ACTION | Activism

It’s About Time: An Archive of the Black Panther Party (1 of 2)

A long-time member of the Black Panther Party (BPP), Billy X provides a tour of the archive he founded on the works and legacy of the BPP, showing carefully preserved specimens of issues of the Black Panther Party Newspaper.

Billy X Jennings (Billy X), a long-time member of the Black Panther Party (BPP) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, describes the It’s About Time archive he founded in 2004, with the help of his partner of several decades. He provides a brief tour of the archive room in Sacramento, California (United States), where he stores many important documents, books, and art related to the BPP’s work and legacy. Bringing out carefully preserved original issues of the Black Panther Party Newspaper that was one of the leading publications of the Afro-American community during the time of the Civil Rights movement in the United States, he describes the significance of the messaging on the cover pages of a few of the issues. Billy X also shows samples of underground publications at the time, from which many in the country obtained information about the challenges marginalized communities faced and the grassroots movements they led to address these challenges.

author Billy X Jennings (he), an activist, educator, and archivist, was a long-time member of the Black Panther Party (BPP), where he held many positions over several years, including being the personal aid to BPP leaders, Huey Newton and David Hilliard.
author_affiliation Africa, Indigenous North America | Chickasaw
residence United States
organizational It’s About Time