The New Black Panthers have a new foe. The old Black Panthers.
The newcomers say they are fighting for justice just like the black power groups of the 1960s, demanding more blacks on Texas school boards and patrolling the grounds of burned churches while wearing black berets, sunglasses and guns.But those who helped found the original Black Panther Party claim the new group is racist.
"We're totally against the race-baiting and bully tactics that they use among people in the community and the image they project to our youth," said Fahim Minkah, a member of the original Black Panther Party.
Even co-founder Bobby Seale has called the New Black Panthers a "black racist hate group."
New Black Panther Party leader Aaron McCarthy, who goes by the name Aaron Michaels, denies the charge. He said the Black Panthers should look to their own past before making accusations.
"They called the pigs the pigs. They called white people honkies. They did everything," the 35-year-old Michaels said.
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in 1966 in Oakland, Calif., by Seale and Huey Newton, who called for an end to police brutality and patrolled the city to document excesses by authorities.
They had conflicts with police and startled California with a fully armed protest inside the Legislature. But they also ran breakfast programs, conducted sickle cell anemia testing and pushed for better housing and more jobs.
The party spread to other cities and had as many as 5,000 members at its peak. Trouble spread as well. In all, 28 party members and 14 police officers died in armed conflicts.
By the late 1970s the party had fallen apart; Newton died in 1989 in a shootout on a drug-infested street in Oakland.
The New Black Panthers' party platform is based on the 10-point program of the original Black Panther Party, with some revisions. It also calls for free health care and "full reparations for our people."
The new group says it has worked on voter registration and food distribution programs.
"We've been doing things people don't know about," Michaels said. "They want to focus on the fact that we carry guns."
Yet the New Black Panthers have distinguished themselves largely by protesting what they see as a lack of blacks on the Dallas school board and among the district's top administrators.
The group has disturbed several board meetings by making demands and refusing to yield the floor.