Dedicated to the improvement of the African-American community, the Black Panthers’ commitment to armed self-defense and revolutionary politics led to violent conflicts with local, state, and national authorities.
The Black Panthers were formed on October 15, 1966, in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. Students at Merritt College in Oakland, Newton and Seale were heavily influenced by the teachings of black activist Malcolm X. In forming the Black Panthers, both men advocated the arming of the black community for self-defense.
Members of the Black Panthers were easily identified by their uniform, which consisted of a black beret, black pants, a powder blue shirt, black shoes, and a black leather jacket. As slogans the Panthers often proclaimed “Power to the People” and “Off the Pigs,” referring to the overthrowing of police authority. The symbol of the panther was adopted from the Lowndes County Freedom Party in Alabama. It was chosen because the Panther never attacks unless cornered, and the African-American community of the 1960s felt cornered.
The founding of the Black Panthers reflected a major shift in the African-American struggle for equality and justice from a national to an international focus. The African-American community began to look toward those African nations that used force to gain independence from colonial powers, and they saw a need for a more militant approach to gaining equality. They also questioned the legitimacy of the existing social, economic, and political systems more actively in the 1960s.
Newton and Seale created a 10-point program called “What We Want,” which reflected a new nationalist thrust aimed at the average African American, not a black member of the middle class. The “What We Want” program called for freedom, full employment, the end of white destruction of the black community, decent housing, and equal EDUCATION. It also demanded exemption for all African Americans from military service and called for an end to police brutality and murder. The Panthers further demanded freedom for African Americans from federal, state, county, and city prisons, and for all African Americans to be tried by a jury of other African Americans. Newton and Seale said “We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace.” The 10-point program reflected influences of revolutionaries such as Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon, the Chinese dictator Mao Zedong,
Poster for the Black Panther Party (Library of Congress)
Black Power 41
And Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara. Newton saw himself as the heir to Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers as a continuation of Malcolm’s Afro-American Unity organization.
The Panthers attempted a coalition with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1968, and it appeared that an alliance had been forged at a rally in February 1968. Due to differences between the two groups and interference on the part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the alliance was never brought to fruition. Members of SNCC believed that the Black Panther organization was too militant and sexist and they did not want to accept the Panther’s 10-point program. The FBI also began calling SNCC leaders and their families, threatening them in the name of the Black Panthers.
From the years 1967 to 1970, Huey P. Newton was imprisoned, leaving Eldridge Cleaver as the main ideological figurehead of the Black Panthers. Cleaver began pushing alliances with white militant organizations, causing ideological disagreements with the imprisoned Newton. The Panthers no longer spoke of self-defense against police, but rather they began advocating the increased use of unprovoked attacks on police. Cleaver took the Black Panthers in a more openly revolutionary direction from the reformist position Newton envisioned.
Between 1968 and 1969, violence between the Panthers and police escalated due to Cleaver’s increased emphasis on the use of guns. On April 6, 1968, police killed Panther leader Bobby Hutton in a shootout. During this period, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI named the Black Panthers as the most dangerous black “extremist” organization in America. The FBI used counterintelligence programs against the Panthers. The goal of these programs was to destroy the Panthers from the inside as well as the outside. The FBI fabricated and distributed fake propaganda, created front groups, and gave misinformation. The violence of the period reached its peak in Chicago on December 4, 1969, when Black Panther members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were murdered during a police raid.
Beginning in 1969, the Black Panthers began a major reorganization at both national and local levels. This reorganization became public by 1971 when the Panthers officially expelled Cleaver in the February 20 issue of the Black Panther, the organization’s newspaper.
Despite many internal and external struggles, the Black Panthers were one of the first organizations to forge new post-civil rights agendas and tactics in the struggle to gain equality for the African-American community.
Further reading: Charles E. Jones, The Black Panther Party Reconsidered (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998);
Jennifer B. Smith, An International History of the Black Panther Party (New York: Garland, 1999).
—Sarah Brenner
World History
