The Black Panther Party
What was the Black Panther Party?
The Black Panther Party was an African American revolutionary organization that was formed in 1966 and reached its heyday a few years later. Its initial purpose was to patrol Black neighborhoods to protect residents from police brutality. It later morphed into a Marxist group that called for, among other things, the arming of all African Americans, the release of all Black prisoners, and the payment of compensation to African Americans for centuries of exploitation. Rather than integrating American society, members wanted to change it fundamentally. For them, black power was a global revolution.
It was also notable for its various social programs, such as free breakfasts for children, and medical clinics, providing transportation, food and clothing, .
Who founded The Black Panther Party?
Huey Newton, Black Panther Minister of Defense
A poster of Huey Newton sitting in a rattan throne chair wearing a beret and a black leather jacket while holding a rifle in his right hand and a spear in his left hand.
Along the bottom of the print is the text, “The racist dog policemen must withdraw immediately from our communities, cease their wanton murder and brutality and torture of black people, or face the wrath of the armed people.”
Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia.[11] They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria.[12][13] Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs distributed in 23 cities across the United States and had served over 20,000 kids between 1969 and 1970 alone. education programs (The Panthers would also often educate youth and parents on black history, black pride, and community uplift during the free meals) and community health clinics.[14][15][16][17] The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.[18]
In addition to challenging police brutality, the Black Panther Party launched more than 35 Survival Programs and provided community help, such as education, tuberculosis testing, legal aid, transportation assistance, ambulance service, and the manufacture and distribution of free shoes to poor people.
Black Panther Party's Free Breakfast Program
Black Panther's Free Ambulance Service
Black Panther's provided free transportation to prison
Black Panther's provided free medical clinics 1969-1975
Black Panther's school turned kids from ghetto into scholars
Black Panther's Newspaper
Black Panther's Clothing drive
What was the slogan for The Black Panther Party?
Stokely Carmichael saw the concept of "black power" as a means of solidarity between individuals within the movement. It was a replacement of the "Freedom Now!" slogan of Carmichael's contemporary, the non-violence leader Martin Luther King Jr. With his use of the term, Carmichael felt this movement was not just a movement for racial desegregation, but rather a movement to help end how American racism had weakened black people.
What was the The Black Panther Party Ten-Point Program?
The Black Panther Party Ten-Point Program
Written October 15, 1966
1. We Want Freedom. We Want Power to Determine the Destiny of Our Black Community.
We believe that Black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.
2. We Want Full Employment for Our People.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the White American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
3. We Want An End to the Robbery By the Capitalists of Our Black Community.
We believe that this racist government has robbed us, and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.
4. We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter of Human Beings.
We believe that if the White Landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.
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.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world then he has little chance to relate to anything else.
6. We Want All Black Men To Be Exempt From Military Service.
We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the White racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military by whatever means necessary.
7. We Want An Immediate End to Police Brutality and the Murder of Black People.
We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self-defense.
8. We Want Freedom For All Black Men Held in Federal, State, County and City Prisons and Jails.
We believe that all Black People should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
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.
We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that Black people will receive fair trials. The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical, and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the Black community from which the Black defendant came. We have been, and we are being, tried by all-White juries that have no understanding of the “average reasoning man” of the Black community.
10. We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
What happened to The Black Panther Party?
In 1969, J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), described the party as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country."[19][20][21] The FBI sabotaged the party with an illegal and covert counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, and police harassment, all designed to undermine and criminalize the party. The FBI was involved in the 1969 assassinations of Fred Hampton[22][23] and Mark Clark, who were killed in a raid by the Chicago Police Department.[24][25][26][27] Black Panther Party members were involved in many fatal firefights with police. Huey Newton allegedly killed officer John Frey in 1967, and Eldridge Cleaver (Minister of Information) led an ambush in 1968 of Oakland police officers, in which two officers were wounded and Panther treasurer Bobby Hutton was killed. The party suffered many internal conflicts, resulting in the murders of Alex Rackley and Betty Van Patter.
Government persecution initially contributed to the party's growth among African Americans and the political left, who both valued the party as a powerful force against de facto segregation and the US military draft during the Vietnam War. Party membership peaked in 1970 and gradually declined over the next decade, due to vilification by the mainstream press and infighting largely fomented by COINTELPRO.[28] Support further declined over reports of the party's alleged criminal activities, such as drug dealing and extortion.[29]
The party's history is controversial. Scholars have characterized the Black Panther Party as the most influential black power organization of the late 1960s, and "the strongest link between the domestic Black Liberation Struggle and global opponents of American imperialism".[30] Other scholars have described the party as more criminal than political, characterized by "defiant posturing over substance.
What was COINTELPRO?
COINTELPRO, counterintelligence program conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1956 to 1971 to discredit and neutralize organizations considered subversive to U.S. political stability. It was covert and often used extralegal means to criminalize various forms of political struggle and derail several social movements, such as those for civil rights and Puerto Rican independence.
COINTELPRO operations were initiated against various organizations, including the Communist Party, Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, Black Panther Party (BPP), American Indian Movement, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Ku Klux Klan. Tactics included intense surveillance, organizational infiltration, anonymous mailings, and police harassment. These programs were exposed in 1971 when the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI burglarized an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, stole confidential files, and then released them to the press. More information regarding COINTELPRO was later obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, lawsuits lodged against the FBI by the BPP and the SWP, and statements by agents who came forward to confess their counterintelligence activities.
Read more about The Black Panther Party below
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-panthers
Who was William O'Neal?
William O'Neal (April 9, 1949 – January 15, 1990) was an American FBI informant in Chicago, Illinois, where he infiltrated the local Black Panther Party (BPP). He is known for being the catalyst for the 1969 police/FBI assassination of Fred Hampton, head of the Illinois BPP.
After his role was revealed in 1973, O'Neal was relocated to California under the Federal Witness Protection Program and given a new identity. In 1984, he secretly returned to Chicago. He was interviewed in 1989 about his informancy, for the second part of the documentary series Eyes on the Prize. The night the first episode aired, January 15, 1990, O'Neal committed suicide. His own episode was broadcast on February 19, 1990.
Read more about William O'Neal below https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_O%27Neal_(informant)#:~:text=William%20O'Neal%20(April%209,head%20of%20the%20Illinois%20BPP
