops in Oakland and Richmond partnered with AAMLO for a “virtual field trip”. I created a worksheet that summarized the history of the Panthers and encouraged the Girl Scouts to think critically about the change they wanted to see in their communities today. It was a meaningful assignment for me, a reminder of the historian’s duty to not only share knowledge with others, but in accessible and engaging ways. I did my best to tailor the worksheet to the girl scouts’ experiences.

In designing the worksheet, I thought about what might be most compelling for girls in middle school learning about the Panthers, perhaps for the first time, by centering the women in the leadership of the Party like Elaine Brown and Ericka Huggins. While Newton was living abroad in Cuba in the 1970s, Elaine Brown led the Party’s headquarters in Oakland as the first and only woman to do so. Women like Brown played a variety of roles that helped make the Party more inclusive of both men and women.

There were so many directions I could have taken with the worksheet, but I decided to get to the root of the Panthers’ story: the desire to liberate one's community from unfair policing and poverty. I wanted to emphasize the Panthers' desire to create change in the community and encouraging the Girl Scouts to ask themselves similar questions. Mischaracterizations and tropes of the Panthers as a violent and angry gun-carrying mob mask the truth. The Panthers saw their movement for social justice as rooted in self-defense and autonomy for the local Black community. Through their “survival” initiatives like the Free Breakfast for Children Program and the Oakland Community School, the Panthers supported the school-age residents in their community.

The worksheet activity starts with an excerpt from the Black Panther Party’s 10-Point Program from 1966. The program outlined what the organization wanted to secure for Black people: among other demands, their list included freedom, employment, decent housing, land, bread, clothing, and justice. The worksheet then asks: "What do you want for your community? Come up with your own program for the changes you want to see", followed by "Why does your community need these changes?", and finally “How will you help your community make these changes?”

These are the kinds of questions we should all ask ourselves during these turbulent times. How will we take accountability for our own lives and communities? How can each of us create the change we want to see in the world? With the fifty-fifth anniversary of the Black Panther Party just around the corner in 2021, I am excited to have the privilege of supporting AAMLO in sharing the history of Oakland and the Black Panther Party with a new generation. 

- Matthew Alexander Randolph is a PhD Student in History at Stanford University specializing in the history of the African Diaspora. - 
(Follow Matt on Twitter @m_alexrandolph)