A Taste of Brown: A Black Panther's Movement Critique
             And, he told me about what he dreamed.
             And a feeling familiarly came around.
             Man, where have you been for all these years
             Man, where were you when I sought you
             The above lyrics signified a certain type of uniformity and camaraderie, characteristic of the legendary Black Panther movement. However, uniformity and camaraderie were soon threatened when Elaine Brown became head of the party. When the former leader Huey Newton went into exile in the late 1970's, Elaine rose to the position of leadership, drastically changing the internal party structure. Elaine became a female symbol of power, holding an office traditionally held by men.
             The Black Panther party came into existence addressing suffering in America. The 1970s were a time of federal troops in the South being employed to repel racist, police﷓advocated violence against black children attempting to attend school with white children. It was a time of constant police attacks on blacks seeking voting rights, which became both a social and political issue. Brown discusses the major goals of this organization: to insure blacks essential rights denied through the Jim Crow era by institutional racism and lynching. The right to have food, shelter, health care and education was denied to blacks. Brown recounts an instance that shows the unintended effects of the denial of these rights. She begins,
             "I mean, we've got a six-year-old girl whose entire right leg is marred by third-degree burns.... Three kids from one family came to us with no shoes – only thongs – and when we went to their own house, we couldn't find a single toothbrush" (393).
             As illustrated by the quote, the fundamental human rights had been stripped from the black community prior to the rise of the Black Panthers. To ameliorate the past wrong, this party performed major tasks towards the equalizin...