May 1, 1970 – New Haven, Connecticut, USA: Boy gives raised fist salute as he and a friend sit on a statue in front of the New Haven County Courthouse during a demonstration of 15,000 people during the Bobby Seale / Ericka Huggins trial. Bobby Seale, Chairman of the Black Panther Party is on trial along with Ericka Huggins for murder. Both are acquitted.(Stephen Shames/Polaris). ©2016, Stephen Shames from the book Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers (Abrams). Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery.
Fifty years ago, in October 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) in Oakland, California. Inspired by black nationalists like Malcolm X, the BPP developed an economic and political plan that would build the African American community from the inside out.
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While the Civil Rights Movement worked to dismantle Jim Crow laws and push for integration, the BPP developed the Ten Point Platform and Program that called for freedom, full employment, reparations, housing, education, military exemption, end to police brutality and murder, freedom for the incarcerated, Constitutional rights during trial, and full self-determination
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The BPP were not pacifists; they knew the letter of the law and armed themselves against an unjust government, exactly as the Second Amendment ordained. The BPP organized, fast and well, with local chapters established in 68 cities around the country. They established more than 50 community survival programs including Free Breakfast for School Children, Free Medical Clinic, Free Food, Clothing, and Legal Aid programs, sickle cell screening, an award-winning charter school and SAFE—a senior citizen program to help prevent muggings and attacks on the elderly.
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In response to their ability to exact the rights granted in the Constitution—including freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom to protest, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called the BPP, “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” In response, he organized COINTELPRO, an illegal operation of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, and ultimately murder, in order to destabilize, discredit, and criminalize the Party. Hoover’s illegal operation was ultimately successful, and by the early 1970s, the BPP had largely disbanded.
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