History of the Black Panther Party

The intention in the following pages is to explore the history of the Black Panther Party from its origins during the 1960s. There are those who identify the Black Panther Party with the presentday militia movement, but their origins are quite different, even though their methods and intentions might seem to be similar.

Although the Black Panther Party is probably most associated in memory with the large urban cities of the north, it had its birth in the rural south. That birth was an outgrowth of white resistance in the south to any inclusion of black Americans in the structures of power.

Essentially, the Black Panther Party had its genesis in the work of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's efforts to enable black citizens to participate in the political process. The term "Black Power," had already been generated in regard to the development of black economic and political influence on the larger society. This had created a great deal of fearful reaction on the part of white Americans in both North and South.

The Black Panther Party was to become even a greater source of fear for white Americans. It began, however, because white Americans in the South refused to allow any black candidates to participate in the political process. The SNCC organizers in Lowndes County had attempted to ensure black inclusion in both the voting and candidating process, but had been denied opportunities by the local

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tempt by large segments of the population, particularly those marginalized, to realize the promises of American democracy, they were not perceived as particularly American, but as un-American and ungrateful (Burns, 1990). In some respects, the history of the Black Panther Party is a history of all those depredations by the police, and abuse of power, that the Party had been formed to defend people against. However, members of the Black Panther Party were not totally innocent. Many of them had jail records for major crimes against other people. Some of them, such as Eldridge Cleaver, considered those crimes as justified as part of the revolutionary uprising of the black population. Cleaver actually described his attacks on white women as a revolutionary act directed particularly against white men (Cleaver, 1968). Other members of the Black Panther Party, both in Oakland and elsewhere, had been gang members and still acted like gang members on many occasions. In Chicago, in particular, Black Panther Party members continued to aggrandize themselves in their communities by selling protection or by simply ripping off members of the community. Yet the Black Panther Party was clearly designed to avoid this kind of problem. The Par
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Approximate Word count = 2316
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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