by Eva Dameron
Daily Lobo
Elaine Brown said in order to turn the page of history, it must be written first.
Brown, a former chairwoman of the Black Panther Party, said African-Americans need to keep fighting for equality.
"A lot of times when people get to talking about the history of black people, or talking about black people, peoples' eyes glaze over, and a lot of these people are black people," she said.
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Brown said African-Americans need to revisit the past in order to move forward.
She spoke at the Black History Month Kick-off Brunch to an audience of about 200 at the SUB on Saturday.
Brown traced back the pages of African-American history and related it to the Black Panther Party, founded in October 1966.
Brown talked about the history of struggle for African-Americans, the war in Iraq and how the Black Panther Party set out to free all oppressed groups in the world.
"The greatest tragedy of this whole war and this whole scenario in America today is our silence about it," Brown said. "We have been overwhelmed by some sort of mass media propaganda machine, but we have fallen into a kind of complete unconsciousness."
She said the winds of Hurricane Katrina swept over America and exposed its reality.
"And that reality is very, very sad - particularly among black people," she said. "We have to understand the history of black people that gave rise to the Black Panther Party."
"Elaine Brown is one of the most electrifying speakers in the country," said Finnie Coleman, director of African American Studies. "She's one of the most important women in American history, period. She's head of a national organization that was not a popular organization, and she led that with aplomb and really set up a legacy for us."
Brown said the Black Panther Party was created when something else was needed.
"Hell is a place where by design nobody gets his needs met," she said. "If you looked at America then, you might think you were in hell. So the Black Panther Party assessed the state of the blacks and realized we were not getting all our basic needs met."
She said the party was not only concerned with the freedom of African-Americans.
"Our freedom was important to us, but we could not have our freedom in the context of oppression of others," Brown said.
The Black Panther Party formed coalitions with American Indians, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, impoverished white people and Vietnamese, she said, and they fought for women's liberation and gay liberation.
"We even worked with the IRA - that's the Irish Republican Army," Brown said. "We worked with every freedom organization that we could think of to form coalitions throughout this world."
In 1968, J. Edgar Hoover said the Black Panther Party represented the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States, Brown said.
"That meant that we were the terrorists of our time," she said.
Stephanie Cooper attended the event, hosted by African American Studies. She said Brown's speech was riveting.
"That was awesome - all of their influences with all of the oppressed cultures, and how it was not just the Black Panther Party but their connection with all of the other parties that we all are familiar with all over the world," Cooper said.
She said it is important to celebrate Black History Month because if you don't understand your past, you can't understand your future.
"And I think it's imperative that young people stay in touch and don't lose that information, because a lot of it is not included in the history books," Cooper said. "Therefore it is the responsibility of those who were there to keep that memory."
