A former Black Panther says having a black president in the United States is not doing anything to help black children today.
Prominent in the 1960s and 70s, the Black Panther movement was born amid concerns of police brutality against young black men.
The group's unofficial historian is Billy Jennings, and he's visiting Australia.
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Kerri Worthington has the story.
Black Panther members took inspiration from civil rights leader Malcolm X who, before his assassination in 1965, led a movement to end what he said was white people's oppression of black Americans.
Black Panthers armed themselves with handguns, attracting the ire of the government and security organisations like the FBI.
As a consequence, the Black Panthers had a reputation of violence and militancy.
But Black Panther Billy X Jennings says there was more to them than guns.
"Very few people know the connection between our social programs in the Black Panther party. In American society the media has dissected those programs away from the Black Panther Party. So you seem like you're talking about two different things. When I came here to Australia, it seemed like people were stuck in 1969 and 1970. All they ask me about is guns... you know, like that was our primary thing. The gun was a tool, like Malcolm X said, for self-defence in our community."
Mr Jennings himself joined the Black Panthers in 1968 as a teenager, drawn to it by the socialist ideals it was beginning to develop in conjunction with civil rights.
He says the community services they established continue today.
"Our main concentration was on developing social programs to aid people in our community. For instance, the free breakfasts for school children program -- a simple program that marries nutrition and education together. But before we did it, no one has done it in the private or in the public sector. So what we did was deal with hunger, because it's hard for a young person to concentrate on education when their stomach is grumbling. So the breakfast program was a landmark program that fed kids - no matter what colour you were. And we so embarrassed the government because the government was calling us thugs, but we were feeding kids. They were not doing anything like that. So we embarrassed the government into doing that."
The Black Panther Party reached its peak in 1969 before declining memberships and internal division led to its eventual dissolution in 1982.
Nonetheless, Billy Jennings says the legacy continues not only through the community services the Black Panthers established, but through its international influence.
Several chapters were established in Australia in the 1970s by Aboriginal rights activists, perhaps the most vocal of which was in the Sydney suburb of Redfern.
Mr Jennings says other chapters were set up in countries as diverse as Japan and Algeria, attracting marginalised members of those societies.
He's brought archival material on his speaking tour of Australia to show how wide the Panthers' influence was.
"These are Panthers from the UK, these are Panthers from New Zealand, these are Panthers from India, this is the Panther newspaper from Israel. This is the impact of the Panther party worldwide. It was a youth movement because most Panthers were 17, 18, 19 years old. We weren't going to take the same shit our parents took. You know, they took being hosed down or dogs sicked (incited to attack) on them for voting, but we as kids, we weren't going to take that BS (rubbish), and so people drew from that inspiration."
When asked if movements like the Black Panthers still have relevance in 2013, with equal civil rights in the United States and a black president in the White House, Billy Jennings emphatically says yes.
"The situation is almost worse than it was in the 1960s. Just because we have a black president, that skin colour doesn't filter down to the community. So he is a Democrat, whatever a Democrat is. But in terms of overall black conditions, unemployment is high. Mortality death rate per capita to the bigger society, young black kids are dying at a younger age. You have a 50 per cent drop-out rate in all our public schools, and so forth. There's not any money for infrastructure in America. They used it all for the war, or the capitalists stole it all when they bankrupted Wall Street."
Billy Jennings says black Americans are still a target for police brutality and casual racism, even if it's far less overt than in the 1960s.
He says the latest targets have been Muslims since the 2001 attacks by Islamic militants on New York and Washington, but that hasn't led to better black-white relations.
"What the Arab people are today is what black people were 40 years ago. They're used as the boogey man [myth to frighten children]. And since that time it's gotten worse because they've enacted oppressive laws like Homeland Security. And no it hasn't drawn us any closer. You know, the system thrives off dividing people. I mean, that's what they do."
Mr Jennings' visit to Australia was sponsored by the group Socialist Alternative, for its annual Marxist conference.
