Black Panther Sociology

The Black Panther was founded in October 1966 by Bobby Scale and Huey Newton. The party was formed in Oakland, California with the intentions of providing African Americans with protection against police brutality. However, the group quickly grew into a Marxist assembly. Their movement was concerned with issues such as exploitation that African Americans underwent following Jim Crow. They called for the release of all the African Americans incarcerated individuals and to be exempted from all sanctions. The organization reached its peak in the 1960s with a membership of over 2000 people. It was also operational in most the major cities across the United States like Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago. It also followed a very militant style

operation. This paper will try to determine if the group was deemed a terrorist organization or national freedom fighters for African-Americans (and all people of color).
Origins
In The Political Repression of the Black Panther Party 1966-1971 The Case of the Oakland Bay Area by Charles E. Jones provides his readers with a more detailed and analytical work on the Black Panthers. The author portrays the Party as a militant race-based group that rejected the legitimacy of the United States federal government. They developed many of their ideologies from Marxism and Leninism which was a black revolutionary type of nationalism (Jones, 417). Newton and Seale wanted to address the needs of African Americans, but not from a “middle class” perspective as did student groups like the Afro-American Association or the Soul Students Advisory Council. Jones asserts that the group positioned itself as global freedom fighters against American imperialism.
Despite police brutality of the 1960s, the group blossomed to include members in all major cities and rural villages. Jones revealed that the Party was formed in response to police brutality that characterized the 1950s and 1960s. The Party believed that the Civil Rights Movements achieved very little hence the need for a violent approach. The Party was concerned with a modern form of “mental slavery (although slavery had been outlawed in the United States due to the 13th Amendment). Blacks still languished in poverty while other races flourished. In the face of intense repression, the Party flourished, becoming the center of a revolutionary movement with offices in 68 American cities and powerful allies around the world.
In the article Foucault and the Black Panthers by Brady Thomas Heiner, his findings mirror that of Jones - the Party was formed because its aim was to demand the return of fundamental power to the people. Both Jones and Heiner argue that those in government (i.e. the FBI) tend to favor certain races over the others (Heiner, 314). As a result, the rate of poverty among African-Americans in urban communities was very high and they were forced to live with inhumane conditions. Their children did not always have access to proper education. They also did not have quality healthcare. This is despite all the efforts they made to fight in the American Civil War, World War I and World War II. Their white-American counterparts had the best houses, their children went to the best schools, and they had adequate access to healthcare. African Americans were paid low wages compared to white-Americans although, at times doing the same level of work. At this point, African Americans needed to fight back in other ways that were not non-violent or peaceful protest. Thus, the birth of a militant style black militia was born in the 1960’s. (Heiner, 331-333)
Robert Blauner in Internal Colonialism and Ghetto Revolt argues that African Americans in the 1950s (living in the United States) suffered from social and economic inequities compared to their white counter parts.

However, he contributes the rise of the Party with the rise of communism. On page 397 he says “the Black ghetto has been a more permanent phenomenon, although some individuals do escape it… Afro-Americans are distinct in the extent to which their segregated communities have remained controlled economically, politically, and administratively from the outside (Blauner 402).” This was a problematic to black youth in the 1960s and they wanted to take action. Bauner notes that the administrators who control the ghettos or urban communities in America are usually white-Americans who do not live in these communities and this contributes to the colonization of the black mind and body. He also argues that the cultural revitalization that was and is the aspirations of the Party continues to “play a key role in anti-colonial movement(s) (Blauner, 403).” This is anti-colonial movement is Black Nationalism or Black Power which calls on African Americans within the urban communities to cease back control of their very own institutions. These institutions include, but are not limited to schools, police departments, social services and businesses. This is exactly what the Party did. In the first draft of the Platform and Program of the Black Panther Party, their demands included

– clothing, land, and liberation of Black people in prison (Foner, 7).
According to Blauner, communism rose due to inequality in the American society. Similarly, the Black Panther Party rose in response to social inequality in the United States (Blauner, 394). African Americans were subjected to poor living conditions, violence, health issues and unemployment. The author emphasizes that such conditions led to uprisings which in turn increased police violence in the ghettos. Police violence allegedly was a way of restoring order in the northern cities. The author asserts that these conditions and the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 that led to the formation of Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Even though the media has continuously portrayed the Black Panther Party as extremists, one must reject that notion completely. Members of the Party were fighting for the rights of marginalized communities especially for Black and brown bodies.
Philip S. Foner provides us with a firsthand account of Huey P. Newton and Bobby Scale and how the Party was formed in Black Panther Speak, originally published in 1970 when their history was still unfolding. Foner was a Marxist and leftist Historian who was even fired from a teaching position by City College for alleged communist activities in the 1930s (New York Times, 1994). The author provides a detailed analysis of how the group was formed, and the underground activities they carried out in response to police brutality in California (Foner, 4). The author’s details on how the two founders armed themselves and announced that they were going to fight the cruelty and brutality of police forces. However, in a few months’ time, they made enemies with the local government very quickly. These students claimed to be enacting Malcolm X's theory of self-defense by arming themselves with guns. Police brutality was so common at this time that they needed to do something. African Americans were beaten and killed randomly by the police on a daily basis. Police departments even sought out racist police from the south to work in the northern (major city) ghettos. For instance, two days after Malcolm X's murder, a 17-year-old boy was gunned down while walking from his house that had caught fire. (Foner, 15)
Features of the Black Panther Party
Joseph revealed that Seale and Newton founded the party on Marxist ideologies.

The founders established a ten point program system that guided the activities of the Party. The Ten-Point Program argued for an end to police brutality, equal employment for all races, and distribution of land resource equally, provision of fair justice, and proper housing for all. The Black Panther Party aligned themselves with other Black Power movements that emphasized on the unification of civil rights, community control, and black pride. Even though the authorities saw the Party as a gang, the members saw themselves as a political party that wanted more African Americans to be elected in political offices. Unfortunately, they never achieved their dreams of having more African Americans elected in political offices. Luckily, the party established a number of social help programs such as free breakfast for school children and free health clinics for African-Americans (Joseph,

751-760).
One study from of the New Haven, Connecticut chapter describes the organization as a community based organization that “offered effective social services to some of the city’s most aggrieved residents (Joseph, 763).” This historical study conducted by Yohuru Williams argues that regardless of the Party’s unpopular image in the media, the residents of New Haven increasingly benefited from effective social services because it relied more on craftiness than guns. (Joseph, 763) The Party was much more than just angry black militant youth and community organizing. At one point in the 1970’s the Party turned to Booby Seal run for mayor of Oakland, California. They wanted to be at the main forefront of American politics and furthers the study of urban communities in a post-war society (post- Vietnam War). This was a bold effort on behalf of the Party, regardless of its failure and dismantling of the Party by local and federal authorities. It is a shame that their legacy and image is violence and “domestic terrorism.”
The contradiction between the Party’s image in the media and a grassroots community organization is very evident in the coverage surrounding them in print, television and radio. The mainstream media’s made sure to distance the Black Panther Party as far away from the Civil Rights Protests and even the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Simply, the name and/or its image made it easy for the mainstream media to expose this group as militant and make many assumptions about them because they wanted to exercise their right to the second amendment. They were good at downplaying the ideologies of the Party whilst the national exposure helped and hurt the movement in many ways. Joseph claims that it was a double edge sword for the Party because of the population notion between violence, urban riots, and black power. This was patronizing and very racist on behalf of the press. One way in which the Party’s members fought back against that racist tactics including an international campaign to free founder Newton from jail after allegedly killing a police officer in 1967(Joseph, 765) . Journalist ate this right up because they were always hungry for a story. The iconography of the Party was also further pushed by the Black Panther newspaper which circulated throughout major cities and its chapters.