About Me

Hi, my name is Malvin Malai-Harrison and I am a senior student at Washington State University majoring in Strategic Communication. This website is a research project for my COM 490 class, Web Design & Usability. I chose to research the Black Panther Party because of a few reasons. The main reason being derived from a lot of the social injustices that I witnessed over the past year (2020). In the wake of the George Floyd protests and other protests that erupted after the deaths and shootings of black people such as: Breonna Taylor and Philando Castile to name a few, I saw parallels being drawn between the Black Panther Party and the Black Lives Matter movement. On surface level it may seem that these two organizations/movements are the same. However, after diving deep into my research it should be made abundantly clear that these are two organizations operating in different environments/conditions in different eras. But one cannot deny the influence and legacy that the Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party left for future generations to continue in the fight for justice and equity in America. Through this project, I wanted to showcase a different side of the Black Panther Party. The side that focused on unity, bringing service and resources to the community in ways that the government and society continuously failed to do so. While much of history and media focuses on the violent imagery of the Black Panthers, a much softer and community-oriented view of the party became glossed over. My hope is that this project provides a glimpse for users to see the side of the Black Panthers that makes them rethink what they previously understood about them and the struggles they sought to address in their communities.

Our assignment was to research a topic of our choice and create a website based around the information we found. I learned a lot about my personal web development throughout the process. When you don’t have a clear plan on how you want to approach a project, or if you’re not thorough in the planning process, then it can be very easy for the website to not achieve what you want it to. I found myself having to rethink a lot of the web pages and consider, “is this too much information?” If so, which information is the most important to keep, and what should I omit? These are very essential questions to consider when deciding on your content and direction you want take with the site. I learned that everything on a website should be intentionally placed and that it’s important to stray away from a page that’s too “busy” or has excessive information (except this page, of course).