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 black population of Oakland. Armed with guns and rifles (legal in California at the time), members of the early BPP visibly monitored the police. BPP members, having followed the police scanner, would arrive at a crime scene to read the alleged offender his or her rights. Obeying the law, Panthers did not interfere with police and stood at least 10 feet from them, but their armed presence and confrontational manner rattled lawmakers. In 1967, the “Panther Bill,” a piece of antifirearm legislation named because it would prevent the BPP from displaying firearms, was introduced in the California legislature. Undeterred, BPP members traveled to Sacramento that May, carrying their guns in protest.

While the BPP organized social programs and legal intimidation aboveground, it simultaneously created an underground unit that engaged in armed struggle, most notably against police. The underground BPP was decentralized, with small cells working in individual communities. Members held weapons-training classes and close-order drills in public space while carrying guns.

After the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., in April 1968, the BPP quickly grew from a California-based organization to a nationwide group of more than 5,000 in 40 chapters. Propaganda that showed police as pigs was splashed throughout the BPP newspaper, The Black Panther. By September 1968, J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, believed the BPP posed “the greatest threat to internal security in the country.” Indeed, the BPP was a principal focus of Cointelpro, the government counterintelligence agency that targeted New Left groups in the 1960s. By the end of 1969, more than 30 BPP members had been sentenced to death, 40 had been sentenced to life imprisonment, another 55 had been charged with crimes that carried more than 30 years' imprisonment, and more than 150 members had become underground fugitives.

In the early 1970s, the BPP split, partly because of FBI infiltration. The “reformist” group, headed by Newton, envisioned a transformation from black revolutionaries to a legitimate social protest organization. Newton, however, had not forsaken armed struggle and violence. In 1972, he created an internal military group called the Squad, which was used to discipline BPP members internally and to commit crimes in Oakland, including extortion and murder. The other revolutionary faction, based in the New York BPP chapter headed by Eldridge Cleaver, continued to call for armed struggle. The still-militant factions of the New York BPP split off to form the Black Liberation Army, which continued the BPP's underground legacy well into the 1980s.