The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally named the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was founded in Oakland, California, in October 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. This organization emerged as a revolutionary force, advocating for Black nationalism, socialism, and armed self-defense against police brutality. The BPP was a significant part of the Black Power movement, which sought to move beyond the integrationist goals and nonviolent tactics of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The BPP's philosophy was influenced by various sources, including the speeches of Malcolm X, the teachings of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, and Frantz Fanon's book "The Wretched of the Earth." The party's practice of armed self-defense was inspired by Robert Williams, who advocated for this approach against anti-black aggression by the Ku Klux Klan.
Origins and Political Program
The Black Panther Party was founded on October 15, 1966, in West Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. They sought to distinguish themselves from other African American cultural nationalist organizations, such as the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Nation of Islam. The Black Panther Party differed from cultural nationalists by distinguishing between racist and nonracist whites and allying themselves with progressive members of the latter group. They also believed that African American capitalists and elites could and did exploit and oppress others, particularly the African American working class.
Newton and Seale canvassed their community, gathering information about the issues that mattered most to residents. They then created the Ten Point Platform and Program, which served as the foundation for the Black Panther Party. The Ten Point Program addressed a principle stance of the Black Panther Party: economic exploitation is at the root of all oppression in the United States and abroad, and the abolition of capitalism is a precondition of social justice. This socialist economic outlook, informed by a Marxist political philosophy, resonated with other social movements in the United States and in other parts of the world.
The Ten-Point Program
The Black Panther Party's Ten-Point Program outlined their core demands:
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- We want freedom.
- We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every person employment or a guaranteed income.
- We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of 40 acres and two mules.
- We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society.
- We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us.
- We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality.
- We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials.
- We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.
Rise to Prominence
The Black Panther Party came into the national spotlight in May 1967 when a small group of its members, led by its chair, Seale, marched fully armed into the California state legislature in Sacramento. The Black Panther Party viewed the legislation, a gun control bill, as a political maneuver to thwart the organization’s effort to combat police brutality in the Oakland community. The images of gun-toting Black Panthers entering the Capitol were supplemented, later that year, with news of Newton’s arrest after a shoot-out with police in which an officer was killed. With this newfound publicity, the Black Panther Party grew from an Oakland-based organization into an international one with chapters in 48 states in North America and support groups in Japan, China, France, England, Germany, Sweden, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uruguay, and elsewhere.
The initial tactic of the party used contemporary open-carry gun laws to protect Party members when policing the police. The Panthers employed a California law that permitted carrying a loaded rifle or shotgun as long as it was publicly displayed and pointed at no one. Generally this was done while monitoring and observing police behavior in their neighborhoods, with the Panthers arguing that this emphasis on active militancy and openly carrying their weapons was necessary to protect individuals from police violence.
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Community Programs and Social Impact
In addition to challenging police brutality, the Black Panther Party launched more than 35 Survival Programs and provided community help, such as education, tuberculosis testing, legal aid, transportation assistance, ambulance service, and the manufacture and distribution of free shoes to poor people. Of particular note was the Free Breakfast for Children Program (begun in January 1969) that spread to every major American city with a Black Panther Party chapter.
The Black Panther Party of Chicago emerged on the city's West Side in the autumn of 1968. The militant image and rhetoric that attracted so many radical Chicagoans to the Panthers' ranks, however, hindered the effectiveness of the party's programs.
Government Repression and COINTELPRO
Even as the Black Panther Party found allies both within and beyond the borders of North America, the organization also found itself squarely in the crosshairs of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO. In fact, in 1969 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover considered the Black Panther Party the greatest threat to national security. Hoover had pledged that 1969 would be the last year of the Black Panther Party and devoted the resources of the FBI, through COINTELPRO, toward that end.
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COINTELPRO used agent provocateurs, sabotage, misinformation, and lethal force to eviscerate the national organization. The FBI’s campaign culminated in December 1969 with a five-hour police shoot-out at the Southern California headquarters of the Black Panther Party and an Illinois state police raid in which Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was killed. The measures employed by the FBI were so extreme that, years later when they were revealed, the director of the agency publicly apologized for “wrongful uses of power.”
The party's militant image also prompted federal and local authorities to raid Panther property on three separate occasions in 1969, ostensibly to look for fugitives and illegal weapons. The final raid, on the morning of December 4, crippled the organization and claimed the lives of Illinois chapter deputy chairman Fred Hampton and Panther Mark Clark.
Decline and Legacy
From the mid-1970s through the ’80s, the activities of the Black Panther Party all but ceased. Although COINTELPRO contributed to its demise, the dissolution of the party’s leadership also contributed to the downfall of the organization. After returning from exile in Cuba, Newton was killed in a drug dispute in August 1989, perishing in an alley in West Oakland, not far from where he and Seale had founded the first Black Panther Party chapter.
The party's legacy is controversial. Government persecution initially contributed to the party's growth among African Americans and the political left, who both valued the party as a powerful force against de facto segregation and the US military draft during the Vietnam War.
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