Black Panther Party Essay -- American History

Huey Newton and Bobby Seale were two African-American men growing up in the ghetto of California where they saw and experienced racism and police brutality. There voices were not heard when it came to their communities. It took three young children to die by car crashes, and a peaceful candlelight vigil that turned into a fight between a neighborhood and the police (in which the police covered up their badges so that no one could report them to the police department) for them to want to make a change to free themselves from control and oppression. It was because of this that 25 year old Huey Newton and 30 year old Bobby Seale founded The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in October 1966, in Oakland, California. The party was inspired by revolutionaries such as Mao Tse-tung and Malcolm X. Malcolm had represented a militant revolutionary, with the dignity and self-respect to stand up and fight to win equality for all oppressed minorities. Influenced by the teachings of Mao's Red Book the organization became more of a Marxist-Communist group that favored violent revolution, if necessary, to bring about changes in society. Equipped with rifles and the knowledge from many law books the Black Panther Party fed the hungry, protected the weak from racist police, and presented a Ten Point Platform and Program of Black political and social activism. The platform is stated as follows: 1.) We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community. 2.) We want full employment of our people. 3.) We want an end to the robbery by the CAPITALIST of our Black community. 4.) We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings. 5.) We want education for our people that exposes the tr ue nature of this decadent Ameri... ...hoice c.) Huey Newton's arrest unites the two feuding races of revolutionaries V.) Panthers and the police a.) hostility b.) quote from Panther Paper causes alarm within the government c.) government campaign against the Panthers VI.) The end a.) More FBI infiltration b.) Illegal and unethical methods of infiltration c.) Death of Panthers d.) Struggle to keep party afloat e.) End of party Bibliography Andrews, Lori Black Power, White Blood. New York: Pantheon Books. 1996. Carmichael, Stokely, Hamilton Charles V. Black Power the Politics of Liberation in America. New York: Random House. 1967 Freed, Donald. Agony in New Haven. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1973 Meier, August, Rudwick, Elliott. Black Protest In the Sixties. Chicago: Quadrangle Books. 1970 Shakur, Assata, Assata An Autobiography. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books. 1987