October 15th 1966 The Black Panther Party (BPP) is born The head of the FBI, Edgar J Hoover, called the BPP «the greatest threat to the internal security of the country». The Black Panthers were formed in California in 1966 and played a short but important part in the civil rights movement. The Black Panthers believed that the non-violent campaign of Martin Luther King had failed and any promised changes to their lifestyle via the traditional civil rights movement, would take too long to be implemented or simply not introduced. The language of the Black Panthers was violent as was their public stance. The two founders of the BPP were Huey Percy Newton and Bobby Seale. They preached for a revolutionary war but though they considered themselves an African-American party, they were willing to speak out for all those who were oppressed from whatever minority group. They were willing to use violence to get what they wanted. The BPP had 4 desires : equality in education, housing, employment and civil rights. The call for a revolutionary war against authority at the time of the Vietnam War, alerted the FBI to the Black Panthers activities. Whatever happened, the FBI was successful in destroying the Black Panthers movement. To view the BPP as a purely revolutionary and violent movement is wrong. In areas of support the BPP created a Free Food Program to feed those who could not afford to do so for themselves; Free Medical Research Health Clinics to provide basic health care for those who could not afford it and an Intercommunal Youth Band to give community pride to the movement. In a book of his essays called To Die for the People, Huey Newton wrote that these were exactly what the African-American community wanted and that the BPP was providing its own people with something the government was not. Such community projects have survived in other guises, but after the demise of the BPP their lost their drive for a number of years. By 1972 most Panther activity centered on the national headquarters and a school in Oakland, where the party continued to influence local politics. Party contractions continued throughout the 1970s. By 1980 the Black Panther Party comprised just 27 members. The history of the BPP is controversial. Scholars have characterized the Black Panther Party as the most influential black movement organization of the late 1960s, and the strongest link between the domestic Black Liberation Struggle and global opponents of American imperialism. youtube/watch?v=VZwz_3Wyizs
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 15:35:32 +0000
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