The Black Panther's 10 Point Program in Jazz Poetry by Connor Guarnieri
Black advocacy was present in many places in the BAM, and jazz poetry is no exception. Marked by its unconventional prose, its rhythmic tendencies, this form of art is very important in black culture. This form of poetry also sees its fair share of Black Power and Black Liberation ideals entrenched inside. In this post, I hope to show how the Black Panthers 10 point program is present in these poems, showing how popular this belief was at the time. One example of the ten point program being present in BAM poetry comes in the jazz poem a/coltrane/poem by Sonia Sanchez. In the poem, she quite bluntly talks about her anger about rich white men, such as the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts, who seemingly ruin day to day life: “YEH. U RIGHT THERE. YOU ROCKEFELLERS. MELLONS VANDERBILTS FORDS. Yeh. GITem. PUSHem/PUNCHem/STOMPem. THEN LIGHT A FIRE TO THEY pilgrim asses.” Sonia Sanchez is expressing a hatred towards these oppressive figures in the way of jazz po...