Black Panther Party Essay Sample

During the 60s, numerous black leaders, including Malcolm X, were assassinated. A wave of riots erupted, sparking the formation of different political organizations and movements. These organizations were advocates of black power and socialist ideologies. Organizations like the Black Panther Party were formed. The Black Panther Party believed in self-defense, particularly against the police and police brutality against black Americans during that time. Although the Black Panthers were regarded as a radical organization, they are also rarely acknowledged for their contributions to the black community. During the Civil Rights movement, the Black Panthers were a major party striving for equality, fighting alongside other people for their civil rights, and wanting to be considered part of a society with equal rights as any white person.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was organized in Oakland, California, in the fall of 1966 by two black militants: Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. Seale was chairman and Newton was Minister of Defense (Foner 7). The Panthers wanted better housing, full access to a first-rate education, high-quality jobs, and increased opportunities for Black people (Martin 81). The ideology of the Black Panther Party coincided with the way of Marxism-Leninism (Foner 129). These ideologies were one of the main reasons why state and federal officials resisted the idea of a “black nationalist” movement.

Huey Percy Newton was born on February 17, 1942, in Monroe, Louisiana, the seventh son of a sharecropper who once narrowly escaped being lynched. He attended Merritt College in Oakland and the San Francisco School of Law. In 1966, he met Bobby Seale and they co-founded the Black Panther Party For Self Defense (Foner 5). Newton had several run-ins with authorities throughout the years. In one of the instances, Newton got pulled over by a cop with no probable cause. The cop began searching him. He described this search as a violation, and shots were fired from all directions. Officer Frey was dead and Newton was the prime suspect (Martin 105). In 1967 Newton was charged with murder (Jenkins 3).  This outraged many people in the Black Panther Party that they organized the Free Huey movement. The Panthers began to use Newton's case to mobilize support and bring more awareness to their cause. They wanted to emphasize that, in their eyes, he was a political prisoner. Newton was standing up to a long history of police brutality and oppression against Black people (Martin 107). The Black Panther Party made Newton a revolutionary icon during 3 years of rallies & protests by tens of thousands of people across North America to "Free Huey" (Martin 114). However, on September 8, 1968, Newton, the Black Panther Party's Minister of Defense, was sentenced to two to fifteen years in prison. Even though he was acquitted of wounding Officer Herbert Heanes, he was convicted of manslaughter in the death of Officer John Frey (Martin 150).

Bobby Seale, a famous civil rights leader and co-founder of the Black Panther Party, was born on October 22, 1936. Seale and the Black Panthers advocated a militant approach to civil rights. The organization in general and Seale in particular strongly opposed the nonviolent and integrationist stances of Martin Luther King and other moderate civil rights leaders (Weidman 1). Seale was among the leaders of the Black Panthers who got into conflict with federal and state officials. During the Chicago 8 trials, he repeatedly shouted accusations at the judge and prosecution and disrupted the court proceedings, this led to him being tied and gagged in court and then tried for contempt of court (Martin 208). As a result, Seale was sentenced to four years in prison.

Due to the tensions between the Black Panther Party and government state officials, numerous riots erupted. The Chicago Eight were the first people tried under the first federal anti-riot law. This incited many riots across Chicago. The mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, refused to grant permits, so the protesters could demonstrate legally. He requested that all the 12,000 police officers in Chicago be on twelve-hour shifts. He called in over 5,000 National Guardsmen and 6,000 U.S. army troops (Martin 221). The LAPD's SWAT squad made its first big deployment on December 9, 1969, in a four-hour standoff with members of the Black Panthers (Fleischer 1). The Panthers that survived these riots were charged with attempted murder, unlawful use of weapons, and aggravated battery, The Cook County State Attorney, Edward V. Hanrahan, maintained that the Panthers fired first and that the officers were defending themselves (Martin 233). During the 1967 Newark Riots, law enforcement officers shot looters and fired randomly into crowds. They targeted businesses labeled "Black Owned." The police ended up injuring uninvolved bystanders and people in their homes. Twenty-three people were killed. All were black except two. These included six women, two children, and a seventy-three-year-old man (Martin 90-91).

The Mulford Act was a 1967 California law that made it illegal to carry loaded firearms in public without a permit. Signed into law by California Governor Ronald Reagan at the time, the goal of this bill was to disarm members of the Black Panther Party who were conducting armed patrols of Oakland neighborhoods (Morgan 3). Bobby Seale was one of them and gave a speech on how the bill significantly impacted the Black community and the Black Panther organization as a whole. During his speech, Seale commented on the Mulford Act saying, “The pending Mulford Act brings the hour of doom one step nearer. A people who have suffered so much for so long at the hands of a racist society must draw the line somewhere. We believe that the black communities of America must rise up as one man to halt the progression of a trend that leads inevitably to their destruction.” (qtd. In Martin 7). Since the Black Panthers believed in self-defense, they believed that this conduct would cause the police to get away with their tyranny and unfair deeds, and they would be unable to defend themselves.

The Black Panther Party prompted suspicions and urged federal intervention. The FBI launched COINTELPRO, a series of illegal projects carried out to surveil, infiltrate, disrupt and discredit domestic American political organizations, including the Black Panther Party. The FBI forwarded forged letters to cause confusion and suspicion and listened to phone calls to gather information. They also sent agents to pose as Panther members (Foner 208). J. Edgar Hoover, the former director of the FBI stated that COINTELPRO's job was to "prevent the rise of a 'messiah' who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement.”(qtd. in Martin 204). Fred Hampton was a possible suspect for what Hoover considered the threat of an emerging “messiah.” William O’Neil, an FBI informant, gave the FBI a detailed map of Fred's apartment, so they would know where Fred would be sleeping. The Chicago police raided Fred Hampton’s apartment. Fred was killed, shot in the head twice while he slept (Martin 235). The measures employed by the FBI were so extreme that, years later when they were revealed, the director of the agency publicly apologized for “wrongful uses of power.” (Robertson 2).

After dropping the "for self-defense" portion of its name, the BPP became even more politically active. It was a key factor in registering more than 90,000 black Democrats so they could vote in the 1977 Oakland mayoral election (Foner 57). The BPP established chapters throughout the United States, in such cities as New York; Chicago; Denver; and Hartford, Connecticut. These chapters advocated violence as a legitimate alternative to nonviolent measures (Robertson 2). From the mid-1970s through the ’80s, the activities of the Black Panther Party all but ceased. Although COINTELPRO contributed to its demise, the dissolution of the party’s leadership also contributed to the downfall of the organization (Robertson 2).

The Panthers fed 20,000 children around the country during the 1968-69 school year. The next school year-1969/70-they hoped to feed 100,000. Students were hungry, especially in impoverished Black communities. This was a real and immediate issue that the Panthers could address (Martin 173). The party began to volunteer more in their communities. They initiated survival programs, which provided free health clinics, free sickle-cell-anemia screening, a free shoe program, escorts for the elderly, and free ambulance service (Robertson 2).  For many young black people, school highlighted the ways they would never fit into an ideal of whiteness and, as a result, could not succeed (Martin 179). The Oakland Community Learning Center, a school for underprivileged black children, was considered one of its most successful projects (Robertson 1). On October 26, 1968, the Black Panther Party would organize a statewide conference for Black student unions as well (Martin 162).

The Black Panther Party had numerous influential female leaders. In 1974, Elaine Brown was named chair of the BPP, the highest position ever held by a woman. Other women assumed leadership positions in the party and were instrumental in changing the party's direction and image (Robertson 2). Kathleen Neal Cleaver is another influential Black Panther Party member. Neal was born in Memphis, Texas on May 13, 1945. Neal then attended Oberlin College, and later Barnard College. She left Barnard in 1966 to relocate to New York and work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She then married Eldridge Cleaver, Minister of Information for the Black Panther Party (Nielson 2). Neal moved to San Francisco, California to become the Communications Secretary for the Panthers (Nielson 3).