Aaron Michaels

Aarn Michaels was the producer for a radio talk show in Dallas, Texas. The show was called Talk Back. It was one of the first African-American talk shows in the Dallas area. In 1986 he began researching and became more aware of the FBI's Counterintelligence Program, he also started doing research on the Black Panther Party and some of the pitfalls that they befailed as an organization and as individuals within the organization. He started doing looking around for individuals who were still alive within that organization. And that was about 1986 things of that nature because He officially brought out the New Black Panther Party as an organization about October of 1987. Around that time, It was the 25th year anniversary of the Black Panther Party of self-defense by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.

In doing research on the BPP former members, he had done a number of interviews with people, like Bobby Rush, who was and is still an alderman, an alderman in Chicago and then became a member of Congress some years later. We bought him on Talkback Liberation Radio. Where they did a number of interviews including an interview with Bobby Seale,

who was a professor emeritus at his university, that he's still at right now. They also talked to several other members of the Black Panther Party. Then one day Aaaron Michaels came to deeper conclusion, That if the FBI had not infiltrated and destroyed the Black Panther Party, that they would have been an organization that would have carried on their legacy even to this very day. He decided that it was time for the Black Panther Party to resurrect itself in Black communities because the same things that were going on that were going on in the 1960s, the 1950s, 40s and 30s was still happening in the 80s in the African American community. His goal was to resurrect the ideology of the Black Panther Party and their stance against drugs, a proliferation of drugs in the African American community. Namely, crack cocaine, which pretty much had just decimated the Black community in the 1980s and 90s and even to this very day, it's still a prolific drug in the African American community. getting drugs out the African American community was one of the things that launched the birth of the New Black Panther Party.

They started having problems with some people in the African American community because they were saying, "well, you know, Black people don't have jobs, Black people don't have this. Why are you guys out here harassing Black people who are just trying to make a living?"

Michaels would reply, "you guys are selling drugs and destroying the neighborhoods, doing the work of the capitalist class by doing that. He used that as one of the catalyst that really launched the New Black Panther Party.

Michaels and his team used to be called the Brothers in Black in the community, before ever calling themselves the Black Panther Party or the New Black Panther Party. They did that for probably a year to year and a half. And then they ended up coming to this greater conclusion, that there wasn't just drugs in the community that was still destroying us, but it was us not being in the boardrooms of Dallas, Texas when decisions about Black communities were being made. Those were some of the other things that drove them to recreate the ideological values of the Black Panther Party.