Black Panther Party

A group of revolutionary black nationalists working within the black power movement, the Black Panther Party (BPP) was at the vanguard of armed struggle that constituted the “new left terrorism” of the late 1960s.

Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in October 1966. The group, based in Oakland, California, put forth a 10-point program that demanded for black and oppressed communities full employment, adequate housing, free health care, an end to police brutality and capitalist exploitation, freedom for all prisoners, reparations, and an immediate end to all wars of aggression. Of all the black nationalist and anti-imperialist movements that began in the turbulent 1960s, the BPP was perhaps the most renowned, easily recognized by its quasi-military black berets, leather jackets, and guns.

By the mid-1960s, the predominantly white Oakland police department had exhibited an ever-increasing brutality against the predominantly ...