Learning About The Black Panthers Changed How I Saw Liberation

Michael Williams is an Atlanta organizer and member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Motivated by racist attacks targeting Black communities, he began studying the Black Panther Party and discovered its socialist roots. In this reflection, Williams explains why he believes Black liberation and socialism are inseparable and how that realization shaped his political journey.

I’m a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a revolutionary socialist organization with branches in major cities across the country. I’m part of the Atlanta branch.

As a Black socialist, I believe there is no Black liberation without abolishing capitalism, and there is no abolishing capitalism without Black liberation. They’re two sides of the same struggle.

For me, it started with the mass racist attacks that were happening across the country, especially the massacre committed by Dylann Roof. Armed racists were going into churches, schools, grocery stores and other public places, gunning down Black people.

At the time, I wasn’t familiar with socialism or communism, but I did know about the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. When I saw my people being attacked, I thought, “We need to bring back the Black Panthers.”

So I started studying what the Black Panthers were actually about. That’s when I learned they were socialists. They weren’t just running free breakfast programs and health clinics out of the kindness of their hearts. They had a broader strategy: to show people that we don’t need bosses or billionaires to survive. We can take care of ourselves. We can take power into our own hands.

Once I understood that socialism was intertwined with Black history in that way, I knew I wanted to be part of that movement.

We know our rights came through struggle. The right to vote is fundamental in any democracy. But the United States has never truly been a democracy for everyone. The country was founded on slavery, and under the Constitution only white men who owned property could vote.

Even after slavery ended, Black people endured a century of Jim Crow. After the civil rights movement won important victories, we’ve continued to see those gains rolled back.

Today, politicians and Supreme Court justices can dismantle rights that our communities fought and bled for. That’s why I believe we need a new system, one controlled by working people rather than politicians and billionaires.

To me, socialism is about protecting the rights we’ve won and expanding them so they can’t simply be taken away again.