Photo taken with the New Black Panther Party National Minister
James Muhammad and FAMU students Nyasha Baly & Jina Gilliam.
A regional leader of the New Black Panther Party says his organization is grossly misunderstood.
“We are a group of people, brothers and sisters who love you and love our people enough that we put our life on the line everyday. The New Black Panther Party is not a hate group,” said James Muhammad, who takes the title Minister. Muhammad is acutely aware that the NBPP is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Muhammad is the NBPP’S Minister of Education. He met on Wednesday with Florida State’s Black Student Union, where he shared the NBPP’s perspective and its mission.
The New Black Panther Party practices self-determination for their community and the black nation. Their overall goal is to defeat white supremacy by thriving in entrepreneurs hip in the community and creating their own education system, employment system and court system.
The NBPP believes that all black people should be exempt from military service, taxation, death penalties and an immediate end to police harassment. These forms of demands are from the NBPP self-defense 10-point program and platform. The New Black Panther Party is not affiliated with the original Black Panther Party. The New Black Panther Party has its own objective of unifying people in the black nation and sustaining black power through love.
The Black Student Union at FSU hosted “Agape,” a Black Love series event to discuss the highest and purest form of love and charity. Muhammad accentuated the importance of black love in our society between brothers and sisters with the belief that black love creates black power. He began to draw in the audience with a rhetorical question: “How can you love someone else until you love yourself?”
Muhammad spoke about the importance of black women and men sustaining relationships within their race.
“We need each other,” said Muhammad. Simply because of the understanding and relational prominence of black love in the “black nation” as the NBPP refers to it. At the event Muhammad inspired the audience on how people can get involved with the NBPP.
“You can be a friend, a supporter. You can start your own group a student organization. We do not want people to protest, we want people to build businesses and be leaders, we can train you.”
Andrew Melville, the BSU president at FSU, strives to bring awareness on campus maintaining the leadership presence Muhammad promoted.
“The ultimate goal of mine as BSU president is to get black people in the city of Tallahassee involved. At our events, I would like to see more students from Florida A&M University uniting with us in BSU because it is important for all of us to get exposure of our culture from guests like Brother Muhammad.”
Serena Bradshaw, BSU political education leader, works closely with Melville to coordinate intimate educational events that will help students grow mentally and spiritually. She is a leader of the Political Education committee within BSU. As an affiliate, she coordinates events to advocate for the rights of black students on campus.
“At this event I wanted to talk about black love, in not only romantic relationships, but from a broad spectrum. And I thought the New Black Panther Party would be great because they have a lot of wisdom and academia to expound upon the origin of Black Love.”
Black people coming together in a space, educating and fellowshipping amongst each other is black love in its essence, Muhammad said. The Black Student Union exemplifies the importance of discussing topics that can successfully help the black community elevate to be better-educated people.