Black Panther Party

The Black Panther Party was a black human rights and self-defense organization active in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. The passage of 1960s civil rights legislation following the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. the Topeka Board of Education brought minimal economic and social relief to the masses of black people living in cities throughout North America. Chronic poverty and reduced public services characterized these urban centers, where city residents were subject to poor living conditions, joblessness, chronic health problems, violence, and limited means to change their circumstances. Such conditions contributed to the urban uprisings of the 1960s and to the increased use of police violence as a measure to impose order on cities throughout North America.

It was in this context, and in the wake of the assassination of Malcolm X, that Merritt Junior College students Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense on October 15, 1966, in West Oakland, California. Shortening its name to the Black Panther Party (BPP), the organization immediately sought to set itself apart from the black cultural nationalist organizations, such as the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Nation of Islam, to which it is commonly compared. Although the groups do share certain philosophical positions and tactical features, the BPP and cultural nationalists differ on a number of basic points. For instance, whereas black cultural nationalists generally regard all white people as oppressors, the BPP distinguishes between racist and nonracist whites and ally themselves with progressive members of the latter group. Also, whereas cultural nationalists generally view all black people as oppressed, the BPP believes that black capitalists and elites can and typically do exploit and oppress others, particularly the black working class. Perhaps most importantly, whereas cultural nationalists place considerable emphasis on symbolic systems, such as language and imagery, as the means to liberate black people, the BPP believes that such systems, though important, are ineffective in bringing about liberation. In its view, symbols are woefully inadequate to ameliorate the unjust material conditions, such as joblessness, created by capitalism.

From the outset, the BPP outlined a Ten Point Program, not unlike those of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and Nation of Islam, to initiate national black community survival projects and to forge alliances with progressive white radicals and [Page 246]organizations of people of color. A number of positions outlined in the Ten Point Program address a principle BPP stance: Economic exploitation is at the root of all oppression in the United States and abroad, and the abolition of capitalism is a precondition of social justice. This socialist economic outlook, informed by a Marxist political philosophy, resonated with other social movements in the United States and in other parts of the world. Therefore, even as the BPP found allies both within and beyond the borders of North America, the organization also found itself squarely within the crosshairs of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO. In fact, in 1968 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover considered the BPP the greatest threat to national internal security.

...