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Black Panther - Historical Contexts

Africa's ivory, gold and other trade resources attracted Europeans to West Africa and the desperate need for labour. Britain's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade began in 1562 and by the 1730s it became the worlds biggest slave-trading nation. The exploitation of enslaved people made many Europeans, including the British, extremely wealthy.

In the United States, the labour of enslaved people was used to produce goods such as tobacco, cotton, sugar and indigo dye.

The Romans and Greeks had enslaved many people from different regions, but the transatlantic slave trade involved the mass transportation of African people, to support economic growth in European countries.

"Black Panther" was successful in the way it was able to shift some of the perspectives away from the usual stereotypes about Africa in the Western world, and throughout the film it deals with the effects of colonialism on individual cultural identity, and even the effect of it on the rest of the world.




The civil rights movement was a mass protest movement against racial segregation and discrimination in the United States that came to national importance during the mid-1950s.

The movement had its roots in centuries-long efforts of enslaved Africans, and their descendants, to resist racial oppression and to abolish slavery all together. During the movement, African Americans sought to desegregate schools, have equal access to employment opportunities, endorsing discrimination, and ensure that all Black men and women no longer face voter supp hression. Black panther was created to address a serious lack of major Black American comic book superheroes, an issues that was particularly noticeable by the history of racial tension and civil rights activism in the United States.

Marvel's "Black Panther" also celebrates black culture and involves discussions about the importance of representation of African Americans in the media.


After African Americans boycotted the Montgomery, Alabama bus system for over a year, the local bus company had agreed to desegregate its buses because it had lost so much revenue, however the city and state insisted that bus drivers continue to enforce Jim Crow laws. This later led to the Supreme court affirming that segregation on the buses was illegal

(1956) which meant black riders were on the buses again, and sitting in any seats they chose.

Support for a federal Civil Rights Act was one of the goals of the 1963 March on Washington. President John F. Kennedy had introduced the bill before his assassination, so in 1964 his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law. The act banned discrimination based on race, colour, religion and discrimination in hiring practices was also outlawed.

Martin Luther King Jr led a march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 in order to remove obstacles that denied black people to vote.

This was later abolished by President Lyndon B. Johnson who signed the act that allowed back people to vote. He said " The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men"

Marvel's "Black Panther" celebrates black culture and involves discussions about the importance of representation of African Americans in the media.


The Black Panther Party was a black power political organisation founded by "college" students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in California (oct. 1966) and was created after the assassination of Malcolm X (1965).

Its members confronted politicians, challenged the police and protected black citizens from brutality and the party's original purpose was to patrol African American neighborhoods to protect residents from the acts of police brutality.

The party's community service programs, called "survival programs" provided food, clothing ,and transportation, they also helped establish more than 60 community assistance programs including medical services and free clothing and shoes.

The Black Panther Party came into the national spotlight in May 1967, and was declared by the FBI as a "communist organisation" and an enemy of the United States government.

In December 1969 the FBI was involved in a five hour police shoot out at the Southern California headquarters of the black panthers party and a police raid which chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was killed. The measure taken by the FBI was so extreme that, years later when they were revealed, the director of the agency publicly apologised for "wrongful uses of power".





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