The Civil Rights Movement: The Black Panther Party

The Black Panther Party was formed on October of 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The Panthers had a very important part in the Civil Rights Movement. The Black Panthers favored aggressive, violent self defense of minority communities against the U.S government. The Panthers saw that Martin Luther King’s non-violence was not successful. The party fought to engage in a political revolution for socialism by organized and community-based programs. The party’s agenda was to promote political equality across gender and color. They were active in the United States from 1966 until 1982. The Black Panther Party would patrol black neighborhoods to keep track of police activities and protect the residents from police brutality.

The Black Panther’s beliefs were based on Malcolm X. Malcolm spoke for a militant revolution. He said that standing up and fighting for equality for all oppressed minorities should be done with dignity and self-respect. The Black Panthers followed Malcolm’s idea of international working class unity. The way the party enforced this was by uniting with various minorities and white revolutionary groups. The Party had four major goals: equality, housing, employment, and civil rights. For this the party had “The Point Program.” This was a set of guidelines for the Black Panther Party ideas and ways of operation. Every Black Panther member had to follow these set of rules. The party believed that all men are created equal and no one should take their rights, this is what the ten point program was based on.
On April 1967, the party marched on the California State Capitol fully armed.

Leading this march was Bobby Seale. The Panthers were protesting because the state was trying to outlaw carrying weapons in public. While Bobby Seale was reading a statement of protest, the police immediately arrested Bobby Seale along with thirty other Panthers. This act sparked the Panthers and later they started to spread outside of the state of California. On October 1967, the police arrested Huey Newton for killing an Oakland cop. As a result, Eldridge Cleaver started a movement called “Free Huey.” The Panthers really devoted themselves to this movement. While this was happening, the Black Panther Party was trying to be involved in political spectrum. The party formed alliances with various revolutionaries. Stokely Carmichael, the former chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, was recruited and he later became the party’s prime minister in February 1968. Stokely Carmichael was not in favor of letting whites into the black liberation movement. Carmichael believed that whites did not understand what the Panthers were doing and did not have the same effect in the movement. Stokely Carmichael said, "Whites who come into the black community with ideas of change seem to want to absolve the power structure of its responsibility for what it is doing, and say that change can only come through black unity, which is the worst kind of paternalism..... If we are to proceed

toward true liberation, we must cut ourselves off from white people..... [otherwise] we will find ourselves entwined in the tentacles of the white power complex that controls this country.” Stokely Carmichael
said that if they are doing a black movement is does not seem ideal to be mixing with others, especially if it's the whites who are they are going against.
In 1968, the Black Panther Party was selling the Mao’s Red Book, a book of selected statements from speeches and writings by Mao Zedong, the former Chairman of the Communist Party of China, to the students in universities. The money earned from selling the books was going to be used to buy shotguns. The Black Panthers also required the members to read the book. While this was happening, FBI agent named J. Edgar Hoover started a program called COINTELPRO (counterintelligence program). The program’s goal was to break the unity of the revolutionary groups of those who were doing Panther activities and had been influenced by the party. To destroy the Black Panther Party, the FBI initiated a program of surgical assassination. The FBI started to kill members who they knew could undermine the power and authority of an established system or institution. Along with many killings, there were also arrests. There was also programs of psychological warfare. This intended to split the party not just politically but also morally. The party was being spied on and the FBI was enticing the Panthers to commit illegal acts. The FBI would also falsely implicate Panthers in partaking in an illegal act. In addition, the FBI used chemical warfare, meaning they were using chemicals to keep fear and terror to the party.
Bobby Hutton was shot dead on April 6, 1968 in West Oakland by a police officer in a ninety minute gun battle. Because his house was set on fire, Hutton was forced to run outside, where there were bullets flying everywhere. He was unarmed and shot ten times. He was only 17 years old.
The first ever Panther Free Breakfast for School Children program is started at St. Augustine’s Church in Oakland in January of 1969. By the end of the year the Panthers had set up kitchens in cities across the country to feed over 10,000 children every morning before the kids set off to school. The Black Panther Party understood that the children needed nourishing breakfast every morning so that they could be on task and be active to learn the most as possible.
A few months after the Free Breakfast program, FBI agent J. Edgar Hoover says publicly that The Black Panther Party is “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” In Chicago Fred Hampton, leader of the local Panther Party, leads five different breakfast programs in the west side. Some other positive actions of Hampton’s include creating a free medical center, starting a program of health services which tested for sickle cell anemia, and encouraging blood drives for the county hospital. The Black Panther party in Chicago begins to reach to local gangs in an attempt to encourage them to improve their behavior. The Party tries to keep gangs away from crime. The Party reaches some success and Hampton party starts to grow each day. Fred Hampton was shot while he sleeping on December 4, at 4:00. He was shot twice in the head and once in the shoulder.
Three others left unharmed that were with him that morning. The police found him because of an FBI informant. Mark Clark, who was sleeping in the living room chair, was also murdered while sleeping. His wife was shot but she survived. She was pregnant and eight months into her pregnancy. Four Panthers were wounded. The federal grand jury said there were ninety bullets fired inside that apartment. The jury said that one came from the Panther Mark, who had slept with the shotgun in his hand. All the surviving Panther members were arrested, and were charged for murder. The police officers did not receive any kind of punishment.
In 1969 the alliance between the Panthers and SNCC starts breaking apart.

One of the reasons for this was that the SNCC was allowing whites in the effort of the minority liberation. The argument led to a gunfight at UCLA, causing the death of two Panthers. Huey Newton is then convicted in September. The government courthouse sentenced Newton to two to fifteen years in prison for voluntary manslaughter.
In 1969 Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, is formally accused of a serious crime in Chicago for protesting in the Democratic National Convention. The court does not allow Bobby Seale to choose a lawyer. Seale repeatedly says that he is being denied his constitutional right to counsel. He was simply ignored. He was sentenced to four years in prison. While in jail, Seale was charged again for killing a cop before. The trial ended in 1971 with a hung jury, meaning he was not guilty. There was many more charges made against the Black Panther Party.
On August 22, 1989 Newton is shot over a drug dispute in the streets of Oakland. Bobby Seale resigns from the party. Elaine Brown takes over the Party’s community

programs.
In the beginning of the 1980s, many attacks on the party and divisions cause the party to fall apart. There was also no more leadership. The Panthers remaining were found and killed in the following years, or either put in prison, others were forced to leave the United States. Before Bobby Seale death he said “ As it was [the U.S. government] chopped off the head [of the Black liberation movement] and left the body there armed. That's why all these young bloods are out there now, they've got the rhetoric but are without the political direction... and they've got the guns."