The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee’s Black Caucus, Virgie Rollins, admitted at a small town hall in Detroit Saturday that she is a former Black Panther, a controversial organization that was formed in the 1960s.
“I’m a former Black Panther and, when we talk about the movement , as a former Black Panther with Angela Davis and Kathleen Cleaver, it was important … to make people understand it was about the movement for us,” said Rollins. “Educating us. We got out and we taught kids, we fed the hungry, and we clothed the naked.”
At the end of Rollins’ statement, which was secretly taped and posted online by the GOP War Room, she asks blacks to vote for Democrats in the 2018 midterms and help take Congress back from the Republican Party.
“We got to turn back to the revolution!” Rollins yelled.
Sitting near Rollins was Democratic National Committee Deputy Chairman Keith Ellison, D-Minn.
The Black Panther Party’s history dates back to 1966, when it was founded and served as a community organization to protect blacks from police brutality by law enforcement officers in Oakland, Calif. As the movement grew across the country, the United Kingdom and Algeria, it faced allegations of being focused on “defiant posturing over substance,” according to author Hugh Pearson.
