By Logan Langlois
NASHVILLE, TN — This week marks the 57th anniversary of the Black Panther Party (BPP) a group that worked to ensure the equal rights of Black men and women while actively fighting against police brutality. Founded on October 15, 1966, in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the group originally named the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was heavily inspired by the speeches of the late Malcolm X and the grotesque living conditions for Black Americans in their home city. The pair were also inspired by the Nation of Islam, as well as literature like the anti-colonialist book The Wretched of the Earth (Les Damnes de la Terre, 1961) by the Martinique psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. Though many civil rights leaders preached the path of nonviolent protest, Newton and Seale advocated Black individuals arm themselves in protection against police brutality, the party’s main founding issue.
If nothing else, Newton and Seale practiced what they preached, as they would participate in patrolling the streets of their city armed to intervene against police brutality. The practice of armed self-defense itself was influenced by African American activist Robert Williams, who advocated this practice against racist aggression by the Ku Klux Klan in his book Negros with Guns (1962). While continuing to gain momentum, Black Panthers would fund their operation by selling copies of former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book to other students on campus. Street patrols would prove to inspire other BPP chapters across America, all of which were driven to fight against institutional police brutality like their founders.
Together, Newton and Seale would author 10 guiding principles to help direct the movement, published in their own newspaper under the title “What We Want Now!” These principles include goals for the party including demands such as freedom, employment, and housing. The principles also heavily focused on issues Black Americans faced while dealing with the American justice system, stating that Black citizens had the constitutional right to be judged by a Black jury.
The Black Panther Party also did other work to improve the lives of their Black communities, such as public charity work organized under their “Survival Program.” This chapter within the Black Panthers engaged in great public action, such as organizing a free breakfast program for Black children before they went to school so they could focus on learning. This effort ended up growing along with the size and influence of the Black Panthers, growing into a program that gave free food to impoverished elders in their communities, as well as low-income individuals.
In response to the sub-par care given to many within the Black community and other non-white patients by hospitals at the time, the BPP established People’s Free Medical Clinics (PEMC) in 1968 in Kansas City, Chicago, and Seattle. Utilizing these clinics, the Black Panthers began screening people for sickle-cell anemia, educating the public, and spreading awareness regarding the disease. Grassroots education about sickle cell and the American government’s neglect in treating it caused the U.S. Congress to pass the National Sickle Cell Anemia Act of 1972.
As the clinics grew across the nation, they were often harassed by city health inspectors, police raids, and difficulty maintaining consistent medical volunteers. The BPP were consistently subject to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s COINTELPRO program which deployed a combination of sabotage and misinformation, largely because of their armed self-defense against police, as well as its revolutionary Communist elements. The same campaign would result in the death of rising star Frank Hampton during a violent police raid. These external attacks, as well as legal problems and internal problems rapidly declined their political force until dissolving.
