Black Panthers

BLACK PANTHERS PARTY

START

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) was founded in October 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. They were young political activists disappointed in the failure of the civil rights movement to improve the condition of blacks outside the South. They saw brutality against civil rights protesters as part of a long tradition of police violence and state oppression. They immersed themselves in the history of blacks in America. In 1966 they organized young, poor, disenfranchised African Americans into the Black Panther Party. It was then a revolutionary organization with an ideology of Black nationalism, socialism, and armed self-defense, particularly against police brutality. The BPP name was inspired by the use of the black panther as a symbol that had recently been used by the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, an independent Black political party in Alabama.

Bobby Seale at John Sinclair Freedom Rally at Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor, Michigan

"We don’t hate nobody because of color. We hate oppression."

Bobby Seale

ViDEO

INFLUENCE

+ info

The BPP’s practice of armed self-defense was influenced by African American activist Robert Williams, who advocated this practice against anti-black aggression by the Ku Klux Klan in his book Negroes with Guns (1962). Newton and Seale put in place their community starting by asking residents about issues of concern. They collected the responses and created the Ten Point Platform and Program that served as the foundation of the Black Panther Party.

ADVOCATING FOR COMMUNITY REFORMS

Although created as a response to police brutality, the Black Panther Party quickly expanded to advocate for other social reforms. Among the organization initiatives, they campaigned for prison reform, held voter registration drives, organized free food programs which included food giveaways and a school breakfast program in several cities, opened free health clinics in a dozen cities serving thousands who could not afford it, and created Freedom Schools in nine cities including the noteworthy Oakland Community School, led by Ericka Huggins from 1973 to 1981.

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

Women made up about half of the Panther membership and often held leadership roles. Vanetta Molson directed Seattle’s survival programs. Lynn French in Chicago and Audre Dunham in Boston were inspirational local leaders. Elaine Brown became the national chairwoman in 1972. Still, the organization’s members struggled to overcome gender inequality.

Black Panther children in a classroom at the Intercommunal Youth Institute, the Black Panther school, in Oakland in 1971.

A teacher leads his students with the black power salute and slogans at a Black Panther liberation school, Dec. 20, 1969.