![]() ![]() Nearby, a bronze bust of Newton was installed to memorialize his critical role as co-founder along with Bobby Seale. Newton Way in honor of the leader and to mark where he was killed. The City Council renamed a section of 9th Street as Huey P. In the two years since we started teaching this unit, there has been growing attention to the BPP’s legacy in its birthplace of Oakland. When we began three years ago, the only visible memorial to the Black Panther Party in Oakland was a makeshift sign attached to the pole of a streetlight at 55th Street and Market, indicating that the BPP organized to have this streetlight installed after a car struck a child at the intersection. Our compelling question was “How should the City of Oakland better memorialize the multifaceted legacy of the Black Panther Party?” Our unit about the Black Panther Party sought to expose our students to an essential history that originated powerfully in the same city where many were now student teaching and to do so in an open-ended way that allowed them to draw their own conclusions. Social studies instruction needs to move away from a static model in which students learn by memorizing the “truth” posited in textbooks to a dynamic approach in which they ask questions, gather and analyze evidence, and make arguments about the past. Over the past three years, they collectively have identified three key qualities that make the Black Panther Party unit their favorite: asking questions that matter, engaging critically with diverse sources, and making arguments to stakeholders. Our students come from a variety of racial and class backgrounds and are drawn to UC Berkeley’s program because of its explicit focus on social justice. The activity was an example of our students’ major fall semester assignment - a weeklong curricular unit of instruction that they would plan and teach as student teachers. My co-teacher Lizzie Humphries and I had created this city council simulation as the culmination of a three-day unit on the BPP. It was another controversial meeting of the Oakland City Council with one important distinction - the “council members” were actually preservice teachers in a History Methods class at UC Berkeley. that they put into practice.” Another took issue with having a single person represent the BPP and urged members to “return this monument proposal to the people by creating an open call for Black artists to submit proposals for a new monument concept, one dedicated not to the image of a single man, but to the legacy of the Black Panther Party as a party of the people. The council members engaged in a lively debate as to the significance of the BPP - was it armed struggle, community programs, or something else? One council member passionately argued against using funds for a statue and instead proposed that the city establish “a fund, named for the Panthers, to support the types of programs. ![]() Newton and the Black Panther Party outside the Alameda County Courthouse” and to use “the iconic photograph of Huey Newton seated in a wicker chair with a rifle in one hand and a spear” as the basis for the memorial. That evening, the members discussed whether or not to “approve plans to install a memorial to Huey P. ![]() 28, 2020, the Oakland City Council convened to discuss a resolution pertaining to the legacy of the Black Panther Party (BPP), which had been founded in Oakland more than 50 years prior. ![]()
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