The Black Panthers

The Black Panthers was a political organization founded in Oakland, California in 1966 by Bobby G. Seale and Huey P. Newton. The purpose of their organization sought to provide leadership for discontented urban blacks. They also urged blacks to arm themselves, and their political philosophy was basically radical reform. In their "Ten Point Program," the Black Panthers demanded the following reforms from the American state:

  1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black community.
  2. We want full employment for our people.
  3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black community.
  4. We want decent housing, fit shelter for human beings.
  5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.
  6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.
  7. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people.
  8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county, and city prisons and jails.
  9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.
  10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.

The Black Panthers first attracted attention in 1967 when they invaded the California state legislature to protest a gun-control bill. In the laters 1960s, U.S. authorities campaigned against the Panthers because they were suspected of terrorist acts and ties to alien powers. In 1979, two members were killed in Chicago (the reasons are still not known) and there were many shoot-outs and deaths concerning the party. The two founders, Seale and Newton, as well as Eldridge Cleaver were charged with murder. Cleaver was the chief protagonist for the Black Panthers party.

In 1972, Newton and Seale both decided on peace and the Black Panthers split up. Cleaver did not have the same goals of peace, however, and maintained his faction in exile until 1975. Seale ran for mayor of Oakland in 1973 and lost, and in 1980, Newton obtained a doctoral degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

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