Romantic love is not the only sort of love. There are alternative forms—including communal love, which is deeply rooted in collective care and well-being. These ideas of community-wide care and support receive far less attention in American society. They don’t have holidays and entire cultural genres built around them.
Yet, communal love has made a deep impact on history. Take, for instance, the story of a group popularly known for militancy, not love: the Black Panther Party (BPP). The Panthers, in addition to their bold ideas about Black revolution and self-defense, made a significant (but often under-appreciated) contribution to society’s conceptualization of caring for one another. For them, love was not just an emotion but an action. The BPP saw communal love as a revolutionary ideal—one that demanded the creation of programs and institutions to serve a Black community that had been neglected in the U.S. This vision emerged as a powerful agent for change and empowerment in the Black Freedom Struggle, even if the Panthers themselves didn't always live up to their visionary goals.
In 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, Calif. The group became widely known for the striking image its members cultivated: black leather jackets, berets, and openly carried loaded rifles. They made headlines for marching, armed, into the California State Capitol to protest proposed state gun control legislation. The legislation, they argued, aimed to stop the Panthers from monitoring police officers and Black people from defending themselves from law enforcement abuses.
The media gravitated toward the BPP’s bold aesthetics, often portraying the Panthers as dangerous radicals. Law enforcement officials including FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, saw the group as a national security threat.
Yet, this image was a caricature of what the Panthers actually stood for. At the center of their mission was a vision of communal love. They saw themselves as actively invested in the liberation of oppressed people. The BPP believed in self-determination, collective care, nourishment, and education for Black and impoverished communities.
Their commitment and philosophy of empowerment spurred the BPP to launch numerous social service programs that are far less remembered by history than the group’s militancy. They especially focused on helping the population they saw as most vulnerable and unable to directly advocate for themselves—Black children.