Courtesy of www.afroam.org/history/Panthers/panther-lead.html

 

"Patrolling the pigs."1960s America, the Black panther Party was armed, disciplined, and ready to take on the police. The Black Panther Party was founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in October 1966 in Oakland CA.  The Black Panther Party for Self-defense became the most widely known black militant political organization in the late 960s.  The BPP grew to more than 5,000.  Out of the Ghetto in Oakland the Panthers grew in response to violence. 

Self-Defense

   In Oakland as in other US cities, blacks were routinely stopped, harassed, arrested, and in some cases some blacks were even killed.  The Panthers used the Californian law to arm them selves for monitoring the police activities in black communities to ensure that Civil Rights were respected.     

1967 and Election Ideas

    In 1967 the BPP dropped "for Self-Defense" from its name.  Newton's election ideas held the paramilitary organization together.  His election ideas were drown from Marxist-Leninist and black nationalism writing and from the examples of the revolutionary movements in Asia and Africa.  

Influence and Young Blacks

    What most influenced the Black Panther leaders in the mid-1960s was Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth {1965}.  The appeal to most young blacks was its willingness to challenge the police by asserting the rights of armed self-defense for blacks and not on its unrefined ideology.  Seale and Newton were highly influenced by Malcolm X.      

                           

Political Goals

    The explicit political goals of the Panthers were summarized in the last part of their ten-point platform and program 

"We want land ,bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.  And as our major political objectives, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only blacks colonial subjects will be allowed to participate, for the purpose of determining  the will of the black people as to their national destiny.  When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with one another, and to assume, among the powers of the Earth, the separate but equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitled them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the cause 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 unalienable 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 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 affect their safety and happiness.  Prudence,  indeed, will dictate the governments long established  should not be changed for light and transited causes; and according , all experience halt shown, that mankind  are more disposed to supper, while others are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.  But, then a long train of abuses and usurpations, Pursuing the invariable the same object, evince 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."  Direct quote from the Panthers Oct. 1966 Platform and Program.          

              

The Black Panther     

        They adopted the black panther symbol from an independent political Party established the previous year black residents of Lowndes County Alabama.    

Newton's arrest

    1967 Oakland CA. Newton was indicted on charges of murdering one policeman and wounding another, because of this the development of the BPP was profoundly affected.  

Attacks on the Party
     As the BPP grew so did the attacks against them.  Originally they were raids of the Party offices and homes of members.  It got to be were blacks were being arrested at random.  In fact it got so bad that blacks were being routinely stopped, harassed, beaten, and sometimes even killed.  April 5, 19698, 1 day after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assignation, San Diego police crashed down the door of Ken Denman without a warrant, a peace and freedom party leader and Panther organizer in San Diego.  Aug 5,1968, Police killed 3 Black leaders,  Captain Little Tommy Lewis, Steve Bartholomew, and Robert Lawrence at Adams bvl, and Montclair in Watts.       
    Jan 1,1969 Captain Franco {Frank Diggs} was shoot in an alley in Long Beach, he was the reputed leader of the BPP's underground apparatus.  L.A.P.D. transforms into its Metro Squad in 1969.  This Metro Squad was used for patrolling the Black Panthers named "urban counterinsurgency task force."  4115 S. Central Avenue in LA was the Black Panthers Party's headquarters when hundreds of the L.A.P.D officers for the Newton Street division enclosed the building.  Geronimo Pratt, the leader at the time, turned off al the lights armed and organized the Panthers to defend themselves.  Joan Kelly and Elaine Brown contacted the media, causing the L.A.P.D. to back off.  The L.A.P.D. raided the L.A. BPP offices, 9 were arrested in the raid and 2 other L.A. Panthers were arrested the same day.  The same day.  During this swing 56 were arrested of 42 Panthers.   

Raided 
     June 16, 1969, 2608 Imperial Avenue the Panther’s office were raided by the San Diego Police Department {S.D.P.D.} Sep. 8, 1969 armed police raided the Watts Breakfast Program. On May 15,1969, in an internal memo, Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote “ The Breakfast for Children Program represents the best and the most influential activity going for the BPP and, as such, is potentially the greatest threat to efforts by the authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for.’’

     In the months of September to December of 1969, South California Panthers were arrested day after day with most of the charges dropped within a week. Oct. 10,1969 L.A.P.D had a shootout with Bruce Richards he was wounded and charges with attuned murder, Walter Poke who was killed. Another raid of the BPP offices again on Oct.18 1969. All 7of the Panthers were present in the BPP offices when they were raided by the S.D.P.D. on November 22. December 8, L.A.P.D. sent out the new SWAT teams, a warrant, a battering ram, helicopters, a tank, trucks, dynamite, and 400 police officers to raid 3 L.A. BPP facilities including the Central Ave Headquarters. The raid was similar to the Chicago raids 4 days earlier by the FBI and Chicago Police, but this raid ended after the Panthers exchanged gun fire for 5 hours then surrendering alive.

   Were as in Chicago Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were murdered. Cotton proved the blueprints of the Party’s facilities before the raid.  The warrant Howe ever was made of faults information about the stolen military weapons.  1 day after Davis and other members set up a vidgial outside the BPP southern headquarters, when the L.A.P.D. attacked scattering people in all directions.  
   

Continued 

 Attacks continued.  November 4,1970, a child care center was raided.   The L.A.P.D. gathered the small children and held guns to their heads while other officers beat the adult Panthers.  Police said that they were responding to a compliant of children in the building.  L.A. offices of the  FBI were ready to neutralize the BPP,  in doing so they murdered 2 top leaders Bunchy Carter and Higgins.  

FBI
   Former FBI agent infiltrator and agent Provocateur Earl Anthony alleges that he knows this to be true "When I met with FBI agents Robert O'Conner and Ron Kizenski at our designed time (Aug 6, 1968) they said that they were tired of the ''Panther Shit" and the FBI had worked out a deal with the Kearenga  where they would supply the US with weapons and a master plan to destroy the L.A. Black Panther Party, and they were hoping to get something like that going in New York."  This is said to be true, but Anthony has been proven untrusworthy in the past so this may or may no be true.           

   THE DOWNFALL

  

December 8, L.A.P.D. sent out the new SWAT teams, with a warrant, a battering ram, helicopters, a tank, trucks, dynamite, and 400 police officers to raid threeL.A. BPP facilities including the Central Ave Headquarters. The raid was similar to the Chicago raids four days earlier by the FBI and Chicago Police, but this raid ended after the Panthers exchanged gunfire for five hours then surrendering alive. Where as in Chicago, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were murdered. Cotton provided the blueprints of the Party’s facilities before the raid. 

In April 1969, 21 members of the BPP were indicted on charges of bombing a building, but the charges were meant to end the Black Panthers. Bobby Seale was one of the 21 indicted. After Seale and Newton left the BPP to Elaine Brown she emphasized on community service programs. By the mid-1970s most of the original leaders were no longer in the picture. At the end of the 70s the Party was weakened by attacks, legal problems, and internal divisions. The Black Panther Party was no longer a political force.

Pratt was convicted of first degree murder on July 28, 1972. Pratt remains in Prison after nearly 2 decades in California. The average time served on a first degree murder conviction 4.5 years.

” Newton stressed community service. He participated in electoral politics. These efforts to regain popular support were negative, however, by publishing charges that Newton and other Panthers engaged in extortion and assaults directed again other blacks. By the mid-1970s most Panther veterans including Seale and Cleaver, had deserted or were expelled from the group, and Newton faced with various criminal charges fled from the US to Cuba. Upon his return to the US, Newton remained a controversial figure. Although he completed advocated and remained politically active, he was also involved with drugs. He was shot to death in Oakland in the summer of 1989. It was a drug related incident.” Quote from Stanford.edu