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Black Panther Party

May 04, 2023

For similarly named organisations, see Black panther (disambiguation) § Political organisations.

The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was a Marxist-Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California.[8][9][10] The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia.[11] They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria.[12][13] Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics.[14][15][16][17] The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.[18]

Black Panther Party
AbbreviationBPP
LeaderHuey Newton
Founded1966; 57 years ago (1966)
Dissolved1982; 41 years ago (1982)
HeadquartersOakland, California
NewspaperThe Black Panther
Membershipc. 5,000 (1969)[1]
Ideology
Political positionFar-left
Colors  Black

In 1969, J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), described the party as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country."[19][20][21] The FBI sabotaged the party with an illegal and covert counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, all designed to undermine and criminalize the party. The FBI was involved in the 1969 assassinations of Fred Hampton,[22][23] and Mark Clark, who were killed in a raid by the Chicago Police Department.[24][25][26][27] Black Panther Party members were involved in many fatal firefights with police. Huey Newton allegedly killed officer John Frey in 1967, and Eldridge Cleaver (Minister of Information) led an ambush in 1968 of Oakland police officers, in which two officers were wounded and Panther treasurer Bobby Hutton was killed. The party suffered many internal conflicts, resulting in the murders of Alex Rackley and Betty Van Patter.

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. Party membership peaked in 1970 and gradually declined over the next decade, due to vilification by the mainstream press and infighting largely fomented by COINTELPRO.[28] Support further declined over reports of the party's alleged criminal activities, such as drug dealing and extortion.[29]

The party's history is controversial. Scholars have characterized the Black Panther Party as the most influential black power organization of the late 1960s, and "the strongest link between the domestic Black Liberation Struggle and global opponents of American imperialism".[30] Other scholars have described the party as more criminal than political, characterized by "defiant posturing over substance".[31]

History

Origins

 
Original six members of the Black Panther Party (1966)
Top left to right: Elbert "Big Man" Howard, Huey P. Newton (Defense Minister), Sherwin Forte, Bobby Seale (Chairman)
Bottom: Reggie Forte and Little Bobby Hutton (Treasurer).
Newsreel in which Kathleen Cleaver spoke at Hutton Memorial Park in Alameda County, California. The footage also shows a student protest demonstration at Alameda County Courthouse, Oakland, California. Black Panther Party leaders Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, and Bobby Seale spoke on a 10-point program they wanted from the administration which was to include full employment, decent housing and education, an end to police brutality, and black people to be exempt from the military. Black Panther Party members are shown as they marched in uniform. Students at the rally marched, sang, clapped hands, and carried protest signs. Police in riot gear controlled marchers.

During World War II, tens of thousands of black people left the Southern states during the Second Great Migration, moving to Oakland and other cities in the Bay Area to find work in the war industries such as Kaiser Shipyards. The sweeping migration transformed the Bay Area as well as cities throughout the West and North, altering the once white-dominated demographics.[32] A new generation of young black people growing up in these cities faced new forms of poverty and racism unfamiliar to their parents, and they sought to develop new forms of politics to address them.[33] Black Panther Party membership "consisted of recent migrants whose families traveled north and west to escape the southern racial regime, only to be confronted with new forms of segregation and repression".[34] In the early 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement had dismantled the Jim Crow system of racial caste subordination in the South with tactics of non-violent civil disobedience, and demanding full citizenship rights for black people.[35] However, not much changed in the cities of the North and West. As the wartime and post-war jobs which drew much of the black migration "fled to the suburbs along with white residents", the black population was concentrated in poor "urban ghettos" with high unemployment and substandard housing and was mostly excluded from political representation, top universities, and the middle class.[36] Northern and Western police departments were almost all white.[37] In 1966, only 16 of Oakland's 661 police officers were African American (less than 2.5%).[38]

Civil rights tactics proved incapable of redressing these conditions, and the organizations that had "led much of the nonviolent civil disobedience", such as SNCC and CORE, went into decline.[35] By 1966 a "Black Power ferment" emerged, consisting largely of young urban black people, posing a question the Civil Rights Movement could not answer: "How would black people in America win not only formal citizenship rights, but actual economic and political power?"[37] Young black people in Oakland and other cities developed study groups and political organizations, and from this ferment the Black Panther Party emerged.[39]

Founding the Black Panther Party

In late October 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense).[10] In formulating a new politics, they drew on their work with a variety of Black Power organizations.[40] Newton and Seale first met in 1962 when they were both students at Merritt College.[41] They joined Donald Warden's Afro-American Association, where they read widely, debated, and organized in an emergent black nationalist tradition inspired by Malcolm X and others.[42] Eventually dissatisfied with Warden's accommodationism, they developed a revolutionary anti-imperialist perspective working with more active and militant groups like the Soul Students Advisory Council and the Revolutionary Action Movement.[43][44] Their paid jobs running youth service programs at the North Oakland Neighborhood Anti-Poverty Center allowed them to develop a revolutionary nationalist approach to community service, later a key element in the Black Panther Party's "community survival programs."[45]

Dissatisfied with the failure of these organizations to directly challenge police brutality and appeal to the "brothers on the block", Huey and Bobby took matters into their own hands. After the police killed Matthew Johnson, an unarmed young black man in San Francisco, Newton observed the violent insurrection that followed. He had an epiphany that would distinguish the Black Panther Party from the multitude of Black Power organizations. Newton saw the explosive rebellious anger of the ghetto as a social force and believed that if he could stand up to the police, he could organize that force into political power. Inspired by Robert F. Williams' armed resistance to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and Williams' book Negroes with Guns,[46] Newton studied gun laws in California extensively. Like the Community Alert Patrol in Los Angeles after the Watts Rebellion, he decided to organize patrols to follow the police around to monitor for incidents of brutality. But with a crucial difference: his patrols would carry loaded guns.[47] Huey and Bobby raised enough money to buy two shotguns by buying bulk quantities of the recently publicized Mao's Little Red Book and reselling them to leftists and liberals on the Berkeley campus at three times the price. According to Bobby Seale, they would "sell the books, make the money, buy the guns, and go on the streets with the guns. We'll protect a mother, protect a brother, and protect the community from the racist cops."[48]

On October 29, 1966, Stokely Carmichael – a leader of SNCC – championed the call for "Black Power" and came to Berkeley to keynote a Black Power conference. At the time, he was promoting the armed organizing efforts of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) in Alabama and their use of the Black Panther symbol. Newton and Seale decided to adopt the Black Panther logo and form their own organization called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.[49] Newton and Seale decided on a uniform of blue shirts, black pants, black leather jackets, black berets.[50] Sixteen-year-old Bobby Hutton was their first recruit.[51]

By January 1967, the BPP opened its first official headquarters in an Oakland storefront, and published the first issue of The Black Panther: Black Community News Service.

 
Black Panther Party founders Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton standing in the street, armed with a Colt .45 and a shotgun.

Late 1966 to early 1967

Oakland patrols of police

The initial tactic of the party utilized contemporary open-carry gun laws to protect Party members when policing the police. This act was done to record incidents of police brutality by distantly following police cars around neighborhoods.[52] When confronted by a police officer, Party members cited laws proving they had done nothing wrong and threatened to take to court any officer that violated their constitutional rights.[53] Between the end of 1966 to the start of 1967, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense's armed police patrols in Oakland black communities attracted a small handful of members.[54] Numbers grew slightly starting in February 1967, when the party provided an armed escort at the San Francisco airport for Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X's widow and keynote speaker for a conference held in his honor.[55]

The Black Panther Party's focus on militancy was often construed as open hostility,[56][57] feeding a reputation of violence even though early efforts by the Panthers focused primarily on promoting social issues and the exercise of their legal right to carry arms. 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.[50] 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. For example, chants like "The Revolution has come, it's time to pick up the gun. Off the pigs!",[58] helped create the Panthers' reputation as a violent organization.

Rallies in Richmond, California

The black community of Richmond, California, wanted protection against police brutality.[59] With only three main streets for entering and exiting the neighborhood, it was easy for police to control, contain, and suppress the population.[60] On April 1, 1967, a black unarmed twenty-two-year-old construction worker named Denzil Dowell was shot dead by police in North Richmond.[61] Dowell's family contacted the Black Panther Party for assistance after county officials refused to investigate the case.[62] The Party held rallies in North Richmond that educated the community on armed self-defense and the Denzil Dowell incident.[63] Police seldom interfered at these rallies because every Panther was armed and no laws were broken.[64] The Party's ideals resonated with several community members, who then brought their own guns to the next rallies.[65]

Protest at the Statehouse

Awareness of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense grew rapidly after their May 2, 1967 protest at the California State Assembly. On May 2, 1967, the California State Assembly Committee on Criminal Procedure was scheduled to convene to discuss what was known as the "Mulford Act", which would make the public carrying of loaded firearms illegal. Newton, with Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver, put together a plan to send a group of 26 armed Panthers led by Seale from Oakland to Sacramento to protest the bill. The group entered the assembly carrying their weapons, an incident which was widely publicized, and which prompted police to arrest Seale and five others. The group pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of disrupting a legislative session.[66] At the time of the protest, the Party had fewer than 100 members in total.[67]

 
Black Panther convention, Lincoln Memorial, June 19, 1970.

In May 1967, the Panthers invaded the State Assembly Chamber in Sacramento, guns in hand, in what appears to have been a publicity stunt. Still, they scared a lot of important people that day. At the time, the Panthers had almost no following. Now, (a year later) however, their leaders speak on invitation almost anywhere radicals gather, and many whites wear "Honkeys for Huey" buttons, supporting the fight to free Newton, who has been in jail since last Oct. 28 (1967) on the charge that he killed a policeman ...[68]

In 1967, the Mulford Act was passed by the California legislature and signed by governor Ronald Reagan. The bill was crafted in response to members of the Black Panther Party who were copwatching. The bill repealed a law that allowed the public carrying of loaded firearms.

Ten-point program

Main article: Ten-Point Program (Black Panther Party)

The Black Panther Party first publicized its original "What We Want Now!" Ten-Point program on May 15, 1967, following the Sacramento action, in the second issue of The Black Panther newspaper.[55]

  1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.
  2. We want full employment for our people.
  3. We want an end to the robbery by the Capitalists of our Black Community.
  4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
  5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in present-day society.
  6. We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.
  7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people.
  8. We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.
  9. We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Black Communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.
  10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.

Late 1967 to early 1968

COINTELPRO

Further information: COINTELPRO
 
COINTELPRO document outlining the FBI's plans to 'neutralize' Jean Seberg for her support for the Black Panther Party, by attempting to publicly "cause her embarrassment" and "tarnish her image".

In August 1967, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) instructed its program "COINTELPRO" to "neutralize ... black nationalist hate groups" and other dissident groups. In September 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the Black Panthers as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country".[69] By 1969, the Black Panthers and their allies had become primary COINTELPRO targets, singled out in 233 of the 295 authorized "Black Nationalist" COINTELPRO actions.[70] The goals of the program were to prevent the unification of militant black nationalist groups and to weaken their leadership, as well as to discredit them to reduce their support and growth. The initial targets included the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Nation of Islam, as well as leaders including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Maxwell Stanford and Elijah Muhammad. As assistant FBI Director William Sullivan later testified in front of the Church Committee, the Bureau "did not differentiate" between Soviet spies and suspected Communists in black nationalist movements when deploying surveillance and neutralization tactics.[71]

COINTELPRO attempted to create rivalries between black nationalist factions and to exploit existing ones. One such attempt was to "intensify the degree of animosity" between the Black Panthers and the Blackstone Rangers, a Chicago street gang. The FBI sent an anonymous letter to the Rangers' gang leader claiming that the Panthers were threatening his life, a letter whose intent was to provoke "preemptive" violence against Panther leadership. In Southern California, the FBI made similar efforts to exacerbate a "gang war" between the Black Panther Party and a black nationalist group called the US Organization, allegedly sending a provocative letter to the US Organization to increase existing antagonism.[72]

COINTELPRO also aimed to dismantle the Black Panther Party by targeting their social/community programs, including its Free Breakfast for Children program, whose success had served to "shed light on the government's failure to address child poverty and hunger—pointing to the limits of the nation's War on Poverty".[73] According to Bloom & Martin, the FBI denounced the Party's efforts as a means of indoctrination because the Party taught and provided for children more effectively than the government. "Police and Federal Agents regularly harassed and intimidated program participants, supporters, and Party workers and sought to scare away donors and organizations that housed the programs like churches and community centers".[73][74]

Black Panther Party members were involved in many fatal firefights with police. Newton declared:

Malcolm, implacable to the ultimate degree, held out to the Black masses ... liberation from the chains of the oppressor and the treacherous embrace of the endorsed [Black] spokesmen. Only with the gun were the black masses denied this victory. But they learned from Malcolm that with the gun, they can recapture their dreams and bring them into reality.[75]

Huey Newton charged with murdering John Frey

On October 28, 1967, Oakland police officer John Frey was shot to death in an altercation with Huey P. Newton during a traffic stop in which Newton and backup officer Herbert Heanes also sustained gunshot wounds. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter at trial, but the conviction was later overturned. In his book Shadow of the Panther, writer Hugh Pearson alleges that Newton was intoxicated in the hours before the incident, and claimed to have willfully killed John Frey.[76]

Free Huey! campaign

At the time, Newton claimed that he had been falsely accused, leading to the Party's "Free Huey!" campaign. The police killing gained the party even wider recognition by the radical American left[77] and it stimulated the growth of the Party nationwide.[67] Newton was released after three years, when his conviction was reversed on appeal.[78]

As Newton awaited trial, the "Free Huey" campaign developed alliances with numerous students and anti-war activists, "advancing an anti-imperialist political ideology that linked the oppression of antiwar protestors to the oppression of blacks and Vietnamese".[79] The "Free Huey" campaign attracted black power organizations, New Left groups, and other activist groups such as the Progressive Labor Party, Bob Avakian of the Community for New Politics, and the Red Guard.[80] For example, the Black Panther Party collaborated with the Peace and Freedom Party, which sought to promote a strong antiwar and antiracist politics in opposition to the establishment democratic party.[81] The Black Panther Party provided needed legitimacy to the Peace and Freedom Party's racial politics and in return received invaluable support for the "Free Huey" campaign.[82]

Founding of the L. A. Chapter

In 1968 the southern California chapter was founded by Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter in Los Angeles. Carter was the leader of the Slauson Street gang, and many of the L.A. chapter's early recruits were Slausons.[83]

Killing of Bobby Hutton

Bobby James Hutton was born April 21, 1950, in Jefferson County Arkansas. At the age of three, he and his family moved to Oakland, California after being harassed by racist vigilante groups associated with the Ku Klux Klan. In December 1966, he became the first treasurer and recruit of the Black Panther Party at the age of just 16 years old.

On April 6, 1968, two days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and with riots raging across cities in the United States, the 17-year-old Hutton was traveling with Eldridge Cleaver and other BPP members in a car. The group confronted Oakland Police officers, then fled to an apartment building where they engaged in a 90-minute gun battle with the police. The standoff ended with Cleaver wounded and Hutton voluntarily surrendering. According to Cleaver, although Hutton had stripped down to his underwear and had his hands raised in the air to prove that he was unarmed, Oakland Police shot Hutton more than 12 times, killing him. Two police officers were also shot. He became the first member of the party to be killed by police.

Although at the time the BPP claimed that the police had ambushed them, several party members later admitted that Cleaver had led the Panther group on a deliberate ambush of the police officers, provoking the shoot-out.[84][85][86][87][88] Seven other Panthers, including Chief of Staff David Hilliard, were also arrested. Hutton's death became a rallying issue for Panther supporters.[89][90][91]

Late 1968

Chronology

  • Early Spring 1968: Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice published.
  • April 6, 1968: Death of Bobby James Hutton, killed in a gunfight with Oakland police.[89]
  • April 17, 1968: Funeral for Bobby James Hutton in Berkeley, followed by a rally at the Alameda County Courthouse.[89]
  • April to mid-June 1968: Cleaver in jail.
  • Mid-July 1968: Huey Newton's murder trial commences. Panthers hold daily "Free Huey" rallies outside the courthouse.
  • August 5, 1968: Three Panthers killed in a gun battle with police at a Los Angeles gas station.[92]
  • Early September 1968: Newton convicted of manslaughter.
  • Late September 1968: Days before he is due to return to prison to serve out a rape conviction, Cleaver flees to Cuba and later Algeria.
  • October 5, 1968: A Panther is killed in a gunfight with police in Los Angeles.[92]
  • November 1968: The BPP finds numerous supporters, establishing relationships with the Peace and Freedom Party and SNCC. Money contributions flow in, and BPP leadership begins embezzlement.[93]
  • November 6, 1968: Lauren Watson, head of the Denver chapter, is arrested by Denver Police for fleeing a police officer and resisting arrest. His trial will be filmed and televised in 1970 as "Trial: The City and County of Denver vs. Lauren R. Watson."
  • November 20, 1968: William Lee Brent and two accomplices in a van marked "Black Panther Black Community News Service" allegedly rob a gas station in San Francisco's Bayview district of $80, resulting in a shootout with police.[94]

In 1968, the group shortened its name to the Black Panther Party and sought to focus directly on political action. Members were encouraged to carry guns and to defend themselves against violence. An influx of college students joined the group, which had consisted chiefly of "brothers off the block". This created some tension in the group. Some members were more interested in supporting the Panthers' social programs, while others wanted to maintain their "street mentality".[95]

By 1968, the Party had expanded into many U.S. cities,[67] including Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Newark, New Orleans, New York City, Omaha, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Toledo, and Washington, D.C. Peak membership was near 5,000 by 1969, and their newspaper, under the editorial leadership of Eldridge Cleaver, had a circulation of 250,000.[96] The group created a Ten-Point Program, a document that called for "Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice and Peace", as well as exemption from conscription for black men, among other demands.[97] With the Ten-Point program, "What We Want, What We Believe", the Black Panther Party expressed its economic and political grievances.[98]

Curtis Austin states that by late 1968, Black Panther ideology had evolved from black nationalism to become more a "revolutionary internationalist movement":

[The Party] dropped its wholesale attacks against whites and began to emphasize more of a class analysis of society. Its emphasis on Marxist–Leninist doctrine and its repeated espousal of Maoist statements signaled the group's transition from a revolutionary nationalist to a revolutionary internationalist movement. Every Party member had to study Mao Tse-tung's "Little Red Book" to advance his or her knowledge of peoples' struggle and the revolutionary process.[99]

Panther slogans and iconography spread. At the 1968 Summer Olympics, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, two American medalists, gave the black power salute during the American national anthem. The International Olympic Committee banned them from all future Olympic Games. Film star Jane Fonda publicly supported Huey Newton and the Black Panthers during the early 1970s. She actually ended up informally adopting the daughter of two Black Panther members, Mary Luana Williams. Fonda and other Hollywood celebrities became involved in the Panthers' leftist programs. The Panthers attracted a wide variety of left-wing revolutionaries and political activists, including writer Jean Genet, former Ramparts magazine editor David Horowitz (who later became a major critic of what he describes as Panther criminality)[citation needed] and left-wing lawyer Charles R. Garry, who acted as counsel in the Panthers' many legal battles.

The BPP adopted a "Serve the People" program, which at first involved a free breakfast program for children. By the end of 1968, the BPP had established 38 chapters and branches, claiming more than five thousand members. Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver left the country days before Cleaver was to turn himself in to serve the remainder of a thirteen-year sentence for a 1958 rape conviction. They settled in Algeria.[100]

By the end of the year, party membership peaked at around 2,000.[101] Party members engaged in criminal activities such as extortion, stealing, violent discipline of BPP members, and robberies. The BPP leadership took one-third of the proceeds from robberies committed by BPP members.[102]

Survival programs

no kid should be running around hungry in school

Bobby Seale[103]

The Black Panther Party's free breakfast program is "the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for."

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover[103]

Inspired by Mao Zedong's advice to revolutionaries in The Little Red Book, Newton called on the Panthers to "serve the people" and to make "survival programs" a priority within its branches. The most famous of their programs was the Free Breakfast for Children Program, initially run out of an Oakland church.

The Free Breakfast For Children program was especially significant because it served as a space for educating youth about the current condition of the Black community, and the actions that the Party was taking to address that condition. "While the children ate their meal[s], members [of the Party] taught them liberation lessons consisting of Party messages and Black history."[73] Through this program, the Party was able to influence young minds, and strengthen their ties to communities as well as gain widespread support for their ideologies. The breakfast program became so popular that the Panthers Party claimed to have fed twenty thousand children in the 1968–69 school year.[104]

Other survival programs[105] were free services such as clothing distribution, classes on politics and economics, free medical clinics, lessons on self-defense and first aid, transportation to upstate prisons for family members of inmates, an emergency-response ambulance program, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and testing for sickle-cell disease.[106] The free medical clinics were very significant because they modeled an idea of how the world might work with free medical care, eventually being established in 13 places across the country. These clinics were involved in community-based health care that had roots connected to the Civil Rights Movement, which made it possible to establish the Medical Committee for Human Rights.[107]

Political activities

In 1968, BPP Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver ran for presidential office on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket.[108] They were a big influence on the White Panther Party, tied to the Detroit/Ann Arbor band MC5 and their manager John Sinclair (author of the book Guitar Army), which also promulgated a ten-point program.

1969

Chronology

  • Early 1969: In late 1968 and January 1969, the BPP began to purge members due to fears about law enforcement infiltration and various petty disagreements.
  • January 14, 1969: The Los Angeles chapter was involved in a shootout with members of the black nationalist US Organization, and two Panthers are killed.
  • January 1969: The Oakland BPP begins the first free breakfast program for children.
  • March 1969: There is a second purge of BPP members.
  • April 1969: Members of the New York chapter, known as the Panther 21 are indicted and jailed for a bombing conspiracy. All would eventually be acquitted.
  • May 1969: Two more southern California Panthers are killed in violent disputes with US Organization members.[92]
  • May 1969: Members of the New Haven chapter torture and murder Alex Rackley, who they suspected of being an informant.
  • July 1969 the BPP organized the United Front Against Fascism conference in Oakland, which was attended by around 5,000 people representing a number of groups.[109][110]
  • July 17, 1969: Two policemen are shot and a Panther is killed in a gun battle in Chicago.[92]
  • Late July 1969: The BPP ideology undergoes a shift, with a turn toward self-discipline and anti-racism.
  • August 1969: Bobby Seale is indicted and imprisoned in relation to the Rackley murder.
  • October 18, 1969: A Panther is killed in a gunfight with police outside a Los Angeles restaurant.[92]
  • Mid-to-late 1969: COINTELPRO activity increases.
  • November 13, 1969: A Panther is killed in a gunfight with police in Chicago.[92]
  • December 4, 1969: Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are killed by law enforcement in Chicago.[11]
  • Late 1969: David Hilliard, current BPP head, advocates violent revolution. Panther membership is down significantly from the late 1968 peak.

Shoot-out with the US Organization

Violent conflict between the Panther chapter in LA and the US Organization, a black nationalist group, resulted in shootings and beatings and led to the murders of at least four Black Panther Party members. On January 17, 1969, Los Angeles Panther Captain Bunchy Carter and Deputy Minister John Huggins were killed in Campbell Hall on the UCLA campus, in a gun battle with members of the US Organization. Another shootout between the two groups on March 17 led to further injuries. Two more Panthers died.

Black Panther Party Liberation Schools

Paramount to their beliefs regarding the need for individual agency to catalyze community change, the Black Panther Party (BPP) strongly supported the education of the masses. As part of their Ten-Point Program which set forth the ideals and goals of the party, they demanded an equitable education for all black people. Number 5 of the "What We Want Now!" section of the program reads: "We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in present-day society." To ensure that this occurred, the Black Panther Party took the education of their youth into their own hands by first establishing after-school programs and then opening up Liberation Schools in a variety of locations throughout the country which focused their curriculum on Black history, writing skills, and political science.[111]

Intercommunal Youth Institute The first Liberation School was opened by the Richmond Black Panthers in July 1969 with brunch served and snacks provided to students. Another school was opened in Mt. Vernon New York on July 17 of the subsequent year.[111] These schools were informal in nature and more closely resembled after-school or summer programs.[112] While these campuses were the first to open, the first full-time and longest-running Liberation school was opened in January 1971 in Oakland in response to the inequitable conditions in the Oakland Unified School District which was ranked one of the lowest-scoring districts in California.[113] Named the Intercommunal Youth Institute (IYI), this school, under the directorship of Brenda Bay, and later, Ericka Huggins, enrolled twenty-eight students in its first year, with the majority being the children of Black Panther parents. This number grew to fifty by the 1973–1974 school year. To provide full support for Black Panther parents whose time was spent organizing, some of the students and faculty members lived together year around. The school itself was dissimilar to traditional schools in a variety of ways including the fact that students were separated by academic performance rather than age and students were often provided one on one support as the faculty to student ratio was 1:10.[113]

The Panther's goal in opening Liberation Schools, and specifically the Intercommunal Youth Institute, was to provide students with an education that wasn't being provided in the "white" schools,[114] as the public schools in the district employed a eurocentric assimilationist curriculum with little to no attention to black history and culture. While students were provided with traditional courses such as English, Math, and Science, they were also exposed to activities focused on class structure and the prevalence of institutional racism.[115] The overall goal of the school was to instill a sense of revolutionary consciousness in the students.[112] With a strong belief in experiential learning, students had the opportunity to participate in community service projects as well as practice their writing skills by drafting letters to political prisoners associated with the Black Panther Party.[115] Huggins is noted as saying, "I think that the school's principles came from the socialist principles we tried to live in the Black Panther Party. One of them being critical thinking—that children should learn not what to think but how to think ... the school was an expression of the collective wisdom of the people who envisioned it. And it was ... a living thing [that] changed every year.[112] Joan Kelley oversaw funding for the Intercommunal Youth Institute which was provided through a combination of Black Panther fundraising and community support.[113]

Oakland Community School

In 1974, due to increased interest in enrolling in the school, school officials decided to move to a larger facility and subsequently changed the school's name to Oakland Community School. During this year, the school graduated its first class.[114] Although the student population continued to grow ranging between 50 and 150 between 1974 and 1977, the original core values of individualized instruction remained.[113] In September 1977, the school received a special award from Governor Edmund Brown Jr. and the California Legislature for "having set the standard for the highest level of elementary education in the state.[114]

The school eventually closed in 1982 due to governmental pressure on party leadership which caused insufficient membership and funds to continue running the school.[113]

Killing of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark

In Chicago, on December 4, 1969, two Panthers were killed when the Chicago Police raided the home of Panther leader Fred Hampton. The raid had been orchestrated by the police in conjunction with the FBI. Hampton was shot and killed, as was Panther guard Mark Clark. A federal investigation reported that only one shot was fired by the Panthers, and police fired at least 80 shots.[116] The only shot fired by the Panthers was from Mark Clark, who appeared to fire a single round determined to be the result of a reflexive death convulsion after he was immediately struck in the chest by shots from the police at the start of the raid.

Hampton was sleeping next to his pregnant fiancée and was subsequently shot twice in the head at point-blank range while unconscious. Coroner reports show that Hampton was drugged with a powerful barbiturate that night, and would have been unable to have been awoken by the sounds of the police raid.[117] His body was then dragged into the hallway. He was 21 years old and unarmed at the time of his death. Seven other Panthers sleeping at the house at the time of the raid were then beaten and seriously wounded, then arrested under charges of aggravated assault and attempted murder of the officers involved in the raid. These charges would later be dropped.

Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan announced to the media later that the Panthers were first to shoot in the interaction and that they showed a "refusal to cease firing... when urged to do so several times." New York Times reporting would later demonstrate that this was not in fact the case and found a great deal of fake evidence being used by Chicago Police to assert their claims.[118]

Former FBI agent Wesley Swearingen asserts that the Bureau was guilty of a "plot to murder" the Panthers.[119] Hampton had been slipped the barbiturates which had left him unconscious by William O'Neal, who had been working as an FBI informant. Hanrahan, his assistant and eight Chicago police officers were indicted by a federal grand jury over the raid, but the charges were later dismissed.[96][120] In 1979 civil action, Hampton's family won $1.85 million from the city of Chicago in a wrongful death settlement.[121]

Torture-murder of Alex Rackley

In May 1969, three members of the New Haven chapter tortured and murdered Alex Rackley, a 19-year-old member of the New York chapter, because they suspected him of being a police informant. Three party officers—Warren Kimbro, George Sams, Jr., and Lonnie McLucas—later admitted taking part. Sams, who gave the order to shoot Rackley at the murder scene, turned state's evidence and testified that he had received orders personally from Bobby Seale to carry out the execution. Party supporters responded that Sams was himself the informant and an agent provocateur employed by the FBI.[122] The case resulted in the New Haven Black Panther trials of 1970. Kimbro, Sams and McLucas were convicted of the murder, but the trials of Seale and Ericka Huggins ended with a hung jury, and the prosecution chose not to seek another trial.

International ties

Activists from many countries around the globe supported the Panthers and their cause. In Scandinavian countries such as Norway and Finland, for example, left-wing activists organized a tour for Bobby Seale and Masai Hewitt in 1969. At each destination along the tour, the Panthers talked about their goals and the "Free Huey!" campaign. Seale and Hewitt made a stop in Germany as well, gaining support for the "Free Huey!" campaign.[123]

1970

Chronology

  • January 1970: Leonard Bernstein holds a fundraiser for the BPP, which was notoriously mocked by Tom Wolfe in Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.
  • Spring 1970: The Oakland BPP engages in another ambush of police officers with guns and fragmentation bombs. Two officers are wounded.[124]
  • May 1970: Huey Newton's conviction is overturned, but he remains incarcerated.
  • July 1970: Newton tells The New York Times that "we've never advocated violence".
  • August 1970: Newton is released from prison.

International travels

In 1970, a group of Panthers traveled through Asia and they were welcomed as guests of the governments of North Vietnam, North Korea, and China. The group's first stop was in North Korea, where the Panthers met with local officials to discuss ways in which they could help each other fight against American imperialism. Eldridge Cleaver traveled to Pyongyang twice in 1969 and 1970, and following these trips he made an effort to publicize the writings and works of North Korean leader Kim Il-sung in the United States.[125] After leaving North Korea, the group traveled to North Vietnam with the same agenda in mind: finding ways to put an end to American imperialism. Eldridge Cleaver was invited to speak to Black GIs by the North Vietnamese government. He encouraged them to join the Black Liberation Struggle by arguing that the United States government was only using them for its own purposes. Instead of risking their lives on the battlefield for a country that continued to oppress them, Cleaver believed that the black GIs should risk their lives in support of their own liberation. After leaving Vietnam, Cleaver met with the Chinese ambassador to Algeria to express their mutual animosity towards the American government.[126]

When Algeria held its first Pan-African Cultural Festival, they invited many important figures from the United States. Among the important figures invited to the festival were Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver. The cultural festival allowed Black Panthers to network with representatives of various international anti-imperialist movements. This was a significant time, which led to the formation of the International Section of the Party.[127] It is at this festival that Cleaver met with the ambassador of North Korea, who later invited him to an International Conference of Revolutionary Journalists in Pyongyang. Eldridge also met with Yasser Arafat, and gave a speech supporting the Palestinians and their goal of achieving liberation.[128]

1971–1974

Newton focused the BPP on the Party's Oakland school and various other social service programs. In early 1971, the BPP founded the "Intercommunal Youth Institute" in January 1971,[129] with the intent of demonstrating how black youth ought to be educated. Ericka Huggins was the director of the school and Regina Davis was an administrator.[130] The school was unique in that it did not have grade levels but instead had different skill levels so an 11-year-old could be in second-level English and fifth-level science.[130] Elaine Brown taught reading and writing to a group of 10- to 11-year-olds deemed "uneducable" by the system.[131] The school children were given free busing; breakfast, lunch, and dinner; books and school supplies; children were taken to have medical checkups; many children were given free clothes.[132]

Split

Significant disagreements among the Party's leaders over how to confront ideological differences led to a split within the party. Certain members felt that the Black Panthers should participate in local government and social services, while others encouraged constant conflict with the police. For some of the Party's supporters, the separations among political action, criminal activity, social services, access to power, and grass-roots identity became confusing and contradictory as the Panthers' political momentum was bogged down in the criminal justice system. These (and other) disagreements led to a split. In January 1971, Newton expelled Geronimo Pratt who, since 1970, had been in jail facing a pending murder charge. Newton also expelled two of the New York 21 and his own secretary, Connie Matthews, who fled the country.

Some Panther leaders, such as Huey P. Newton and David Hilliard, favored a focus on community service coupled with self-defense; others, such as Eldridge Cleaver, embraced a more confrontational strategy. In February 1971, Eldridge Cleaver deepened the schism in the party when he publicly criticized the Party for adopting a "reformist" rather than "revolutionary" agenda and called for Hilliard's removal. Cleaver was expelled from the Central Committee but went on to lead a splinter group, the Black Liberation Army, which had previously existed as an underground paramilitary wing of the Party.[133] The split turned violent, as the Newton and Cleaver factions carried out retaliatory assassinations of each other's members, resulting in the deaths of four people.[134] From mid-to-late 1971, hundreds of members throughout the country quit the Black Panther Party.[135]

In May 1971, Bobby Seale was acquitted of ordering the Rackley murder, and returned to Oakland.

Delegation to China

In late September 1971, Huey P. Newton led a delegation to China and stayed for 10 days.[136] At every airport in China, Huey was greeted by thousands of people waving copies of the Little Red Book and displaying signs that said "we support the Black Panther Party, down with US imperialism" or "we support the American people but the Nixon imperialist regime must be overthrown". During the trip, the Chinese arranged for him to meet and have dinner with a DPRK ambassador, a Tanzanian ambassador, and delegations from both North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam.[137] Huey was under the impression he was going to meet Mao Zedong, but instead had two meetings with the first Premier of the People's Republic of China Zhou Enlai. One of these meetings also included Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing. Huey described China as "a free and liberated territory with a socialist government".[138]

Newton solidifies control and centralizes power in Oakland

In early 1972, the party began closing down dozens of chapters and branches all over the country and bringing members and operations to Oakland.[139] The political arm of the southern California chapter was shut down and its members moved to Oakland, although the underground military arm remained for a time.[140] The underground remnants of the LA chapter, which had emerged from the Slausons street gang, eventually re-emerged as the Crips, a street gang who at first advocated social reform before devolving into racketeering.[141] Minister of Education Ray "Masai" Hewitt created the Buddha Samurai, the party's underground security cadre in Oakland. Newton expelled Hewitt from the party later in 1972, but the security cadre remained in operation under the leadership of Flores Forbes. One of the cadre's main functions was to extort and rob drug dealers and after-hours clubs.[140]

The party developed a five-year plan to take over the city of Oakland politically and focused nearly all of its resources on winning political power in the Oakland city government. Bobby Seale ran for mayor, Elaine Brown ran for city council, and other Panthers ran for minor offices. Neither Seale nor Brown were elected, and many Party members resigned after the losses,[139] although a few Panthers won seats on local government commissions. Following the electoral defeat, Newton embarked on a major purge of the party in early 1974, expelling Bobby and John Seale, David and June Hilliard, Robert Bay, and numerous other top party leaders. Dozens of other Panthers loyal to Seale resigned or deserted.

Newton indicted for violent crimes

In 1974, Huey Newton and eight other Panthers were arrested and charged with assault on police officers. In August 1974, Newton went into exile in Cuba to avoid prosecution for the murder of Kathleen Smith, an eighteen-year-old prostitute. Newton was also indicted for pistol-whipping his tailor, Preston Callins. Although Newton confided to friends that Kathleen Smith was his "first nonpolitical murder", he was ultimately acquitted, after one witness's testimony was impeached by her admission that she had been smoking marijuana on the night of the murder, and another prostitute witness recanted her testimony.[142][143] Newton was also acquitted of assaulting Preston Callins after Callins refused to press charges.[144][clarification needed]

1974–1977

The Panthers under Elaine Brown

In 1974, as Huey Newton prepared to go into exile in Cuba, he appointed Elaine Brown as the first Chairwoman of the Party.[145] Under Brown's leadership, the Party became involved in organizing for more radical electoral campaigns, including Brown's 1975 unsuccessful run for Oakland City Council.[146] The Party supported Lionel Wilson in his successful election as the first black mayor of Oakland, in exchange for Wilson's assistance in having criminal charges dropped against Party member Flores Forbes, leader of the Buddha Samurai cadre.[140]

In addition to changing the Party's direction towards more involvement in the electoral arena, Brown also increased the influence of women Panthers by placing them in more visible roles within the previously male-dominated organization.

Death of Betty van Patter

Panther leader Elaine Brown hired Betty Van Patter in 1974 as a bookkeeper. Van Patter had previously served as a bookkeeper for Ramparts magazine, and was introduced to the Panther leadership by David Horowitz, who had been the editor of Ramparts and a major fundraiser and board member for the Panther school.[147] Later that year, after a dispute with Brown over financial irregularities,[148] Van Patter went missing on December 13, 1974. Some weeks later, her severely beaten corpse was found on a San Francisco Bay beach.

There was insufficient evidence for police to charge anyone with van Patter's murder, but the Black Panther Party leadership was "almost universally believed to be responsible".[149][150] Huey Newton later allegedly confessed to a friend that he had ordered Van Patter's murder, and that Van Patter had been tortured and raped before being killed.[143][151]

FBI files investigating Van Patter were destroyed in 2009 for reasons the FBI has declined to provide.[152]

1977–1982

Return of Huey Newton and the demise of the party

In 1977, Newton returned from exile in Cuba, and received complaints from male members about the excessive power of women in the organization, who now outnumbered men. According to Elaine Brown, Newton authorized the physical punishment of school administrator Regina Davis for scolding a male coworker. Davis was hospitalized with a broken jaw.[153] Brown said "The beating of Regina would be taken as a clear signal that the words 'Panther' and 'comrade' had taken a gender on gender connotation, denoting an inferiority in the female half of us."[154][155][156] Brown resigned from the party and fled to LA.[157]

Although many scholars and activists date the Party's downfall to the period before Brown's leadership, a shrinking cadre of Panthers struggled through the 1970s. By 1980, Panther membership had dwindled to 27, and the Panther-sponsored Oakland Community School closed in 1982 amid a scandal over Newton embezzling funds for his drug addiction,[146][158] which marked the formal end of the Black Panther Party.[145]

Panthers attempt to assassinate a witness against Newton

In October 1977, Flores Forbes, the party's assistant chief of staff, led a botched attempt to assassinate Crystal Gray, a key prosecution witness in Newton's upcoming trial, who had been present the day of Kathleen Smith's murder. When three Panthers attacked the wrong house by mistake, the occupant returned fire and killed one of the Panthers, Louis Johnson, while the other two assailants escaped.[159] One of them, Flores Forbes, fled to Las Vegas, Nevada, with the help of Panther paramedic Nelson Malloy. Fearing that Malloy would discover the truth behind the botched assassination attempt, Newton allegedly ordered a "house cleaning", and Malloy was shot and buried alive in the desert. Although permanently paralyzed from the waist down, Malloy escaped and told police that fellow Panthers Rollin Reid and Allen Lewis were behind his attempted murder.[160] Newton denied any involvement or knowledge and said the events "might have been the result of overzealous party members".[161] Newton was ultimately acquitted of the murder of Kathleen Smith, after Crystal Gray's testimony was impeached by her admission that she had smoked marijuana on the night of the murder, and he was acquitted of assaulting Preston Callins after Callins refused to press charges.

Women and womanism

From its beginnings, the Black Panther Party championed black masculinity and traditional gender roles.[162]: 6  A notice in the first issue of The Black Panther newspaper proclaimed the all-male organization as "the cream of Black Manhood ... there for the protection and defense of our Black community".[163] Scholars consider the Party's stance of armed resistance highly masculine, with guns and violence proving manhood.[164]: 2  In 1968, several articles urged female Panthers to "stand behind black men" and be supportive.[162]: 6  The first woman to join the party was Joan Tarika Lewis, in 1967.[165][page needed]

 
Poster showing four women demonstrating for release of six members of the Black Panther Party from the Niantic State Women's Farm in Connecticut

Nevertheless, women were present in the party from the early days and expanded their roles throughout its life.[166] Women often joined to fight against unequal gender norms.[167] By 1969, the Party newspaper officially instructed male Panthers to treat female Party members as equals,[162]: 2 [162]: 6  a drastic change from the idea of the female Panther as subordinate. The same year, Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton of the Illinois chapter conducted a meeting condemning sexism.[162]: 2  After 1969, the Party considered sexism counter-revolutionary.[162]: 6 

The Black Panthers adopted a womanist ideology responding to the unique experiences of African-American women,[168] emphasizing racism as more oppressive than sexism.[169] Womanism was a mix of black nationalism and the vindication of women,[168]: 20  putting race and community struggle before the gender issue.[168]: 8  Womanism posited that traditional feminism failed to include race and class struggle in its denunciation of male sexism[168]: 26  and was therefore part of white hegemony.[168]: 21  In opposition to some feminist viewpoints, womanism promoted a vision of gender roles: that men are not above women, but hold a different position in the home and community,[168]: 42  so men and women must work together for the preservation of African-American culture and community.[168]: 27 

Henceforth, the Party newspaper portrayed women as intelligent political revolutionaries, exemplified by members such as Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis and Erika Huggins.[162]: 10  The Black Panther Party newspaper often showed women as active participants in the armed self-defense movement, picturing them with children and guns as protectors of home, family and community.[162]: 2 

Police killed or incarcerated many male leaders, but female Panthers were less targeted for much of the 1960s and 1970s. By 1968, women made up two-thirds of the party, while many male members were out of duty. In the absence of much of the original male leadership, women moved into all parts of the organization.[166][170] Roles included leadership positions, implementing community programs, and uplifting the black community. Women in the group called attention to sexism within the Party, and worked to make changes from within.[171]

From 1968 to the end of its publication in 1982, the head editors of the Black Panther Party newspaper were all women.[162]: 5  In 1970, approximately 40% to 70% of Party members were women,[162]: 8  and several chapters, like the Des Moines, Iowa, and New Haven, Connecticut, were headed by women.[164]: 7 

During the 1970s, recognizing the limited access poor women had to abortion, the Party officially supported women's reproductive rights, including abortion.[162]: 11  That same year, the Party condemned and opposed prostitution.[162]: 12 

Many women Panthers began to demand childcare to be able to fully participate in the organization. The Party responded by establishing on-site child development centers in multiple US chapters. "Childcare became largely a group activity", with children raised collectively, in accord with the Panther's commitment to collectivism and the African-American extended-family tradition. Childcare allowed women Panthers to embrace motherhood while fully participating in Party activism.[172]

The Party experienced significant problems in several chapters with sexism and gender oppression, particularly in the Oakland chapter where cases of sexual harassment and gender conflict were common.[173]: 5  When Oakland Panthers arrived to bolster the New York City Panther chapter after 21 New York leaders were incarcerated, they displayed such chauvinistic attitudes towards New York Panther women that they had to be fended off at gunpoint.[174] Some Party leaders thought the fight for gender equality was a threat to men and a distraction from the struggle for racial equality.[162]: 5 

In response, the Chicago and New York chapters, among others, established equal gender rights as a priority and tried to eradicate sexist attitudes.[164]: 13 

By the time the Black Panther Party disbanded, official policy was to reprimand men who violated the rules of gender equality.[164]: 13 

Gender dynamics

In the beginning, recruiting women was a low priority for Newton and Seale.[175] Seale stated in an interview that Newton targeted "brothers who had been pimping, brothers who had been peddling dope, brothers who ain't gonna take no shit, brothers who had been fighting the pigs". Also, they didn't realize that women could help the fight until one came into an interest meeting asking about "female leadership".[176] Regina Jennings recalls that many male leaders had an "unchecked" sexism problem and her task was to "lift the bedroom out of their minds." She remembers overhearing members: "Some concluded that the FBI sent me, but the captain assured them with salty good humor that, 'She's too stupid to be from the FBI.' He thought my cover and my comments too honest, too loud, and too ridiculous to be serious." She recalls her days in Oakland, California as a teenager looking for something to do to add purpose to her life and her community. She grew up around police brutality, so it was nothing new. Her goal in joining was "smashing racism" because she viewed herself as Black before she was a woman. In her community, that identity is what she felt held her back the most.[176]

Women's role

The Black Panther Party was involved in many community projects as part of their organization. These projects included community outreach, like the breakfast program, education, and health programs.[166] In many cases women were the ones primarily involved with administering these types of programs.

From the beginning of the Black Panther Party education was a fundamental goal of the organization. This was highlighted in the Ten Point Platform, the newspaper that was distributed by the party, and the public commentary shared by the Panthers.[166] The newspaper was one of the primary and original consciousness-raising and educational measures taken by the party.[166] Despite the fact that men were out distributing the newspaper, women like Elaine Brown and Kathleen Cleaver were behind the scenes working on those papers.[177]

Elaine Brown

Elaine Brown rose to power within the BPP as Minister of Information after Eldridge Cleaver fled abroad. In 1974, she became chair for the Oakland chapter. She was appointed by Huey Newton, the previous chair, while Newton and other leaders dealt with legal issues.[166][178] From the beginning of her tenure as chair, she faced opposition and feared a coup. She appointed many female officials, and faced backlash for her policies for equality within the organization. When Huey Newton returned from exile and approved of the beating of a female Panther school teacher, Brown left the organization.[178]

Gwen Robinson

In an interview with Judson Jeffries, Gwen Robinson reflects on her time in the Black Panther Party Detroit Division.[179] She explains that she joined in October 1969 despite doubts from her mother, who had participated in a march with Martin Luther King Jr. in the early part of the decade. She chose the Black Panther Party (BPP) because "[She] felt a closeness and a bond with them" more than other organizations like the "SNCC, NAACP, the Urban League, the Nation of Islam, Shrines of Madonna, Eastside Voice of Independent Detroit (ESVID), the Republic of New Africa, and the Revolutionary Action Movement."[179]

In 12th grade, she decided to work full-time with the Party, dropping out of chaotic Denby High School in Detroit. "There were some students who would use the N-word freely" and "a P.E. instructor accused [her] of stealing her keys." She was "shoved" into the pool when she refused to swim for fear of wetting her hair, while a White teacher who taught Afro-American history would kick people out "if you challenged his position on certain Black leaders."[179]

In the BPP, she "was living as part of a collective" where all work was shared, and she enjoyed working all day selling newspapers. She climbed the ranks and became the branch's Communications Secretary in January 1971, after her predecessor left due to "some issues related to sexism". In this branch, unlike the average BPP divisions, the "brothers" never turned violent or physical: "That kind of thing didn't take place in Detroit." She left the organization in 1973, keeping a link through her husband, their circulation manager. Summing up the legacy of the Detroit branch, she says, "It's crucial that people realize that the strength of the organization was rooted in discipline, deep commitment, and a genuine love for the people."[180]

Connections to other political activist groups

Members of the Black Panther Party, such as Huey P. Newton, also frequently collaborated with Latino activist groups, like the Brown Berets and Los Siete de la Raza. Newton himself even attended some court sessions for Los Siete de la Raza's trial in June 1970.[181]

Bobby Seale described their alliances with Los Siete as particularly important, they saw that both Black and Brown activist groups had been dealing with similar issues regarding oppression and violence in the United States.[181]

Connections to the Gay Liberation Movement

Huey Newton expressed his support for the Women's Liberation Movement and the Gay Liberation Movement in a 1970 letter published in the newspaper The Black Panther titled "A Letter from Huey to the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters About the Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements".[182] Written one year after the Stonewall Riots, Newton acknowledged women and homosexuals as oppressed groups and urged the Black Panthers to "unite with them in a revolutionary fashion".[183] The Black Panther Party and the Gay Liberation Movement shared common ground in their fight against police brutality.[184]

Aftermath and legacy

 
New York City Councilman Charles Barron is one of the numerous former Panthers to have held elected office in the US

There is considerable debate about the impact of the Black Panther Party on the wider society or even their local environments. Author Jama Lazerow writes:

As inheritors of the discipline, pride, and calm self-assurance preached by Malcolm X, the Panthers became national heroes in black communities by infusing abstract nationalism with street toughness—by joining the rhythms of black working-class youth culture to the interracial élan and effervescence of Bay Area New Left politics ... In 1966, the Panthers defined Oakland's ghetto as a territory, the police as interlopers, and the Panther mission as the defense of community. The Panthers' famous "policing the police" drew attention to the spatial remove that White Americans enjoyed from the police brutality that had come to characterize life in black urban communities.[185]

Professor Judson Jeffries of Purdue University called the Panthers "the most effective black revolutionary organization in the 20th century".[186] The Los Angeles Times, in a 2013 review of Black Against Empire, an "authoritative" history of the BPP published by University of California Press, called the organization a "serious political and cultural force" and "a movement of intelligent, explosive dreamers".[187] The Black Panther Party is featured in exhibits[188] and curriculum[189][190] of the National Civil Rights Museum.

Numerous former Panthers have held elected office in the United States, some into the 21st century; these include Charles Barron (New York City Council), Nelson Malloy (Winston-Salem City Council), and Bobby Rush (US House of Representatives). Most of them praise the BPP's contribution to black liberation and American democracy. In 1990, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution declaring "Fred Hampton Day" in honor of the slain leader.[121] In Winston-Salem in 2012, a large contingent of local officials and community leaders came together to install a historic marker of the local BPP headquarters; State Representative Earline Parmone declared "[The Black Panther Party] dared to stand up and say, 'We're fed up and we're not taking it anymore'. ... Because they had courage, today I stand as ... the first African American ever to represent Forsyth County in the state Senate".[191]

In October 2006, the Black Panther Party held a 40-year reunion in Oakland.[192]

 
Black Panther 40th Reunion, 2006.

In January 2007, a joint California state and Federal task force charged eight men with the August 29, 1971, murder of California police officer Sgt. John Young.[193] The defendants have been identified as former members of the Black Liberation Army, with two linked to the Black Panthers.[194] In 1975, a similar case was dismissed when a judge ruled that police gathered evidence using torture.[195] On June 29, 2009, Herman Bell pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the death of Sgt. Young. In July 2009, charges were dropped against four of the accused: Ray Boudreaux, Henry W. Jones, Richard Brown and Harold Taylor. Also that month Jalil Muntaquim pleaded no contest to conspiracy to commit voluntary manslaughter, becoming the second person convicted in this case.[196]

Since the 1990s, former Panther chief of staff David Hilliard has offered tours in Oakland of sites historically significant to the Black Panther Party.[197]

Groups and movements inspired and aided by the Black Panthers

Various groups and movements have picked names inspired by the Black Panthers:

In April 1977 Panthers were key supporters of the 504 Sit-Ins, the longest of which was the 25-day occupation of the San Francisco Federal Building by over 120 people with disabilities. Panthers provided daily home-cooked meals in support of the protest's eventual success, which eventually led to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) thirteen years later.[201]

New Black Panther Party

Main article: New Black Panther Party

In 1989, a "New Black Panther Party" was formed in Dallas, Texas. Ten years later, the NBPP became home to many former Nation of Islam members when its chairmanship was taken by Khalid Abdul Muhammad.

The Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center list the New Black Panthers as a black separatist hate group.[202] The Huey Newton Foundation, former chairman and co-founder Bobby Seale, and members of the original Black Panther Party have insisted that this New Black Panther Party is illegitimate and they have strongly objected to it, stating that there "is no new Black Panther Party".[203]

In popular media

Aaron Sorkin's 2020 Netflix film, The Trial of the Chicago 7, features the Chicago Seven trial and Bobby Seale, who is portrayed by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II.

The 2021 film Judas and the Black Messiah, starring Daniel Kaluuya, tells the story of Fred Hampton and his Chicago chapter.

References

Citations

  1. ^ Delli Carpini, Michael X. (2000). "Black Panther Party: 1966-1982". from the original on October 2, 2018. Retrieved June 11, 2019. While the exact size of the party is difficult to determine,the best estimates are that at its peak in 1969, the Black Panthers had as many as 5,000 members and between thirty-four and forty local chapters in the United States.
  2. ^ "Black Panthers". from the original on April 11, 2020. Retrieved June 10, 2020. The Black Panthers were part of the larger Black Power movement, which emphasized black pride, community control and unification for civil rights.
  3. ^ Cleaver, Eldridge (1967). On The Ideology of the Black Panther Party (Part 1) (PDF). Black Panther Party Ministry of Information. (PDF) from the original on December 16, 2020. Retrieved February 2, 2021.
  4. ^ Austin 2006, p. 170
  5. ^ ""Concrete Analysis of Concrete Conditions": A Study of the Relationship between the Black Panther Party and Maoism Relationship between the Black Panther Party and Maoism". p. 29. from the original on February 22, 2021. Retrieved February 22, 2021.
  6. ^ "Intercommunalism (1974)". June 11, 2018. from the original on June 8, 2020. Retrieved June 8, 2020.
  7. ^ "Intercommunalism: The Late Theorizations of Huey P. Newton". June 11, 2018. from the original on June 8, 2020. Retrieved June 8, 2020.
  8. ^ Joseph 2006, p. 219
  9. ^ Van Deburg, William L. (1992). New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975. University of Chicago Press. p. 155. ISBN 978-0226847146.
  10. ^ a b "October 15, 1966: The Black Panther Party Is Founded". The Nation. ISSN 0027-8378. from the original on December 21, 2015. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  11. ^ a b "Mapping the Black Panther Party in Key Cities". Mapping American Social Movements. from the original on January 1, 2017. Retrieved January 1, 2017.
  12. ^ Brown, Mark (December 27, 2013). "Britain's black power movement is at risk of being forgotten, say historians". The Guardian. from the original on January 3, 2017. Retrieved January 2, 2017.
  13. ^ Meghelli, Samir (2009), "From Harlem to Algiers: Transnational Solidarities Between the African American Freedom Movement and Algeria, 1962–1978", in Marable, Manning (ed.), Black Routes to Islam, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 99–119
  14. ^ Pearson 1994, p. 152
  15. ^ Bloom & Martin 2013, chapter 7
  16. ^ Nelson, Alondra (2011). Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination. University of Minnesota Press.
  17. ^ Austin 2006; Bloom & Martin 2013; Murch 2010; Joseph 2006
  18. ^ Haas 2009, p. 41.
  19. ^ "Hoover and the F.B.I." Luna Ray Films, LLC. PBS.org. from the original on January 26, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2013.
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  21. ^ "Panthers 'threaten' U.S., Hoover says". Afro-American. Afro - American Company of Baltimore City. July 26, 1969. ProQuest 532216174.
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  23. ^ Williams, Jakobi (2013). From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago. University of North Carolina Press. p. 167. ISBN 978-0807838167. JSTOR 10.5149/9781469608167_williams.
  24. ^ Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate. February 12, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
  25. ^ O'Reilly, Kenneth (1989). Racial Matters: The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960–1972. Free Press. ISBN 978-0029236819.
  26. ^ Churchill and Vander Wall (2002). The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States. South End Press.
  27. ^ Haas, Jeffrey (2010). The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther. Chicago Review Press.
  28. ^ Bloom & Martin 2013, conclusion
  29. ^ Philip Foner, The Black Panthers Speak, Da Capo Press, 2002.
  30. ^ Bloom & Martin 2013, p. 3
  31. ^ Pearson 1994, p. 340
  32. ^ Murch 2010, p. 4
  33. ^ Murch 2010, p. 5
  34. ^ Murch 2010, p. 6
  35. ^ a b Bloom & Martin 2013, p. 11
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General and cited references

  • Austin, Curtis J. (2006). Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party. University of Arkansas Press. ISBN 978-1557288271.
  • Alkebulan, Paul (2007). Survival Pending Revolution: The History of the Black Panther Party. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
  • Blackmon, Janiece L. (2008). I Am Because We Are: Africana Womanism as a Vehicle of Empowerment and Influence. Blacksburg: Virginia Polytechnic Institute.
  • Bloom, Joshua; Martin, Waldo E. Jr. (2013). Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party. University of California Press. p. 315. ISBN 978-0520953543.
  • Brown, Elaine (1993). A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story. Anchor. ISBN 978-0679419440.
  • Carmichael, Stokely (1967). Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. Random House.
  • Churchill, Ward; Vander Wall, Jim (1988). Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret War Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. South End Press. ISBN 978-0896082946.
  • Dooley, Brian (1998). Black and Green: The Fight for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland and Black America. Pluto Press.
  • Forbes, Flores A. (2006). Will You Die with Me? My Life and the Black Panther Party. Atria Books. ISBN 978-0743482660.
  • Haas, Jeffrey (2009). The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther. Chicago Review Press. ISBN 978-1569763650.
  • Hilliard, David; Cole, Lewis (1993). This Side of Glory: The Autobiography of David Hilliard and the Story of the Black Panther Party. Little, Brown and Co. ISBN 978-0316364218.
  • Jones, Charles E. (1998). The Black Panther Party Reconsidered. Baltimore: Black Classic Press. ISBN 978-0933121966. OCLC 941682342.
  • Joseph, Peniel (2006). Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America. Henry Holt. p. 219. ISBN 978-0805075397.
  • Lewis, John (1998). Walking with the Wind. Simon and Schuster. p. 353. ISBN 978-0684810652.
  • Lazerow, Jama; Williams, Yohuru, eds. (2006). In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0822338901.
  • Murch, Donna (2010). Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. University of North Carolina. ISBN 978-0807871133.
  • Newton, Huey P. (2009) [1973]. Revolutionary Suicide. Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition. Penguin Books. p. 349. ISBN 978-0143105329.
  • Pearson, Hugh (1994). The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0201483413.
  • Rhodes, Jane (2007). Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon. New York: The New Press. ISBN 978-1565849617.
  • Seale, Bobby (1970). Seize The Time: The Story of The Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton. Random House. ISBN 093312130X.
  • Shames, Stephen (2006). "The Black Panthers". Aperture. A photographic essay of the organization, allegedly suppressed due to Spiro Agnew's intervention in 1970.
  • Swirski, Peter (2010). "Chapter One: 1960s: The Return of the Black Panther: Irving Wallace's The Man". Ars Americana Ars Politica. Montreal, London: McGill-Queen's University Press. pp. 26–56. ISBN 978-0773537668. JSTOR j.ctt80bj0.

Further reading

  • Malloy, Sean L. (2017). Out of Oakland: Black Panther Party Internationalism during the Cold War. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-1501713422.
  • "The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution | Documentary about Black Panther Party". Independent Lens. PBS. Retrieved October 6, 2016.
  • Shih, Bryan; Yohuru Williams (2016). The Black Panthers: Portraits from an Unfinished Revolution. Bold Type Books. ISBN 978-1568585550.
  • Whitaker, Mark (2023). Saying It Loud: 1966—The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9781982114121. OCLC 1365769400.

External links

  • Seattle Black Panther Party History and Memory Project The largest collection of materials on any single chapter.
  • Mapping American Social Movements: Mapping the Black Panther Party in Key Cities tracks the geography of the BPP, including offices, facilities, and locations of key events in six cities.
  • according to the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation.
  • FBI file on the BPP
  • Incidents attributed to the Black Panthers at the START database
  • Young Lords in Lincoln Park
  • —Contains FBI Files on BPP members, information on destroyed BPP FBI files, and inventories of BPP FBI files held by the National Archives
  • UC Berkeley Social Activism Online Sound Recordings: The Black Panther Party
  • Hartford Web Publishing collection of BPP documents
  • The Black Panther Party Newspaper, Electronic Archive, published in Black Thought and Culture, Alexander Street Press, Alexandria, VA 2005.
  • The Party's Over, a 1978 profile and history of the Party by New Times magazine.
  • Benjamin R. Young, "'Our Common Struggle against Our Common Enemy': North Korea and the American Radical Left", NKIDP e-Dossier no. 14, Woodrow Wilson Center. An essay and selection of primary sources on the Black Panther Party's ties with North Korea in the late 1960s.
  • Berger, Maurice (September 8, 2016). "Reconsidering the Black Panthers Through Photos". The New York Times.
  • The Black Panther Party Archive at marxists.org

May 04, 2023
black, panther, party, similarly, named, organisations, black, panther, disambiguation, political, organisations, this, article, multiple, issues, please, help, improve, discuss, these, issues, talk, page, learn, when, remove, these, template, messages, this, . For similarly named organisations see Black panther disambiguation Political organisations This article has multiple issues Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page Learn how and when to remove these template messages This article may lend undue weight to certain ideas incidents or controversies Please help improve it by rewriting it in a balanced fashion that contextualizes different points of view July 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message Some of this article s listed sources may not be reliable Please help this article by looking for better more reliable sources Unreliable citations may be challenged or deleted July 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message Learn how and when to remove this template message The Black Panther Party originally the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was a Marxist Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P Newton in October 1966 in Oakland California 8 9 10 The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982 with chapters in many major American cities including San Francisco New York Chicago Los Angeles Seattle and Philadelphia 11 They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria 12 13 Upon its inception the party s core practice was its open carry patrols copwatching designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department From 1969 onward the party created social programs including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs education programs and community health clinics 14 15 16 17 The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard 18 Black Panther PartyAbbreviationBPPLeaderHuey NewtonFounded1966 57 years ago 1966 Dissolved1982 41 years ago 1982 HeadquartersOakland CaliforniaNewspaperThe Black PantherMembershipc 5 000 1969 1 IdeologyBlack nationalism early Black power 2 Marxism Leninism 3 Maoism 4 5 Gun rights Womanism Anti imperialism Intercommunalism later 6 7 Political positionFar leftColors BlackPolitics of United StatesPolitical partiesElectionsIn 1969 J Edgar Hoover the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI described the party as the greatest threat to the internal security of the country 19 20 21 The FBI sabotaged the party with an illegal and covert counterintelligence program COINTELPRO of surveillance infiltration perjury police harassment all designed to undermine and criminalize the party The FBI was involved in the 1969 assassinations of Fred Hampton 22 23 and Mark Clark who were killed in a raid by the Chicago Police Department 24 25 26 27 Black Panther Party members were involved in many fatal firefights with police Huey Newton allegedly killed officer John Frey in 1967 and Eldridge Cleaver Minister of Information led an ambush in 1968 of Oakland police officers in which two officers were wounded and Panther treasurer Bobby Hutton was killed The party suffered many internal conflicts resulting in the murders of Alex Rackley and Betty Van Patter 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 Party membership peaked in 1970 and gradually declined over the next decade due to vilification by the mainstream press and infighting largely fomented by COINTELPRO 28 Support further declined over reports of the party s alleged criminal activities such as drug dealing and extortion 29 The party s history is controversial Scholars have characterized the Black Panther Party as the most influential black power organization of the late 1960s and the strongest link between the domestic Black Liberation Struggle and global opponents of American imperialism 30 Other scholars have described the party as more criminal than political characterized by defiant posturing over substance 31 Contents 1 History 1 1 Origins 1 2 Founding the Black Panther Party 1 3 Late 1966 to early 1967 1 3 1 Oakland patrols of police 1 3 2 Rallies in Richmond California 1 3 3 Protest at the Statehouse 1 3 4 Ten point program 1 4 Late 1967 to early 1968 1 4 1 COINTELPRO 1 4 2 Huey Newton charged with murdering John Frey 1 4 3 Free Huey campaign 1 4 4 Founding of the L A Chapter 1 4 5 Killing of Bobby Hutton 1 5 Late 1968 1 5 1 Chronology 1 5 2 Survival programs 1 5 3 Political activities 1 6 1969 1 6 1 Chronology 1 6 2 Shoot out with the US Organization 1 6 3 Black Panther Party Liberation Schools 1 6 4 Killing of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark 1 6 5 Torture murder of Alex Rackley 1 6 6 International ties 1 7 1970 1 7 1 Chronology 1 7 2 International travels 1 8 1971 1974 1 8 1 Split 1 8 2 Delegation to China 1 8 3 Newton solidifies control and centralizes power in Oakland 1 8 4 Newton indicted for violent crimes 1 9 1974 1977 1 9 1 The Panthers under Elaine Brown 1 9 2 Death of Betty van Patter 1 10 1977 1982 1 10 1 Return of Huey Newton and the demise of the party 1 10 2 Panthers attempt to assassinate a witness against Newton 2 Women and womanism 2 1 Gender dynamics 2 2 Women s role 2 3 Elaine Brown 2 4 Gwen Robinson 3 Connections to other political activist groups 4 Connections to the Gay Liberation Movement 5 Aftermath and legacy 5 1 Groups and movements inspired and aided by the Black Panthers 5 2 New Black Panther Party 6 In popular media 7 References 7 1 Citations 7 2 General and cited references 8 Further reading 9 External linksHistoryOrigins Original six members of the Black Panther Party 1966 Top left to right Elbert Big Man Howard Huey P Newton Defense Minister Sherwin Forte Bobby Seale Chairman Bottom Reggie Forte and Little Bobby Hutton Treasurer source source source source source source source source source source source source source source Newsreel in which Kathleen Cleaver spoke at Hutton Memorial Park in Alameda County California The footage also shows a student protest demonstration at Alameda County Courthouse Oakland California Black Panther Party leaders Huey P Newton Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale spoke on a 10 point program they wanted from the administration which was to include full employment decent housing and education an end to police brutality and black people to be exempt from the military Black Panther Party members are shown as they marched in uniform Students at the rally marched sang clapped hands and carried protest signs Police in riot gear controlled marchers During World War II tens of thousands of black people left the Southern states during the Second Great Migration moving to Oakland and other cities in the Bay Area to find work in the war industries such as Kaiser Shipyards The sweeping migration transformed the Bay Area as well as cities throughout the West and North altering the once white dominated demographics 32 A new generation of young black people growing up in these cities faced new forms of poverty and racism unfamiliar to their parents and they sought to develop new forms of politics to address them 33 Black Panther Party membership consisted of recent migrants whose families traveled north and west to escape the southern racial regime only to be confronted with new forms of segregation and repression 34 In the early 1960s the Civil Rights Movement had dismantled the Jim Crow system of racial caste subordination in the South with tactics of non violent civil disobedience and demanding full citizenship rights for black people 35 However not much changed in the cities of the North and West As the wartime and post war jobs which drew much of the black migration fled to the suburbs along with white residents the black population was concentrated in poor urban ghettos with high unemployment and substandard housing and was mostly excluded from political representation top universities and the middle class 36 Northern and Western police departments were almost all white 37 In 1966 only 16 of Oakland s 661 police officers were African American less than 2 5 38 Civil rights tactics proved incapable of redressing these conditions and the organizations that had led much of the nonviolent civil disobedience such as SNCC and CORE went into decline 35 By 1966 a Black Power ferment emerged consisting largely of young urban black people posing a question the Civil Rights Movement could not answer How would black people in America win not only formal citizenship rights but actual economic and political power 37 Young black people in Oakland and other cities developed study groups and political organizations and from this ferment the Black Panther Party emerged 39 Founding the Black Panther Party In late October 1966 Huey P Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party originally the Black Panther Party for Self Defense 10 In formulating a new politics they drew on their work with a variety of Black Power organizations 40 Newton and Seale first met in 1962 when they were both students at Merritt College 41 They joined Donald Warden s Afro American Association where they read widely debated and organized in an emergent black nationalist tradition inspired by Malcolm X and others 42 Eventually dissatisfied with Warden s accommodationism they developed a revolutionary anti imperialist perspective working with more active and militant groups like the Soul Students Advisory Council and the Revolutionary Action Movement 43 44 Their paid jobs running youth service programs at the North Oakland Neighborhood Anti Poverty Center allowed them to develop a revolutionary nationalist approach to community service later a key element in the Black Panther Party s community survival programs 45 Dissatisfied with the failure of these organizations to directly challenge police brutality and appeal to the brothers on the block Huey and Bobby took matters into their own hands After the police killed Matthew Johnson an unarmed young black man in San Francisco Newton observed the violent insurrection that followed He had an epiphany that would distinguish the Black Panther Party from the multitude of Black Power organizations Newton saw the explosive rebellious anger of the ghetto as a social force and believed that if he could stand up to the police he could organize that force into political power Inspired by Robert F Williams armed resistance to the Ku Klux Klan KKK and Williams book Negroes with Guns 46 Newton studied gun laws in California extensively Like the Community Alert Patrol in Los Angeles after the Watts Rebellion he decided to organize patrols to follow the police around to monitor for incidents of brutality But with a crucial difference his patrols would carry loaded guns 47 Huey and Bobby raised enough money to buy two shotguns by buying bulk quantities of the recently publicized Mao s Little Red Book and reselling them to leftists and liberals on the Berkeley campus at three times the price According to Bobby Seale they would sell the books make the money buy the guns and go on the streets with the guns We ll protect a mother protect a brother and protect the community from the racist cops 48 On October 29 1966 Stokely Carmichael a leader of SNCC championed the call for Black Power and came to Berkeley to keynote a Black Power conference At the time he was promoting the armed organizing efforts of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization LCFO in Alabama and their use of the Black Panther symbol Newton and Seale decided to adopt the Black Panther logo and form their own organization called the Black Panther Party for Self Defense 49 Newton and Seale decided on a uniform of blue shirts black pants black leather jackets black berets 50 Sixteen year old Bobby Hutton was their first recruit 51 By January 1967 the BPP opened its first official headquarters in an Oakland storefront and published the first issue of The Black Panther Black Community News Service Black Panther Party founders Bobby Seale and Huey P Newton standing in the street armed with a Colt 45 and a shotgun Late 1966 to early 1967 Oakland patrols of police The initial tactic of the party utilized contemporary open carry gun laws to protect Party members when policing the police This act was done to record incidents of police brutality by distantly following police cars around neighborhoods 52 When confronted by a police officer Party members cited laws proving they had done nothing wrong and threatened to take to court any officer that violated their constitutional rights 53 Between the end of 1966 to the start of 1967 the Black Panther Party for Self Defense s armed police patrols in Oakland black communities attracted a small handful of members 54 Numbers grew slightly starting in February 1967 when the party provided an armed escort at the San Francisco airport for Betty Shabazz Malcolm X s widow and keynote speaker for a conference held in his honor 55 The Black Panther Party s focus on militancy was often construed as open hostility 56 57 feeding a reputation of violence even though early efforts by the Panthers focused primarily on promoting social issues and the exercise of their legal right to carry arms 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 50 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 For example chants like The Revolution has come it s time to pick up the gun Off the pigs 58 helped create the Panthers reputation as a violent organization Rallies in Richmond California The black community of Richmond California wanted protection against police brutality 59 With only three main streets for entering and exiting the neighborhood it was easy for police to control contain and suppress the population 60 On April 1 1967 a black unarmed twenty two year old construction worker named Denzil Dowell was shot dead by police in North Richmond 61 Dowell s family contacted the Black Panther Party for assistance after county officials refused to investigate the case 62 The Party held rallies in North Richmond that educated the community on armed self defense and the Denzil Dowell incident 63 Police seldom interfered at these rallies because every Panther was armed and no laws were broken 64 The Party s ideals resonated with several community members who then brought their own guns to the next rallies 65 Protest at the Statehouse Awareness of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense grew rapidly after their May 2 1967 protest at the California State Assembly On May 2 1967 the California State Assembly Committee on Criminal Procedure was scheduled to convene to discuss what was known as the Mulford Act which would make the public carrying of loaded firearms illegal Newton with Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver put together a plan to send a group of 26 armed Panthers led by Seale from Oakland to Sacramento to protest the bill The group entered the assembly carrying their weapons an incident which was widely publicized and which prompted police to arrest Seale and five others The group pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of disrupting a legislative session 66 At the time of the protest the Party had fewer than 100 members in total 67 Black Panther convention Lincoln Memorial June 19 1970 In May 1967 the Panthers invaded the State Assembly Chamber in Sacramento guns in hand in what appears to have been a publicity stunt Still they scared a lot of important people that day At the time the Panthers had almost no following Now a year later however their leaders speak on invitation almost anywhere radicals gather and many whites wear Honkeys for Huey buttons supporting the fight to free Newton who has been in jail since last Oct 28 1967 on the charge that he killed a policeman 68 In 1967 the Mulford Act was passed by the California legislature and signed by governor Ronald Reagan The bill was crafted in response to members of the Black Panther Party who were copwatching The bill repealed a law that allowed the public carrying of loaded firearms Ten point program Main article Ten Point Program Black Panther Party The Black Panther Party first publicized its original What We Want Now Ten Point program on May 15 1967 following the Sacramento action in the second issue of The Black Panther newspaper 55 We want freedom We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community We want full employment for our people We want an end to the robbery by the Capitalists of our Black Community We want decent housing fit for shelter of human beings We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in present day society We want all Black men to be exempt from military service We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people We want freedom for all Black men held in federal state county and city prisons and jails We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Black Communities as defined by the Constitution of the United States We want land bread housing education clothing justice and peace Late 1967 to early 1968 COINTELPRO Further information COINTELPRO COINTELPRO document outlining the FBI s plans to neutralize Jean Seberg for her support for the Black Panther Party by attempting to publicly cause her embarrassment and tarnish her image In August 1967 the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI instructed its program COINTELPRO to neutralize black nationalist hate groups and other dissident groups In September 1968 FBI Director J Edgar Hoover described the Black Panthers as the greatest threat to the internal security of the country 69 By 1969 the Black Panthers and their allies had become primary COINTELPRO targets singled out in 233 of the 295 authorized Black Nationalist COINTELPRO actions 70 The goals of the program were to prevent the unification of militant black nationalist groups and to weaken their leadership as well as to discredit them to reduce their support and growth The initial targets included the Southern Christian Leadership Conference the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Nation of Islam as well as leaders including the Rev Martin Luther King Jr Stokely Carmichael H Rap Brown Maxwell Stanford and Elijah Muhammad As assistant FBI Director William Sullivan later testified in front of the Church Committee the Bureau did not differentiate between Soviet spies and suspected Communists in black nationalist movements when deploying surveillance and neutralization tactics 71 COINTELPRO attempted to create rivalries between black nationalist factions and to exploit existing ones One such attempt was to intensify the degree of animosity between the Black Panthers and the Blackstone Rangers a Chicago street gang The FBI sent an anonymous letter to the Rangers gang leader claiming that the Panthers were threatening his life a letter whose intent was to provoke preemptive violence against Panther leadership In Southern California the FBI made similar efforts to exacerbate a gang war between the Black Panther Party and a black nationalist group called the US Organization allegedly sending a provocative letter to the US Organization to increase existing antagonism 72 COINTELPRO also aimed to dismantle the Black Panther Party by targeting their social community programs including its Free Breakfast for Children program whose success had served to shed light on the government s failure to address child poverty and hunger pointing to the limits of the nation s War on Poverty 73 According to Bloom amp Martin the FBI denounced the Party s efforts as a means of indoctrination because the Party taught and provided for children more effectively than the government Police and Federal Agents regularly harassed and intimidated program participants supporters and Party workers and sought to scare away donors and organizations that housed the programs like churches and community centers 73 74 Black Panther Party members were involved in many fatal firefights with police Newton declared Malcolm implacable to the ultimate degree held out to the Black masses liberation from the chains of the oppressor and the treacherous embrace of the endorsed Black spokesmen Only with the gun were the black masses denied this victory But they learned from Malcolm that with the gun they can recapture their dreams and bring them into reality 75 Huey Newton charged with murdering John Frey On October 28 1967 Oakland police officer John Frey was shot to death in an altercation with Huey P Newton during a traffic stop in which Newton and backup officer Herbert Heanes also sustained gunshot wounds Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter at trial but the conviction was later overturned In his book Shadow of the Panther writer Hugh Pearson alleges that Newton was intoxicated in the hours before the incident and claimed to have willfully killed John Frey 76 Free Huey campaign At the time Newton claimed that he had been falsely accused leading to the Party s Free Huey campaign The police killing gained the party even wider recognition by the radical American left 77 and it stimulated the growth of the Party nationwide 67 Newton was released after three years when his conviction was reversed on appeal 78 As Newton awaited trial the Free Huey campaign developed alliances with numerous students and anti war activists advancing an anti imperialist political ideology that linked the oppression of antiwar protestors to the oppression of blacks and Vietnamese 79 The Free Huey campaign attracted black power organizations New Left groups and other activist groups such as the Progressive Labor Party Bob Avakian of the Community for New Politics and the Red Guard 80 For example the Black Panther Party collaborated with the Peace and Freedom Party which sought to promote a strong antiwar and antiracist politics in opposition to the establishment democratic party 81 The Black Panther Party provided needed legitimacy to the Peace and Freedom Party s racial politics and in return received invaluable support for the Free Huey campaign 82 Founding of the L A Chapter In 1968 the southern California chapter was founded by Alprentice Bunchy Carter in Los Angeles Carter was the leader of the Slauson Street gang and many of the L A chapter s early recruits were Slausons 83 Killing of Bobby Hutton Bobby James Hutton was born April 21 1950 in Jefferson County Arkansas At the age of three he and his family moved to Oakland California after being harassed by racist vigilante groups associated with the Ku Klux Klan In December 1966 he became the first treasurer and recruit of the Black Panther Party at the age of just 16 years old On April 6 1968 two days after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr and with riots raging across cities in the United States the 17 year old Hutton was traveling with Eldridge Cleaver and other BPP members in a car The group confronted Oakland Police officers then fled to an apartment building where they engaged in a 90 minute gun battle with the police The standoff ended with Cleaver wounded and Hutton voluntarily surrendering According to Cleaver although Hutton had stripped down to his underwear and had his hands raised in the air to prove that he was unarmed Oakland Police shot Hutton more than 12 times killing him Two police officers were also shot He became the first member of the party to be killed by police Although at the time the BPP claimed that the police had ambushed them several party members later admitted that Cleaver had led the Panther group on a deliberate ambush of the police officers provoking the shoot out 84 85 86 87 88 Seven other Panthers including Chief of Staff David Hilliard were also arrested Hutton s death became a rallying issue for Panther supporters 89 90 91 Late 1968 Chronology Early Spring 1968 Eldridge Cleaver s Soul on Ice published April 6 1968 Death of Bobby James Hutton killed in a gunfight with Oakland police 89 April 17 1968 Funeral for Bobby James Hutton in Berkeley followed by a rally at the Alameda County Courthouse 89 April to mid June 1968 Cleaver in jail Mid July 1968 Huey Newton s murder trial commences Panthers hold daily Free Huey rallies outside the courthouse August 5 1968 Three Panthers killed in a gun battle with police at a Los Angeles gas station 92 Early September 1968 Newton convicted of manslaughter Late September 1968 Days before he is due to return to prison to serve out a rape conviction Cleaver flees to Cuba and later Algeria October 5 1968 A Panther is killed in a gunfight with police in Los Angeles 92 November 1968 The BPP finds numerous supporters establishing relationships with the Peace and Freedom Party and SNCC Money contributions flow in and BPP leadership begins embezzlement 93 November 6 1968 Lauren Watson head of the Denver chapter is arrested by Denver Police for fleeing a police officer and resisting arrest His trial will be filmed and televised in 1970 as Trial The City and County of Denver vs Lauren R Watson November 20 1968 William Lee Brent and two accomplices in a van marked Black Panther Black Community News Service allegedly rob a gas station in San Francisco s Bayview district of 80 resulting in a shootout with police 94 In 1968 the group shortened its name to the Black Panther Party and sought to focus directly on political action Members were encouraged to carry guns and to defend themselves against violence An influx of college students joined the group which had consisted chiefly of brothers off the block This created some tension in the group Some members were more interested in supporting the Panthers social programs while others wanted to maintain their street mentality 95 By 1968 the Party had expanded into many U S cities 67 including Atlanta Baltimore Boston Chicago Cleveland Dallas Denver Detroit Kansas City Los Angeles Newark New Orleans New York City Omaha Philadelphia Pittsburgh San Diego San Francisco Seattle Toledo and Washington D C Peak membership was near 5 000 by 1969 and their newspaper under the editorial leadership of Eldridge Cleaver had a circulation of 250 000 96 The group created a Ten Point Program a document that called for Land Bread Housing Education Clothing Justice and Peace as well as exemption from conscription for black men among other demands 97 With the Ten Point program What We Want What We Believe the Black Panther Party expressed its economic and political grievances 98 Curtis Austin states that by late 1968 Black Panther ideology had evolved from black nationalism to become more a revolutionary internationalist movement The Party dropped its wholesale attacks against whites and began to emphasize more of a class analysis of society Its emphasis on Marxist Leninist doctrine and its repeated espousal of Maoist statements signaled the group s transition from a revolutionary nationalist to a revolutionary internationalist movement Every Party member had to study Mao Tse tung s Little Red Book to advance his or her knowledge of peoples struggle and the revolutionary process 99 Panther slogans and iconography spread At the 1968 Summer Olympics Tommie Smith and John Carlos two American medalists gave the black power salute during the American national anthem The International Olympic Committee banned them from all future Olympic Games Film star Jane Fonda publicly supported Huey Newton and the Black Panthers during the early 1970s She actually ended up informally adopting the daughter of two Black Panther members Mary Luana Williams Fonda and other Hollywood celebrities became involved in the Panthers leftist programs The Panthers attracted a wide variety of left wing revolutionaries and political activists including writer Jean Genet former Ramparts magazine editor David Horowitz who later became a major critic of what he describes as Panther criminality citation needed and left wing lawyer Charles R Garry who acted as counsel in the Panthers many legal battles The BPP adopted a Serve the People program which at first involved a free breakfast program for children By the end of 1968 the BPP had established 38 chapters and branches claiming more than five thousand members Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver left the country days before Cleaver was to turn himself in to serve the remainder of a thirteen year sentence for a 1958 rape conviction They settled in Algeria 100 By the end of the year party membership peaked at around 2 000 101 Party members engaged in criminal activities such as extortion stealing violent discipline of BPP members and robberies The BPP leadership took one third of the proceeds from robberies committed by BPP members 102 Survival programs no kid should be running around hungry in school Bobby Seale 103 The Black Panther Party s free breakfast program is the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for FBI director J Edgar Hoover 103 Inspired by Mao Zedong s advice to revolutionaries in The Little Red Book Newton called on the Panthers to serve the people and to make survival programs a priority within its branches The most famous of their programs was the Free Breakfast for Children Program initially run out of an Oakland church The Free Breakfast For Children program was especially significant because it served as a space for educating youth about the current condition of the Black community and the actions that the Party was taking to address that condition While the children ate their meal s members of the Party taught them liberation lessons consisting of Party messages and Black history 73 Through this program the Party was able to influence young minds and strengthen their ties to communities as well as gain widespread support for their ideologies The breakfast program became so popular that the Panthers Party claimed to have fed twenty thousand children in the 1968 69 school year 104 Other survival programs 105 were free services such as clothing distribution classes on politics and economics free medical clinics lessons on self defense and first aid transportation to upstate prisons for family members of inmates an emergency response ambulance program drug and alcohol rehabilitation and testing for sickle cell disease 106 The free medical clinics were very significant because they modeled an idea of how the world might work with free medical care eventually being established in 13 places across the country These clinics were involved in community based health care that had roots connected to the Civil Rights Movement which made it possible to establish the Medical Committee for Human Rights 107 Political activities In 1968 BPP Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver ran for presidential office on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket 108 They were a big influence on the White Panther Party tied to the Detroit Ann Arbor band MC5 and their manager John Sinclair author of the book Guitar Army which also promulgated a ten point program 1969 Chronology Early 1969 In late 1968 and January 1969 the BPP began to purge members due to fears about law enforcement infiltration and various petty disagreements January 14 1969 The Los Angeles chapter was involved in a shootout with members of the black nationalist US Organization and two Panthers are killed January 1969 The Oakland BPP begins the first free breakfast program for children March 1969 There is a second purge of BPP members April 1969 Members of the New York chapter known as the Panther 21 are indicted and jailed for a bombing conspiracy All would eventually be acquitted May 1969 Two more southern California Panthers are killed in violent disputes with US Organization members 92 May 1969 Members of the New Haven chapter torture and murder Alex Rackley who they suspected of being an informant July 1969 the BPP organized the United Front Against Fascism conference in Oakland which was attended by around 5 000 people representing a number of groups 109 110 July 17 1969 Two policemen are shot and a Panther is killed in a gun battle in Chicago 92 Late July 1969 The BPP ideology undergoes a shift with a turn toward self discipline and anti racism August 1969 Bobby Seale is indicted and imprisoned in relation to the Rackley murder October 18 1969 A Panther is killed in a gunfight with police outside a Los Angeles restaurant 92 Mid to late 1969 COINTELPRO activity increases November 13 1969 A Panther is killed in a gunfight with police in Chicago 92 December 4 1969 Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are killed by law enforcement in Chicago 11 Late 1969 David Hilliard current BPP head advocates violent revolution Panther membership is down significantly from the late 1968 peak Shoot out with the US Organization Violent conflict between the Panther chapter in LA and the US Organization a black nationalist group resulted in shootings and beatings and led to the murders of at least four Black Panther Party members On January 17 1969 Los Angeles Panther Captain Bunchy Carter and Deputy Minister John Huggins were killed in Campbell Hall on the UCLA campus in a gun battle with members of the US Organization Another shootout between the two groups on March 17 led to further injuries Two more Panthers died Black Panther Party Liberation Schools Paramount to their beliefs regarding the need for individual agency to catalyze community change the Black Panther Party BPP strongly supported the education of the masses As part of their Ten Point Program which set forth the ideals and goals of the party they demanded an equitable education for all black people Number 5 of the What We Want Now section of the program reads We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in present day society To ensure that this occurred the Black Panther Party took the education of their youth into their own hands by first establishing after school programs and then opening up Liberation Schools in a variety of locations throughout the country which focused their curriculum on Black history writing skills and political science 111 Intercommunal Youth Institute The first Liberation School was opened by the Richmond Black Panthers in July 1969 with brunch served and snacks provided to students Another school was opened in Mt Vernon New York on July 17 of the subsequent year 111 These schools were informal in nature and more closely resembled after school or summer programs 112 While these campuses were the first to open the first full time and longest running Liberation school was opened in January 1971 in Oakland in response to the inequitable conditions in the Oakland Unified School District which was ranked one of the lowest scoring districts in California 113 Named the Intercommunal Youth Institute IYI this school under the directorship of Brenda Bay and later Ericka Huggins enrolled twenty eight students in its first year with the majority being the children of Black Panther parents This number grew to fifty by the 1973 1974 school year To provide full support for Black Panther parents whose time was spent organizing some of the students and faculty members lived together year around The school itself was dissimilar to traditional schools in a variety of ways including the fact that students were separated by academic performance rather than age and students were often provided one on one support as the faculty to student ratio was 1 10 113 The Panther s goal in opening Liberation Schools and specifically the Intercommunal Youth Institute was to provide students with an education that wasn t being provided in the white schools 114 as the public schools in the district employed a eurocentric assimilationist curriculum with little to no attention to black history and culture While students were provided with traditional courses such as English Math and Science they were also exposed to activities focused on class structure and the prevalence of institutional racism 115 The overall goal of the school was to instill a sense of revolutionary consciousness in the students 112 With a strong belief in experiential learning students had the opportunity to participate in community service projects as well as practice their writing skills by drafting letters to political prisoners associated with the Black Panther Party 115 Huggins is noted as saying I think that the school s principles came from the socialist principles we tried to live in the Black Panther Party One of them being critical thinking that children should learn not what to think but how to think the school was an expression of the collective wisdom of the people who envisioned it And it was a living thing that changed every year 112 Joan Kelley oversaw funding for the Intercommunal Youth Institute which was provided through a combination of Black Panther fundraising and community support 113 Oakland Community SchoolIn 1974 due to increased interest in enrolling in the school school officials decided to move to a larger facility and subsequently changed the school s name to Oakland Community School During this year the school graduated its first class 114 Although the student population continued to grow ranging between 50 and 150 between 1974 and 1977 the original core values of individualized instruction remained 113 In September 1977 the school received a special award from Governor Edmund Brown Jr and the California Legislature for having set the standard for the highest level of elementary education in the state 114 The school eventually closed in 1982 due to governmental pressure on party leadership which caused insufficient membership and funds to continue running the school 113 Killing of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark In Chicago on December 4 1969 two Panthers were killed when the Chicago Police raided the home of Panther leader Fred Hampton The raid had been orchestrated by the police in conjunction with the FBI Hampton was shot and killed as was Panther guard Mark Clark A federal investigation reported that only one shot was fired by the Panthers and police fired at least 80 shots 116 The only shot fired by the Panthers was from Mark Clark who appeared to fire a single round determined to be the result of a reflexive death convulsion after he was immediately struck in the chest by shots from the police at the start of the raid Hampton was sleeping next to his pregnant fiancee and was subsequently shot twice in the head at point blank range while unconscious Coroner reports show that Hampton was drugged with a powerful barbiturate that night and would have been unable to have been awoken by the sounds of the police raid 117 His body was then dragged into the hallway He was 21 years old and unarmed at the time of his death Seven other Panthers sleeping at the house at the time of the raid were then beaten and seriously wounded then arrested under charges of aggravated assault and attempted murder of the officers involved in the raid These charges would later be dropped Cook County State s Attorney Edward Hanrahan announced to the media later that the Panthers were first to shoot in the interaction and that they showed a refusal to cease firing when urged to do so several times New York Times reporting would later demonstrate that this was not in fact the case and found a great deal of fake evidence being used by Chicago Police to assert their claims 118 Former FBI agent Wesley Swearingen asserts that the Bureau was guilty of a plot to murder the Panthers 119 Hampton had been slipped the barbiturates which had left him unconscious by William O Neal who had been working as an FBI informant Hanrahan his assistant and eight Chicago police officers were indicted by a federal grand jury over the raid but the charges were later dismissed 96 120 In 1979 civil action Hampton s family won 1 85 million from the city of Chicago in a wrongful death settlement 121 Torture murder of Alex Rackley In May 1969 three members of the New Haven chapter tortured and murdered Alex Rackley a 19 year old member of the New York chapter because they suspected him of being a police informant Three party officers Warren Kimbro George Sams Jr and Lonnie McLucas later admitted taking part Sams who gave the order to shoot Rackley at the murder scene turned state s evidence and testified that he had received orders personally from Bobby Seale to carry out the execution Party supporters responded that Sams was himself the informant and an agent provocateur employed by the FBI 122 The case resulted in the New Haven Black Panther trials of 1970 Kimbro Sams and McLucas were convicted of the murder but the trials of Seale and Ericka Huggins ended with a hung jury and the prosecution chose not to seek another trial International ties Activists from many countries around the globe supported the Panthers and their cause In Scandinavian countries such as Norway and Finland for example left wing activists organized a tour for Bobby Seale and Masai Hewitt in 1969 At each destination along the tour the Panthers talked about their goals and the Free Huey campaign Seale and Hewitt made a stop in Germany as well gaining support for the Free Huey campaign 123 1970 Chronology January 1970 Leonard Bernstein holds a fundraiser for the BPP which was notoriously mocked by Tom Wolfe in Radical Chic amp Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers Spring 1970 The Oakland BPP engages in another ambush of police officers with guns and fragmentation bombs Two officers are wounded 124 May 1970 Huey Newton s conviction is overturned but he remains incarcerated July 1970 Newton tells The New York Times that we ve never advocated violence August 1970 Newton is released from prison International travels In 1970 a group of Panthers traveled through Asia and they were welcomed as guests of the governments of North Vietnam North Korea and China The group s first stop was in North Korea where the Panthers met with local officials to discuss ways in which they could help each other fight against American imperialism Eldridge Cleaver traveled to Pyongyang twice in 1969 and 1970 and following these trips he made an effort to publicize the writings and works of North Korean leader Kim Il sung in the United States 125 After leaving North Korea the group traveled to North Vietnam with the same agenda in mind finding ways to put an end to American imperialism Eldridge Cleaver was invited to speak to Black GIs by the North Vietnamese government He encouraged them to join the Black Liberation Struggle by arguing that the United States government was only using them for its own purposes Instead of risking their lives on the battlefield for a country that continued to oppress them Cleaver believed that the black GIs should risk their lives in support of their own liberation After leaving Vietnam Cleaver met with the Chinese ambassador to Algeria to express their mutual animosity towards the American government 126 When Algeria held its first Pan African Cultural Festival they invited many important figures from the United States Among the important figures invited to the festival were Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver The cultural festival allowed Black Panthers to network with representatives of various international anti imperialist movements This was a significant time which led to the formation of the International Section of the Party 127 It is at this festival that Cleaver met with the ambassador of North Korea who later invited him to an International Conference of Revolutionary Journalists in Pyongyang Eldridge also met with Yasser Arafat and gave a speech supporting the Palestinians and their goal of achieving liberation 128 1971 1974 Newton focused the BPP on the Party s Oakland school and various other social service programs In early 1971 the BPP founded the Intercommunal Youth Institute in January 1971 129 with the intent of demonstrating how black youth ought to be educated Ericka Huggins was the director of the school and Regina Davis was an administrator 130 The school was unique in that it did not have grade levels but instead had different skill levels so an 11 year old could be in second level English and fifth level science 130 Elaine Brown taught reading and writing to a group of 10 to 11 year olds deemed uneducable by the system 131 The school children were given free busing breakfast lunch and dinner books and school supplies children were taken to have medical checkups many children were given free clothes 132 Split Significant disagreements among the Party s leaders over how to confront ideological differences led to a split within the party Certain members felt that the Black Panthers should participate in local government and social services while others encouraged constant conflict with the police For some of the Party s supporters the separations among political action criminal activity social services access to power and grass roots identity became confusing and contradictory as the Panthers political momentum was bogged down in the criminal justice system These and other disagreements led to a split In January 1971 Newton expelled Geronimo Pratt who since 1970 had been in jail facing a pending murder charge Newton also expelled two of the New York 21 and his own secretary Connie Matthews who fled the country Some Panther leaders such as Huey P Newton and David Hilliard favored a focus on community service coupled with self defense others such as Eldridge Cleaver embraced a more confrontational strategy In February 1971 Eldridge Cleaver deepened the schism in the party when he publicly criticized the Party for adopting a reformist rather than revolutionary agenda and called for Hilliard s removal Cleaver was expelled from the Central Committee but went on to lead a splinter group the Black Liberation Army which had previously existed as an underground paramilitary wing of the Party 133 The split turned violent as the Newton and Cleaver factions carried out retaliatory assassinations of each other s members resulting in the deaths of four people 134 From mid to late 1971 hundreds of members throughout the country quit the Black Panther Party 135 In May 1971 Bobby Seale was acquitted of ordering the Rackley murder and returned to Oakland Delegation to China In late September 1971 Huey P Newton led a delegation to China and stayed for 10 days 136 At every airport in China Huey was greeted by thousands of people waving copies of the Little Red Book and displaying signs that said we support the Black Panther Party down with US imperialism or we support the American people but the Nixon imperialist regime must be overthrown During the trip the Chinese arranged for him to meet and have dinner with a DPRK ambassador a Tanzanian ambassador and delegations from both North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam 137 Huey was under the impression he was going to meet Mao Zedong but instead had two meetings with the first Premier of the People s Republic of China Zhou Enlai One of these meetings also included Mao Zedong s wife Jiang Qing Huey described China as a free and liberated territory with a socialist government 138 Newton solidifies control and centralizes power in Oakland In early 1972 the party began closing down dozens of chapters and branches all over the country and bringing members and operations to Oakland 139 The political arm of the southern California chapter was shut down and its members moved to Oakland although the underground military arm remained for a time 140 The underground remnants of the LA chapter which had emerged from the Slausons street gang eventually re emerged as the Crips a street gang who at first advocated social reform before devolving into racketeering 141 Minister of Education Ray Masai Hewitt created the Buddha Samurai the party s underground security cadre in Oakland Newton expelled Hewitt from the party later in 1972 but the security cadre remained in operation under the leadership of Flores Forbes One of the cadre s main functions was to extort and rob drug dealers and after hours clubs 140 The party developed a five year plan to take over the city of Oakland politically and focused nearly all of its resources on winning political power in the Oakland city government Bobby Seale ran for mayor Elaine Brown ran for city council and other Panthers ran for minor offices Neither Seale nor Brown were elected and many Party members resigned after the losses 139 although a few Panthers won seats on local government commissions Following the electoral defeat Newton embarked on a major purge of the party in early 1974 expelling Bobby and John Seale David and June Hilliard Robert Bay and numerous other top party leaders Dozens of other Panthers loyal to Seale resigned or deserted Newton indicted for violent crimes In 1974 Huey Newton and eight other Panthers were arrested and charged with assault on police officers In August 1974 Newton went into exile in Cuba to avoid prosecution for the murder of Kathleen Smith an eighteen year old prostitute Newton was also indicted for pistol whipping his tailor Preston Callins Although Newton confided to friends that Kathleen Smith was his first nonpolitical murder he was ultimately acquitted after one witness s testimony was impeached by her admission that she had been smoking marijuana on the night of the murder and another prostitute witness recanted her testimony 142 143 Newton was also acquitted of assaulting Preston Callins after Callins refused to press charges 144 clarification needed 1974 1977 The Panthers under Elaine Brown In 1974 as Huey Newton prepared to go into exile in Cuba he appointed Elaine Brown as the first Chairwoman of the Party 145 Under Brown s leadership the Party became involved in organizing for more radical electoral campaigns including Brown s 1975 unsuccessful run for Oakland City Council 146 The Party supported Lionel Wilson in his successful election as the first black mayor of Oakland in exchange for Wilson s assistance in having criminal charges dropped against Party member Flores Forbes leader of the Buddha Samurai cadre 140 In addition to changing the Party s direction towards more involvement in the electoral arena Brown also increased the influence of women Panthers by placing them in more visible roles within the previously male dominated organization Death of Betty van Patter Panther leader Elaine Brown hired Betty Van Patter in 1974 as a bookkeeper Van Patter had previously served as a bookkeeper for Ramparts magazine and was introduced to the Panther leadership by David Horowitz who had been the editor of Ramparts and a major fundraiser and board member for the Panther school 147 Later that year after a dispute with Brown over financial irregularities 148 Van Patter went missing on December 13 1974 Some weeks later her severely beaten corpse was found on a San Francisco Bay beach There was insufficient evidence for police to charge anyone with van Patter s murder but the Black Panther Party leadership was almost universally believed to be responsible 149 150 Huey Newton later allegedly confessed to a friend that he had ordered Van Patter s murder and that Van Patter had been tortured and raped before being killed 143 151 FBI files investigating Van Patter were destroyed in 2009 for reasons the FBI has declined to provide 152 1977 1982 Return of Huey Newton and the demise of the party In 1977 Newton returned from exile in Cuba and received complaints from male members about the excessive power of women in the organization who now outnumbered men According to Elaine Brown Newton authorized the physical punishment of school administrator Regina Davis for scolding a male coworker Davis was hospitalized with a broken jaw 153 Brown said The beating of Regina would be taken as a clear signal that the words Panther and comrade had taken a gender on gender connotation denoting an inferiority in the female half of us 154 155 156 Brown resigned from the party and fled to LA 157 Although many scholars and activists date the Party s downfall to the period before Brown s leadership a shrinking cadre of Panthers struggled through the 1970s By 1980 Panther membership had dwindled to 27 and the Panther sponsored Oakland Community School closed in 1982 amid a scandal over Newton embezzling funds for his drug addiction 146 158 which marked the formal end of the Black Panther Party 145 Panthers attempt to assassinate a witness against Newton In October 1977 Flores Forbes the party s assistant chief of staff led a botched attempt to assassinate Crystal Gray a key prosecution witness in Newton s upcoming trial who had been present the day of Kathleen Smith s murder When three Panthers attacked the wrong house by mistake the occupant returned fire and killed one of the Panthers Louis Johnson while the other two assailants escaped 159 One of them Flores Forbes fled to Las Vegas Nevada with the help of Panther paramedic Nelson Malloy Fearing that Malloy would discover the truth behind the botched assassination attempt Newton allegedly ordered a house cleaning and Malloy was shot and buried alive in the desert Although permanently paralyzed from the waist down Malloy escaped and told police that fellow Panthers Rollin Reid and Allen Lewis were behind his attempted murder 160 Newton denied any involvement or knowledge and said the events might have been the result of overzealous party members 161 Newton was ultimately acquitted of the murder of Kathleen Smith after Crystal Gray s testimony was impeached by her admission that she had smoked marijuana on the night of the murder and he was acquitted of assaulting Preston Callins after Callins refused to press charges Women and womanismFrom its beginnings the Black Panther Party championed black masculinity and traditional gender roles 162 6 A notice in the first issue of The Black Panther newspaper proclaimed the all male organization as the cream of Black Manhood there for the protection and defense of our Black community 163 Scholars consider the Party s stance of armed resistance highly masculine with guns and violence proving manhood 164 2 In 1968 several articles urged female Panthers to stand behind black men and be supportive 162 6 The first woman to join the party was Joan Tarika Lewis in 1967 165 page needed Poster showing four women demonstrating for release of six members of the Black Panther Party from the Niantic State Women s Farm in Connecticut Nevertheless women were present in the party from the early days and expanded their roles throughout its life 166 Women often joined to fight against unequal gender norms 167 By 1969 the Party newspaper officially instructed male Panthers to treat female Party members as equals 162 2 162 6 a drastic change from the idea of the female Panther as subordinate The same year Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton of the Illinois chapter conducted a meeting condemning sexism 162 2 After 1969 the Party considered sexism counter revolutionary 162 6 The Black Panthers adopted a womanist ideology responding to the unique experiences of African American women 168 emphasizing racism as more oppressive than sexism 169 Womanism was a mix of black nationalism and the vindication of women 168 20 putting race and community struggle before the gender issue 168 8 Womanism posited that traditional feminism failed to include race and class struggle in its denunciation of male sexism 168 26 and was therefore part of white hegemony 168 21 In opposition to some feminist viewpoints womanism promoted a vision of gender roles that men are not above women but hold a different position in the home and community 168 42 so men and women must work together for the preservation of African American culture and community 168 27 Henceforth the Party newspaper portrayed women as intelligent political revolutionaries exemplified by members such as Kathleen Cleaver Angela Davis and Erika Huggins 162 10 The Black Panther Party newspaper often showed women as active participants in the armed self defense movement picturing them with children and guns as protectors of home family and community 162 2 Police killed or incarcerated many male leaders but female Panthers were less targeted for much of the 1960s and 1970s By 1968 women made up two thirds of the party while many male members were out of duty In the absence of much of the original male leadership women moved into all parts of the organization 166 170 Roles included leadership positions implementing community programs and uplifting the black community Women in the group called attention to sexism within the Party and worked to make changes from within 171 From 1968 to the end of its publication in 1982 the head editors of the Black Panther Party newspaper were all women 162 5 In 1970 approximately 40 to 70 of Party members were women 162 8 and several chapters like the Des Moines Iowa and New Haven Connecticut were headed by women 164 7 During the 1970s recognizing the limited access poor women had to abortion the Party officially supported women s reproductive rights including abortion 162 11 That same year the Party condemned and opposed prostitution 162 12 Many women Panthers began to demand childcare to be able to fully participate in the organization The Party responded by establishing on site child development centers in multiple US chapters Childcare became largely a group activity with children raised collectively in accord with the Panther s commitment to collectivism and the African American extended family tradition Childcare allowed women Panthers to embrace motherhood while fully participating in Party activism 172 The Party experienced significant problems in several chapters with sexism and gender oppression particularly in the Oakland chapter where cases of sexual harassment and gender conflict were common 173 5 When Oakland Panthers arrived to bolster the New York City Panther chapter after 21 New York leaders were incarcerated they displayed such chauvinistic attitudes towards New York Panther women that they had to be fended off at gunpoint 174 Some Party leaders thought the fight for gender equality was a threat to men and a distraction from the struggle for racial equality 162 5 In response the Chicago and New York chapters among others established equal gender rights as a priority and tried to eradicate sexist attitudes 164 13 By the time the Black Panther Party disbanded official policy was to reprimand men who violated the rules of gender equality 164 13 Gender dynamics In the beginning recruiting women was a low priority for Newton and Seale 175 Seale stated in an interview that Newton targeted brothers who had been pimping brothers who had been peddling dope brothers who ain t gonna take no shit brothers who had been fighting the pigs Also they didn t realize that women could help the fight until one came into an interest meeting asking about female leadership 176 Regina Jennings recalls that many male leaders had an unchecked sexism problem and her task was to lift the bedroom out of their minds She remembers overhearing members Some concluded that the FBI sent me but the captain assured them with salty good humor that She s too stupid to be from the FBI He thought my cover and my comments too honest too loud and too ridiculous to be serious She recalls her days in Oakland California as a teenager looking for something to do to add purpose to her life and her community She grew up around police brutality so it was nothing new Her goal in joining was smashing racism because she viewed herself as Black before she was a woman In her community that identity is what she felt held her back the most 176 Women s role The Black Panther Party was involved in many community projects as part of their organization These projects included community outreach like the breakfast program education and health programs 166 In many cases women were the ones primarily involved with administering these types of programs From the beginning of the Black Panther Party education was a fundamental goal of the organization This was highlighted in the Ten Point Platform the newspaper that was distributed by the party and the public commentary shared by the Panthers 166 The newspaper was one of the primary and original consciousness raising and educational measures taken by the party 166 Despite the fact that men were out distributing the newspaper women like Elaine Brown and Kathleen Cleaver were behind the scenes working on those papers 177 Elaine Brown Elaine Brown rose to power within the BPP as Minister of Information after Eldridge Cleaver fled abroad In 1974 she became chair for the Oakland chapter She was appointed by Huey Newton the previous chair while Newton and other leaders dealt with legal issues 166 178 From the beginning of her tenure as chair she faced opposition and feared a coup She appointed many female officials and faced backlash for her policies for equality within the organization When Huey Newton returned from exile and approved of the beating of a female Panther school teacher Brown left the organization 178 Gwen Robinson In an interview with Judson Jeffries Gwen Robinson reflects on her time in the Black Panther Party Detroit Division 179 She explains that she joined in October 1969 despite doubts from her mother who had participated in a march with Martin Luther King Jr in the early part of the decade She chose the Black Panther Party BPP because She felt a closeness and a bond with them more than other organizations like the SNCC NAACP the Urban League the Nation of Islam Shrines of Madonna Eastside Voice of Independent Detroit ESVID the Republic of New Africa and the Revolutionary Action Movement 179 In 12th grade she decided to work full time with the Party dropping out of chaotic Denby High School in Detroit There were some students who would use the N word freely and a P E instructor accused her of stealing her keys She was shoved into the pool when she refused to swim for fear of wetting her hair while a White teacher who taught Afro American history would kick people out if you challenged his position on certain Black leaders 179 In the BPP she was living as part of a collective where all work was shared and she enjoyed working all day selling newspapers She climbed the ranks and became the branch s Communications Secretary in January 1971 after her predecessor left due to some issues related to sexism In this branch unlike the average BPP divisions the brothers never turned violent or physical That kind of thing didn t take place in Detroit She left the organization in 1973 keeping a link through her husband their circulation manager Summing up the legacy of the Detroit branch she says It s crucial that people realize that the strength of the organization was rooted in discipline deep commitment and a genuine love for the people 180 Connections to other political activist groupsMembers of the Black Panther Party such as Huey P Newton also frequently collaborated with Latino activist groups like the Brown Berets and Los Siete de la Raza Newton himself even attended some court sessions for Los Siete de la Raza s trial in June 1970 181 Bobby Seale described their alliances with Los Siete as particularly important they saw that both Black and Brown activist groups had been dealing with similar issues regarding oppression and violence in the United States 181 Connections to the Gay Liberation MovementHuey Newton expressed his support for the Women s Liberation Movement and the Gay Liberation Movement in a 1970 letter published in the newspaper The Black Panther titled A Letter from Huey to the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters About the Women s Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements 182 Written one year after the Stonewall Riots Newton acknowledged women and homosexuals as oppressed groups and urged the Black Panthers to unite with them in a revolutionary fashion 183 The Black Panther Party and the Gay Liberation Movement shared common ground in their fight against police brutality 184 Aftermath and legacy New York City Councilman Charles Barron is one of the numerous former Panthers to have held elected office in the US There is considerable debate about the impact of the Black Panther Party on the wider society or even their local environments Author Jama Lazerow writes As inheritors of the discipline pride and calm self assurance preached by Malcolm X the Panthers became national heroes in black communities by infusing abstract nationalism with street toughness by joining the rhythms of black working class youth culture to the interracial elan and effervescence of Bay Area New Left politics In 1966 the Panthers defined Oakland s ghetto as a territory the police as interlopers and the Panther mission as the defense of community The Panthers famous policing the police drew attention to the spatial remove that White Americans enjoyed from the police brutality that had come to characterize life in black urban communities 185 Professor Judson Jeffries of Purdue University called the Panthers the most effective black revolutionary organization in the 20th century 186 The Los Angeles Times in a 2013 review of Black Against Empire an authoritative history of the BPP published by University of California Press called the organization a serious political and cultural force and a movement of intelligent explosive dreamers 187 The Black Panther Party is featured in exhibits 188 and curriculum 189 190 of the National Civil Rights Museum Numerous former Panthers have held elected office in the United States some into the 21st century these include Charles Barron New York City Council Nelson Malloy Winston Salem City Council and Bobby Rush US House of Representatives Most of them praise the BPP s contribution to black liberation and American democracy In 1990 the Chicago City Council passed a resolution declaring Fred Hampton Day in honor of the slain leader 121 In Winston Salem in 2012 a large contingent of local officials and community leaders came together to install a historic marker of the local BPP headquarters State Representative Earline Parmone declared The Black Panther Party dared to stand up and say We re fed up and we re not taking it anymore Because they had courage today I stand as the first African American ever to represent Forsyth County in the state Senate 191 In October 2006 the Black Panther Party held a 40 year reunion in Oakland 192 Black Panther 40th Reunion 2006 In January 2007 a joint California state and Federal task force charged eight men with the August 29 1971 murder of California police officer Sgt John Young 193 The defendants have been identified as former members of the Black Liberation Army with two linked to the Black Panthers 194 In 1975 a similar case was dismissed when a judge ruled that police gathered evidence using torture 195 On June 29 2009 Herman Bell pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the death of Sgt Young In July 2009 charges were dropped against four of the accused Ray Boudreaux Henry W Jones Richard Brown and Harold Taylor Also that month Jalil Muntaquim pleaded no contest to conspiracy to commit voluntary manslaughter becoming the second person convicted in this case 196 Since the 1990s former Panther chief of staff David Hilliard has offered tours in Oakland of sites historically significant to the Black Panther Party 197 Groups and movements inspired and aided by the Black Panthers Various groups and movements have picked names inspired by the Black Panthers Assata s Daughters an all black activist group in Chicago was founded in 2015 by Page May the group is named after Black Panther Assata Shakur and has objectives similar to the Black Panthers 10 Point Program 198 Gray Panthers often used to refer to advocates for the rights of seniors Gray Panthers in the United States The Grays Gray Panthers in Germany Polynesian Panthers an advocacy group for Maori and Pacific Islander people in New Zealand Black Panthers a protest movement that advocates social justice and fights for the rights of Mizrahi Jews in Israel White Panthers used to refer to both the White Panther Party a far left anti racist white American political party of the 1970s as well as the White Panthers UK an unaffiliated group started by Mick Farren The Pink Panthers used to refer to two LGBT rights organizations Dalit Panthers an Indian social reform movement which fights against caste oppression in Indian society The British Black Panther movement which flourished in London in the late 1960s and early 1970s was not affiliated with the American organization although it fought for many of the same rights 199 200 The French Black Dragons a black antifascist group closely linked to the punk rock and rockabilly scene The Young Lords Huey P Newton Gun Club named after the Black Panther Party s founder Memphis Black Autonomy FederationIn April 1977 Panthers were key supporters of the 504 Sit Ins the longest of which was the 25 day occupation of the San Francisco Federal Building by over 120 people with disabilities Panthers provided daily home cooked meals in support of the protest s eventual success which eventually led to the Americans with Disabilities Act ADA thirteen years later 201 New Black Panther Party Main article New Black Panther Party In 1989 a New Black Panther Party was formed in Dallas Texas Ten years later the NBPP became home to many former Nation of Islam members when its chairmanship was taken by Khalid Abdul Muhammad The Anti Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center list the New Black Panthers as a black separatist hate group 202 The Huey Newton Foundation former chairman and co founder Bobby Seale and members of the original Black Panther Party have insisted that this New Black Panther Party is illegitimate and they have strongly objected to it stating that there is no new Black Panther Party 203 In popular mediaAaron Sorkin s 2020 Netflix film The Trial of the Chicago 7 features the Chicago Seven trial and Bobby Seale who is portrayed by Yahya Abdul Mateen II The 2021 film Judas and the Black Messiah starring Daniel Kaluuya tells the story of Fred Hampton and his Chicago chapter ReferencesCitations Delli Carpini Michael X 2000 Black Panther Party 1966 1982 Archived from the original on October 2 2018 Retrieved June 11 2019 While the exact size of the party is difficult to determine the best estimates are that at its peak in 1969 the Black Panthers had as many as 5 000 members and between thirty four and forty local chapters in the United States Black Panthers Archived from the original on April 11 2020 Retrieved June 10 2020 The Black Panthers were part of the larger Black Power movement which emphasized black pride community control and unification for civil rights Cleaver Eldridge 1967 On The Ideology of the Black Panther Party Part 1 PDF Black Panther Party Ministry of Information Archived PDF from the original on December 16 2020 Retrieved February 2 2021 Austin 2006 p 170 Concrete Analysis of Concrete Conditions A Study of the Relationship between the Black Panther Party and Maoism Relationship between the Black Panther Party and Maoism p 29 Archived from the original on February 22 2021 Retrieved February 22 2021 Intercommunalism 1974 June 11 2018 Archived from the original on June 8 2020 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Islam Palgrave Macmillan pp 99 119 Pearson 1994 p 152 Bloom amp Martin 2013 chapter 7 Nelson Alondra 2011 Body and Soul The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination University of Minnesota Press Austin 2006 Bloom amp Martin 2013 Murch 2010 Joseph 2006 Haas 2009 p 41 Hoover and the F B I Luna Ray Films LLC PBS org Archived from the original on January 26 2013 Retrieved January 24 2013 Hoover Calls Panthers Top Threat to Security The Washington Post WP Company LLC d b a The Washington Post July 16 1969 ProQuest 147638465 Panthers threaten U S Hoover says Afro American Afro American Company of Baltimore City July 26 1969 ProQuest 532216174 Stubblefield Anna 2018 Ethics Along the Color Line Cornell University Press pp 60 61 ISBN 978 1501717703 Williams Jakobi 2013 From the Bullet to the Ballot The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago University of North Carolina Press p 167 ISBN 978 0807838167 JSTOR 10 5149 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Perkins Margo V Autobiography As Activism Three Black Women of the Sixties Jackson University Press of Mississippi 2000 p 5 Horowitz David December 13 1999 Who killed Betty Van Patter Archived December 19 2005 at the Wayback Machine http www salon com 1999 12 13 betty Archived December 22 2015 at the Wayback Machine Salon com Archived November 13 1999 at the Wayback Machine Brown 1993 pp 363 367 Frank Browning The Strange Journey of David Horowitz Archived January 28 2016 at the Wayback Machine Mother Jones May 1987 p 34 on Google books Christopher Hitchens Left leaving left leaning Los Angeles Times November 16 2003 Pearson 1994 p 328 Leighton Jared Betty Louise Van Patter archived from the original on March 30 2018 retrieved April 26 2017 Ryder Ulli Kira December 2008 As Shelters Against the Cold Women Poets of the Black Arts and Chicano Movements 1965 1978 Dissertation p 124 Archived from the original on December 23 2016 Retrieved September 17 2016 McClendon III John H 1996 Elaine Brown In Smith Jessie Carney ed Notable Black American Women Book 2 VNR AG pp 66 67 ISBN 9780810391772 Archived from the original on July 27 2020 Retrieved September 13 2016 Brown 1993 p 444 Keating Fiona October 24 2015 Women of the revolution More than 50 of the Black Panther Party were women and carried guns International Business Times Archived from the original on September 16 2016 Retrieved September 13 2016 Brown 1993 pp 444 450 Pearson 1994 p 299 Gunmen Try To Kill Witness Against Black Panther Leader The Leader Post October 25 1977 Turner Wallace December 14 1977 Coast Inquiries Pick Panthers As Target Murder Attempted Murders and Financing of Poverty Programs Under Oakland Investigation New York Times Archived from the original on July 23 2018 Retrieved July 23 2018 The Odyssey of Huey Newton Time November 13 1978 Archived from the original on November 6 2012 Retrieved March 31 2014 a b c d e f g h i j k l m Lumsden Linda 2009 Good Mothers With Guns Framing Black Womanhood in the Black Panther 1968 1980 Journalism amp Mass Communication Quarterly 86 4 900 922 doi 10 1177 107769900908600411 S2CID 145098294 Spencer Robyn Ceanne 2008 Engendering the Black Freedom Struggle Revolutionary Black Womanhood and the Black Panther Party in the Bay Area California Journal of Women s History 20 1 92 doi 10 1353 jowh 2008 0006 S2CID 145479202 a b c d Williams Jakobi 2012 Don t no woman have to do nothing she don t want to do Gender Activism and the Illinois Black Panther Party Black Women Gender amp Families 6 2 Jones 1998 a b c d e f Seale Bobby 1991 Seize the time the story of the Black Panther party and Huey P Newton Baltimore Md Black Classic Press ISBN 9780933121300 OCLC 24636234 Cleaver Kathleen Neal June 1 1999 Women power and revolution New Political Science 21 2 231 236 doi 10 1080 07393149908429865 ISSN 0739 3148 a b c d e f g Blackmon 2008 p 28 Blackmon 2008 p 2 Whose Revolution is This Gender s Divisive Role in the Black Panther Party Ninth Symposium Issue of Gender and Sexuality Law Note 9 Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law 2008 heinonline org Archived from the original on October 18 2016 Retrieved October 6 2016 Say It Loud 9 Black Women in the Black Power Movement Everyone Should Know For Harriet Celebrating the Fullness of Black Womanhood Archived from the original on June 20 2018 Retrieved October 6 2016 Bauer Kari February 22 2016 No Revolution Without Us Feminists of the Black Panther Party with Lynn C French and Salamishah Tillet Urban Democracy Lab Archived from the original on August 11 2016 Retrieved June 25 2016 Regina Jennings Africana Womanism in the Black Panthers Party a Personal story The Western Journal of Black Study 25 3 2001 Austin 2006 pp 300 301 Alameen Shavers Antwanisha Fall 2016 The Woman Question Gender Dynamics within the Black Panther Party Spectrum A Journal on Black Men 5 33 62 doi 10 2979 spectrum 5 1 03 S2CID 152211806 a b Jennings Regina 2001 Africana Womanism in The Black Panther Party A Personal Story The Western Journal of Black Studies 25 146 152 Cleaver Kathleen Katsiaficas 2001 Liberation Imagination and the Black Panther Party A new look at the Panthers and their legacy New York Routledge a b Brown DeNeen L January 10 2018 I have all the guns and money When a woman led the Black Panther Party The Washington Post ISSN 0190 8286 Archived from the original on June 20 2018 Retrieved February 18 2018 a b c Jeffries Judson L Fall 2016 Conversing with Gwen Robinson Spectrum A Journal on Black Men 5 137 145 doi 10 2979 spectrum 5 1 07 S2CID 185337572 Archived from the original on June 20 2018 Retrieved June 19 2018 Jeffries Judson Fall 2016 Conversing with Gwen Robinson Spectrum A Journal on Black Men 5 137 145 doi 10 2979 spectrum 5 1 07 S2CID 185337572 a b Pulido Laura 2019 Black Brown Yellow and Left American Crossroads Volume 19 Ebook ed Berkeley Calif University of California Press doi 10 1525 9780520938892 ISBN 9780520938892 OCLC 61730663 S2CID 242639764 Porter Ronald K 2012 A Rainbow in Black The Gay Politics of the Black Panther Party Counterpoints 367 364 375 JSTOR 42981419 Archived from the original on June 4 2020 Retrieved January 27 2021 via JSTOR Newton Huey P 2002 The New Huey P Newton Reader Hilliard David Weise Donald Brown Elaine 1943 New York NY ISBN 978 1 60980 900 3 OCLC 1086404074 Archived from the original on February 15 2021 Retrieved January 27 2021 Leighton Jared 2019 All of Us Are Unapprehended Felons Gay Liberation the Black Panther Party and Intercommunal Efforts Against Police Brutality in the Bay Area Journal of Social History 52 3 860 85 doi 10 1093 jsh shx119 via EBSCO Lazerow amp Williams 2006 p 37 Jordan Green The strange history of the Black Panthers in the Triad Archived September 9 2014 at the Wayback Machine Yes Weekly April 11 2006 Hector Tobar Black Against Empire tells the history of Black Panthers Archived September 8 2014 at the Wayback Machine The Los Angeles Times January 24 2013 What Do We Want Black Power Archived October 12 2014 at the Wayback Machine National Civil Rights Museum National Civil Rights Museum Curriculum Guide Archived October 29 2014 at the Wayback Machine Black Power Questions to Consider Archived October 29 2014 at the Wayback Machine National Civil Rights Museum Layla Garms Black Panther Legacy Honored with Marker Archived September 8 2014 at the Wayback Machine The Chronicle of Winston Salem October 18 2012 Photos of the Black Panther Party Archived January 17 2007 at the Wayback Machine Oakland 2006 Ex militants charged in S F police officer s 71 slaying at station Archived June 29 2011 at the Wayback Machine via SFGate See Black Liberation Army tied to 1971 slaying and Suspects arrested in police officer s 1971 shooting had settled into quiet lives Archived December 23 2015 at the Wayback Machine USA Today Wohlsen Marcus January 23 2007 8 arrested in 1971 cop killing tied to Black Panthers The San Diego Union Tribune Associated Press Archived from the original on August 27 2016 Retrieved August 14 2016 2nd guilty plea in 1971 killing of S F officer Archived June 29 2011 at the Wayback Machine via SFGate DelVecchio Rick October 25 1997 Tour of Black Panther Sites Former member shows how party grew in Oakland San Francisco Chronicle Retrieved June 15 2011 We re Assata s Daughters Zed Collective October 19 2016 Archived from the original on March 7 2017 Retrieved March 14 2017 Holly Williams Power struggle A new exhibition looks back at the rise of the British Black Panthers Archived September 27 2017 at the Wayback Machine The Independent October 13 2013 Hazelann Williams Reliving The British Black Panther Movement Archived April 11 2015 at the Wayback Machine The Voice January 9 2012 Schweik Susan 2011 Lomax s Matrix The Black Power of 504 Disability Studies Quarterly 31 1 Archived from the original on November 21 2016 Retrieved November 21 2016 Active U S Hate Groups Black Separatist Splcenter org Archived from the original on March 14 2008 Retrieved June 25 2016 Dr Huey P Newton Foundation There Is No New Black Panther Party An Open Letter From the Dr Huey P Newton Foundation Archived from the original on April 1 2011 General and cited references Austin Curtis J 2006 Up Against the Wall Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party University of Arkansas Press ISBN 978 1557288271 Alkebulan Paul 2007 Survival Pending Revolution The History of the Black Panther Party Tuscaloosa University of Alabama Press Blackmon Janiece L 2008 I Am Because We Are Africana Womanism as a Vehicle of Empowerment and Influence Blacksburg Virginia Polytechnic Institute Bloom Joshua Martin Waldo E Jr 2013 Black against Empire The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party University of California Press p 315 ISBN 978 0520953543 Brown Elaine 1993 A Taste of Power A Black Woman s Story Anchor ISBN 978 0679419440 Carmichael Stokely 1967 Black Power The Politics of Liberation Random House Churchill Ward Vander Wall Jim 1988 Agents of Repression The FBI s Secret War Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement South End Press ISBN 978 0896082946 Dooley Brian 1998 Black and Green The Fight for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland and Black America Pluto Press Forbes Flores A 2006 Will You Die with Me My Life and the Black Panther Party Atria Books ISBN 978 0743482660 Haas Jeffrey 2009 The Assassination of Fred Hampton How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther Chicago Review Press ISBN 978 1569763650 Hilliard David Cole Lewis 1993 This Side of Glory The Autobiography of David Hilliard and the Story of the Black Panther Party Little Brown and Co ISBN 978 0316364218 Jones Charles E 1998 The Black Panther Party Reconsidered Baltimore Black Classic Press ISBN 978 0933121966 OCLC 941682342 Joseph Peniel 2006 Waiting Til the Midnight Hour A Narrative History of Black Power in America Henry Holt p 219 ISBN 978 0805075397 Lewis John 1998 Walking with the Wind Simon and Schuster p 353 ISBN 978 0684810652 Lazerow Jama Williams Yohuru eds 2006 In Search of the Black Panther Party New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement Durham Duke University Press ISBN 978 0822338901 Murch Donna 2010 Living for the City Migration Education and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland California University of North Carolina ISBN 978 0807871133 Newton Huey P 2009 1973 Revolutionary Suicide Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition Penguin Books p 349 ISBN 978 0143105329 Pearson Hugh 1994 The Shadow of the Panther Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America Da Capo Press ISBN 978 0201483413 Rhodes Jane 2007 Framing the Black Panthers The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon New York The New Press ISBN 978 1565849617 Seale Bobby 1970 Seize The Time The Story of The Black Panther Party and Huey P Newton Random House ISBN 093312130X Shames Stephen 2006 The Black Panthers Aperture A photographic essay of the organization allegedly suppressed due to Spiro Agnew s intervention in 1970 Swirski Peter 2010 Chapter One 1960s The Return of the Black Panther Irving Wallace s The Man Ars Americana Ars Politica Montreal London McGill Queen s University Press pp 26 56 ISBN 978 0773537668 JSTOR j ctt80bj0 Further readingMalloy Sean L 2017 Out of Oakland Black Panther Party Internationalism during the Cold War Cornell University Press ISBN 978 1501713422 The Black Panthers Vanguard of the Revolution Documentary about Black Panther Party Independent Lens PBS Retrieved October 6 2016 Shih Bryan Yohuru Williams 2016 The Black Panthers Portraits from an Unfinished Revolution Bold Type Books ISBN 978 1568585550 Whitaker Mark 2023 Saying It Loud 1966 The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement New York Simon amp Schuster ISBN 9781982114121 OCLC 1365769400 External linksThis section s use of external links may not follow Wikipedia s policies or guidelines Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references January 2019 Learn how and when to remove this template message Black Panther Party at Wikipedia s sister projects Media from Commons Quotations from Wikiquote Data from Wikidata Seattle Black Panther Party History and Memory Project The largest collection of materials on any single chapter Mapping American Social Movements Mapping the Black Panther Party in Key Cities tracks the geography of the BPP including offices facilities and locations of key events in six cities Official website according to the Dr Huey P Newton Foundation FBI file on the BPP https web archive org web 20150704181939 https vault fbi gov Black 20Panther 20Party Incidents attributed to the Black Panthers at the START database Young Lords in Lincoln Park FBI Docs Contains FBI Files on BPP members information on destroyed BPP FBI files and inventories of BPP FBI files held by the National Archives UC Berkeley Social Activism Online Sound Recordings The Black Panther Party Hartford Web Publishing collection of BPP documents The Black Panther Party Newspaper Electronic Archive published in Black Thought and Culture Alexander Street Press Alexandria VA 2005 The Party s Over a 1978 profile and history of the Party by New Times magazine Benjamin R Young Our Common Struggle against Our Common Enemy North Korea and the American Radical Left NKIDP e Dossier no 14 Woodrow Wilson Center An essay and selection of primary sources on the Black Panther Party s ties with North Korea in the late 1960s Berger Maurice September 8 2016 Reconsidering the Black Panthers Through Photos The New York Times The Black Panther Party Archive at marxists org Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Black Panther Party amp oldid 1152929345, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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