Regina Jennings PhD.

As a member of the original Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, my latest books, Poetry and the Black Panther Party: from Ancestral Memory, Morphogenetic Fields to Hip Hop and Panther Poems: Poetry of a Sister Panther examine that experience. Poetry and the Black Panther Party is a literary tribute to the brave founders and members of the Black Panther organization, who published poems they wrote in the Black Panther newspaper. By explicating this poetry, using links to African thought and philosophy as well as physics, I have accomplished two intentions: the first, to present this body of literature to contemporary audiences and secondly to follow a dictate of Malcolm X which is to connect Black America to Africa in all possible ways.

I learned about Malcolm broadly when a member of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. We considered ourselves Malcolm's children and I never forgot those lessons which are explored in my book Malcolm X and the Poetics of Haki Madhubuti. In that book, I show how Malcolm's use of language not only affected the poetry output of Haki Madhubuti, but also how the great Malcolm X ushered forward new thinking and language uses, as well as behavior, within Black America. Quite frankly, Malcolm X started an entire literary tradition. I consider myself to be a Black Nationalist Freedom Fighter and all of my writings (and behavior) I hope reflect that perspective because our people need unapologetically Black spokes women and men who labor for their interest, primarily.