Black Panthers denounce ‘new’ Panthers

Mr. Zulu Shabazz has been the central figure at numerous NBPP rallies across the nation, including in Jasper, Texas, when he led 50 armed NBPP members clad in military-style fatigues and black berets who sought to confront members of the Ku Klux Klan in the aftermath of the June 1998 truck-dragging death of James Byrd Jr.

In its most recent intelligence report on hate groups, the SPLC said the NBPP is active in California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Mr. Zulu Shabazz has embraced a 10-point platform similar to one written by original Black Panther Party leader Huey Newton that called for equality in employment, housing and education, along with military exemptions, an end to police brutality, the release of blacks from federal, state and local jails, and freedom for blacks to decide their national destiny.

But the NBPP’s manifesto makes several additions, including claims that whites have kept blacks “deaf, dumb and blind and used every dirty trick in the book to stand in the way of our freedom and independence,” and had targeted blacks with “biological and chemical warfare.” It also wants the establishment of a separate nation for blacks, known as New Africa, and calls for blacks to protect themselves from “racist police and the racist military by any means necessary.”