Women strong in Panthers

The words of 16-year-old J. Tarika Lewis paved the road for women to join the Black Panther… The words of 16-year-old J. Tarika Lewis paved the road for women to join the Black Panther Party.

“Y’all have a nice program and everything, it sounds like me. Can I join? Since y’all don’t have no sisters up in here,” she asked one day after walking into the Black Panther headquarters in Oakland, California.

“Well, can I have a gun?” she asked next.

An affirmative answer to her questions made Lewis the first woman to join the party.

Women like J. Tarika Lewis and their involvement in the Black Panther Party were the subjects of a lecture given by Dr. Robyn Ceanne Spencer. The Women’s Studies Department hosted her lecture, “Black Power and Black Panther Women,” last Thursday. Students, professors and community members gathered in Room 2M56 of Posvar Hall at 3 p.m. to listen to Spencer’s work.

Spencer’s lecture and presentation conveyed images of women taking an active role in the Black Panther Party. Women did not allow the Black Power movement to go along without them. During the 1970s, women began to join the Black Panther Party, Spencer said. They took active roles in the party and changed the image that the Black Panthers included only men.

“When people talk about the Black Panther Party, they think they’re talking about men,” Spencer said.

Popular images of the Panthers display the group as having an all-male membership, but the Black Panthers were the first organization to popularize the image of black women as armed insurrectionists, Spencer said. They believed armed self defense was a skill that women could master and pass down to their children.

Black women were indispensable central to the Black Panther Party. According to co-founder Bobby Seale, three-fourths of Black Panther members were women. As mothers, these women taught their children to be combatants against injustice.

Though women took roles as clerical workers and typists, moving up in the party was encouraged, Spencer added. Women stepped up to take on leadership roles and became involved in politics.

Kathleen Cleaver was known for her militant image and politics. Elaine Brown took over the party when previous co-leader Huey Newton went into exile, and Brenda Pressley became involved at the urging of a young man who asked her to type something. When she learned that it was for the Black Panthers, Pressley agreed. She volunteered a few days a week and soon became a Black Panther member.

These women and many more were a “crucial part in black women’s struggle,” Spencer said. She believes that their stories remain unknown because history often omits militant women.

Even today, the “stereotype of a super-strong woman tends to bedevil us,” she said.

Spencer is an assistant professor of African and African-American studies and history at Penn State. She grew up in Brooklyn, New York and graduated from Columbia University in 2001 with a doctorate in American History. Her research specializations include African-American social protest movements, South African history and African-American women.

This year, Spencer is participating in a post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for African-American Urban Studies and the Economy at Carnegie Mellon University. She has written about gender and black power, and the international impact of the Black Panther Party. She is currently working on the book, “Repression Breeds Resistance: The Rise and Fall of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California, 1966-1982.”