[Read Parts 1
and 2]
This is the 3rd and final part
of an interview in late June 2008, with Ericka Huggins, former national
Minister of Education for the Black Panther Party. In this portion
Sister Ericka continues her very informative narrative about the
Oakland Community
School, Oakland,
CA.
Sister
Ericka Huggins explained that the Oakland
Community School
was in fact “an oasis, [a] kind of a haven” for its students, “untouched
by the outer challenges of the community while school was in session.”
Though it was well known by the greater community that the school
was administered and staffed primarily by Black Panther Party members,
and fully supported by the Black Panther Party’s leadership; there
were also students enrolled in the Oakland
Community School
whose parents and /or guardians were not [Black Panther] “Party
members.” A parent or guardian did not necessarily have to be a
Black Panther Party member as a prerequisite to enrolling one’s
child into the school. The Oakland
Community School
was about serving the community as a whole.
The
Oakland Community
School was, as Sister Ericka delineated,
“There for the children…and it also, until its final year
[of] 1981, remained untouched by the clashes and imminent
end to the Black Panther Party.” Thus, for approximately ten years
the Oakland Community
School had, as Brother Huey P. Newton
sometimes remarked, had strived to ‘serve the people body and soul.’
As
I listened to Sister Ericka Huggins’ words during my interview of
her I could not help but think of the words of Huey P. Newton when
he said, “To die for the…racists…is lighter than a feather. But
to die for the people… is heavier than any mountain and deeper than
any sea.” [Reference the introductory pages to the book titled,
To
Die for the People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton].
Sister
Ericka emphasized that the Oakland
Community School
“was a remarkable expression of the action that one can take if
a person understands point 5 of the Black Panther Party Program.
[Point 5 of the Black Panther Party Program reads:
“We
want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this
decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our
true history and our role in the present-day society.
We
believe in an educational system that will give to our people a
knowledge of self. If a man does not have [or woman] does
not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the
world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.”
Sister
Ericka also explained that the Oakland Community School “was loved
not only by the Black community but…had Latino students…Filipino
& Black, Latino & Black, Black & White, multicultural
students from multicultural families…and [the Oakland Community
School] also had White students…Out of the hundreds and hundreds
of students who came to the school over the years only one family
was wealthy. The school was so loved by the community that people
placed their unborn children on [its] waiting list.”
It
was especially uplifting when Ericka remarked that, “When society,
any society, or even a community, or a tribe, or a village…When
any social group decides to give whole being education to
its children…that education, the love and care given to those children
leaves an immortal stain on that community—a beautiful stain - -in
the sense that the children raise their children in the way that
they were raised.”
Sister
Huggins noted that today our society exists “helter skelter,” with
adults being interested primarily in themselves, and lacking a sense
of “longevity”, particularly as related to today’s children. Ericka
poignantly stated that she “wants the planet to exist long after
[she] is gone not just for her children and grandchildren but for
all the children.”
I
asked Ericka if what was done at the Oakland
Community School
is “possible” today. Her answer was and emphatic “yes!” She noted
that people today “are already trying to do it” though she cautioned
often people don’t quite know how to do it “without br inging in
huge sources of funding that restrict their curricular
and programmatic movement, but people are trying.” She further
indicated that presently “there are, for instance small high schools
all over Oakland [CA]” and that she mentors students in them and
they are incredible; but either [such schools] “are under resourced,
under staffed, and those staff are under paid… or they are over
funded, over staffed, and over administrated…and the middle ground
- the no tuition community school - like Oakland Community School
doesn’t really exist.” She further noted that the charter schools
“have become big business” and “the church schools...spend way more
time convincing children to love a particular version of God than
to love themselves.” Ericka pointed out that if and when a funding
source dried up for the Oakland
Community School,
the staff and administrators “did not close down the school.
Rather, they hit the pavement” doing whatever had to be done in
order to keep the Oakland Community School [OCS] open and functioning,
which included OCS teachers who had come from various school districts
taking enormous “cuts in pay,” and some teachers even “going on
welfare” in order to survive, not draw funds from the [Black
Panther] Party, and simultaneously keep the Oakland Community School
up and functioning. Sister Ericka Huggins said, “Yes, it can
be done [today] if people have the passion for young
people; and we need to have that passion.”
Sister
Ericka, made it quite clear that education to the “true nature
of our society” (as point 5 of the Black Panther Party Program
refers to), brings about “consciousness.” She said that, “Whenever
people are educated they will speak from a whole place, not
a scattered, fractured, broken place.”
“There
is,” as Ericka described it, “a national hemorrhage [today] in our
youth and they are dying.” She made the case for not waiting
for “government, churches, or elected officials” to take action
in this regards, but to take action ourselves as a community
and/or communities.
The
fervor and passion for our youth still burn deeply in Ericka Huggins.
She
is of course but one brilliantly stalwart representative of the
many passionately dedicated “family of staff, parents, students,
and their children” of the Oakland
Community School
whose historical example is indelibly stamped in the hearts and
minds of so many right down to the present.
As
the late great Marvin Gaye, sang in his clarion song entitled, “Save
the Children,” from the What's
Going On
album / cd: “Children today, really suffer tomorrow. Oh what
a shame. Such a bad way to live…Live for life. Live life for
the children. Save the babies. You will save the babies, all of
the children. But who really cares? Who’s willing to try?...”
The
Oakland Community
School did “really care” and was
in fact “willing to try,” and in so doing has provided all of us
with a sterling example of what can be done yet again.
BlackCommentator.com
Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a
veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior
of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the
only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political
rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in
opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in
1988 on the nationally televised PBS NewsHour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and
Thinker , by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here
to read excerpts from the book). Click here
to contact Mr. Pinkney. |