How Did The Black Panther Party Influence Between 1966 And 1982?

What was the extent of the Black Panther Party’s influence between 1966 and 1982? Studying the causes and effects of the party’s ideology, policy, momentum, and dissolution.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was formed by college students Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966 as an opposition to baleful police brutality, the organization later developing into an intricate nationwide system that embodied the Black struggle for power and equality (Abu-Jamal). Its activities transformed Black communities by providing accessible quality services and demonstrating the connection between classist and racist oppression, and its ideology inspired many revolutionary reforms whose impact would reflect on a global scale (Bloom, Martin). The activity

Further strengthening its ties within the community, the BPP was open and deliberate about its influence and made many efforts to maintain its honesty. The widely recognized symbol of the party itself had been adopted as a representation of the Black Power movement and the struggle against the racial and class hierarchy, having been originally used to represent the Lowndes County Freedom Organization which responded to the (often violent) discriminative treatment of Black voters in 1965 (Austin, Churchill, Wall). Members of the party gave not only public speeches but also sit-down interviews openly discussing all aspects of the party’s work, goals, internal workings, etc. In 1968 The North American Review published the “relaxed” but still passionately “forceful” questions and answers exchanged between a writer and “a tall very black young man” – a member of the Party, expressing his personal opinions of the party’s program and activity (Swaim). Perhaps most well-known was the periodical /community news service/ launched by the BPP in April 1976. The most widely-read Black publication of its time had a circulation of around 300,000 and was created with the explicit intention to “serve the people” (Juanita, Billy Jennings). The Intercommunal News Service documented the Party’s activities and educated about current events and issues within the community, promoting diversity in its “Sisters’ Section”, poetry segment, and through (sometimes satirical) illustrations (The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, Juanita, Regina Jennings). Artists like Emory Douglas and strong statements like the anonymous 7-line poem “Guns Baby Guns” featured in the very first volumes were as impactful as calls to action as news reporting. Apart from raising