sion of other parties on the ballot alongside the Democrats and Republicans. As a consequence, they began to look for a good name and easily recognized symbol for their new party. They were also concerned to find something that would be obvious, because many blacks were still illiterate or unable to make out very much. The actual origin of the name developed from a meeting in which someone suggested a cat for a symbol and somebody else suggested a black cat. It gradually became a symbol of the black panther, and the Black Panther party was born. Jackson noted that it was not a racist attempt, but a response to the fact that blacks in the south had substandard schools and were illiterate, but could clearly recognize a black cat and distinguish it from the symbols for the Democratic or Republican parties (Powledge, 1991).
There is, however, another story about how the Black Panther Party was founded. In this version, the Black Panther Party was founded in Oakland, California, although inspired by the efforts of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama. This new Black Panther Party was termed the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, and it was organized by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale (Hampton and Fayer, 1990).
Essentially this party developed in response to perceptions that the police were antagonistic to the city's black population and were involved in considerable brutality toward that popula-tion. The party was grounded in the belief that the police, who were predominantly white, served as agents of the white community in containing and restraining the black community from obtaining appropriate economic and political power (Seale, 1970).
The Ten Point program involved many different issues besides the problem of the police, however. The points of the program included:
1. Self determination in black communities;
3. Financial restitution for slavery and black suffering;
5. Education that reflected ...