ABSTRACT
When Black Classic Press director Paul Coates invited me to speak at the Howard University symposium featuring the book he’d published, The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, he asked me to be on the panel discussing the party’s legacy. I dislike the term “legacy”, to me it signifies what has been left after death. Since I am not dead, and a lot of other former Panthers aren’t dead, I told him I’d rather speak on a different panel. The afternoon panel, he said, would focus on gender. I suggested that it be called “Women, Power, and Revolution,” because I think what we have to say about gender transcends the experience of being involved with the Black Panther Party. The organizers, however, followed the conventional thinking, and entitled my panel “Gender Dynamics within the Black Panther Party.”
