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Roots of the Black Panther Party
Before anyone saw black berets and leather jackets in Oakland, California, a different kind of energy was already building inside the Civil Rights Movement. Younger activists — people who had risked their lives as Freedom Riders in Mississippi and sat for hours in segregated jails in Alabama — were growing frustrated. They had marched, they had been beaten, and they had waited. But the problems they were fighting didn’t entirely disappear. Some were getting worse.
In the South, activists survived church bombings, beatings, the murder of Emmet Till, and the assassinations of Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr. In Northern and Western cities, inequality took different forms but hit just as hard: redlining, job discrimination, aggressive policing, overcrowded schools, and neighborhoods that were underfunded and ignored.
Stokely Carmichael, a SNCC organizer who had been arrested more times than he could count, finally put the frustration into words. During the 1966 Meredith March Against Fear, he stepped up to a microphone and shouted:
“We want Black Power!”
The crowd exploded. For many young activists, it felt like someone had finally spoken the truth the nation was dancing around. Younger civil rights workers weren’t abandoning the movement — they were demanding that it evolve.
Black Power was about control — control over your future, your neighborhood, and your identity. It kicked off a wave of Afrocentric pride: natural hair, African-inspired clothing, Black student unions, and demands for classes that treated African American history like it mattered. Students were done being written out of their own story.
Inside civil rights organizations like SNCC and CORE, this new direction created tension. Older leaders still believed deeply in nonviolence. Younger members, shaped by years of beatings and arrests, believed nonviolence didn’t protect people in cities where the biggest threats weren’t restaurant owners or bus drivers — they were police officers, landlords, and angry neighbors.
And in Oakland, two young organizers — Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale — watched this shift unfold and recognized that the moment had arrived for something new.
Black Panther.
Credit: The History Channel
Stockley Carmichael speaks at Greenwood, Mississippi. 1966
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A Movement Reaches Its Breaking Point
The city of Oakland, California was a perfect example of the inequality that was fueling this frustration. The wartime shipyards and factories that once drew thousands of Black families from the South had disappeared. Entire Black neighborhoods were bulldozed to make room for freeways. Black unemployment hovered around 7%, nearly double the rate of white people. And though Black residents made up about 10% of Oakland’s population, they accounted for more than 25% of arrests. Being stopped, questioned, or searched without cause was a normal part of daily life.
Across the country, frustration finally boiled over. Cities like Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles erupted into riots — sparked by police violence but fueled by years of job loss, overcrowded housing, and a government that wasn’t listening. People were reacting to the conditions they had been living with for years.
By the late 1960s, after King’s assassination, the sense of urgency exploded. Many believed that “wait your turn” had already stretched past a breaking point.
And in Oakland, two young organizers were paying very close attention.
Partial clip from a 1966 CBS New Documentary on Stockley Carmichael and the fight for integration in the Chicago suburb of Cicero.
Warning: This video contains outdated racial terms such as "Negro" and "Colored". It also contains interviews where people reference violence. No graphic content is shown.
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The Panthers Step into the Spotlight
In October 1966, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. They adopted the Black Panther as its symbol because the animal doesn’t attack first — but it refuses to run when threatened. That idea shaped everything they did.
Newton studied California’s gun laws and discovered something most people didn’t realize, that citizens could legally carry loaded firearms in public as long as they didn’t point them at anyone. So, the Panthers used that law — word for word.
When police pulled over a Black driver, Panthers showed up with their rifles pointed toward the sky and the California penal code under their arms. They stood exactly where the law said they could and stayed quiet. Their presence didn’t stop the stop — it just made sure the officer knew someone was watching. As the media broadcast these images of the Black Panthers, showing up armed during police stops across the country, it felt empowering to some and threatening to others.
The Panthers also embraced the cultural wave sweeping through the Black Power movement. Natural hair, leather jackets, berets, sunglasses, it all signaled confidence. After generations of being told to step back, the Panthers stepped forward. They moved like people who weren’t asking for permission anymore.
Stokely Carmichael’s call for “Black Power” — something he repeated in speeches and interviews — came out of growing frustration that change was moving slowly and white resistance was still strong. He talked about gaining freedom “by any means necessary,” not as a call for random violence but as a warning that the fight for civil rights wasn’t gentle and never had been. And that message wasn’t only for the Deep South. In places like Cicero, Illinois, when talk began about Black families moving into white neighborhoods, crowds claimed it would bring crime, sink property values, or spark violence against anyone who tried. That wall of fear and hostility was exactly what the civil rights movement had to break down. The media treated Carmichael’s words like a threat, and that panic spread to how they covered the Panthers too.
In 1967, the Panthers showed up at the California State Capitol with rifles in hand to protest a bill aimed at shutting down their patrols. They made sure they followed the law to the letter — and they were there to make their presence known. But the images spread nationwide. Overnight, they went from a local organization to a national force.
Huey Newton (right), founder of the Black Panther Party, sits with Bobby Seale at party headquarters in San Francisco. | CREDIT: TED STRESHINSKY / CORBIS / GETTY IMAGES
Fists in the air, attendees smile at the Revolutionary People's Party Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia, September 1970. Photo: David Fenton via Getty Images.
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Panther Community Work
The Panthers saw the reality in their neighborhoods: people couldn’t fight injustice if they were worrying about food, bills, or basic health care. So, they launched Survival Programs, giving people what they needed right now while still pushing to fix the systems that kept them struggling.
That work started before sunrise. Panthers woke up at 4:00 a.m., gathered donated groceries, borrowed kitchens, and started cooking for their Free Breakfast for Children Program. Some mornings were chaotic — burned pan here, broken stove there — but the kids didn’t care. They came in sleepy, hungry, and left ready to learn. Teachers even reported the difference: kids who ate breakfast asked more questions, stayed awake in class, and stopped falling behind. Within a few years, the Panthers were feeding tens of thousands of children a week across dozens of cities. Their success was so undeniable that states — and eventually the federal government — began adopting school breakfast programs of their own.
Health care came next. Many Black families avoided hospitals because they were expensive, far away, or simply unwelcoming. The Panthers opened free community clinics staffed by volunteer doctors, nurses, and medical students. These clinics offered first aid, vaccinations, physical exams, and crucial sickle-cell anemia testing — at a time when the disease affected Black Americans disproportionately and mainstream medicine barely acknowledged it. The Panthers pushed Congress so hard on sickle-cell awareness that federal funding eventually followed.
But they didn’t stop there. They created Senior Escort Programs so older residents could walk safely to the store or the bus stop. They built Free Food Pantries and distributed bags of groceries to families who ran out of money before payday. They held clothing drives, helped families challenge unfair evictions, and provided free legal aid for parents fighting housing discrimination, police cases, or welfare issues that could derail a household overnight. Panthers ran these programs after school, after work, after patrols, often on almost no sleep.
One of their most ambitious projects was the Intercommunal Youth Institute, later known as the Oakland Community School. It blended traditional academics with small class sizes, nutritious meals, caring teachers, and lessons in African and African American history. Parents described it as a school where students felt “safe, respected, and actually seen.” The state of California eventually recognized it as a model school.
All of this — the meals, the clinics, the tutoring, the groceries, the legal help — came from donations, volunteer hours, and an army of exhausted Panthers committed to proving that communities could take care of themselves when the government refused to.
Panthers serving children free breakfast
Photo by Ducho Dennis
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The FBI Infiltrates the Panthers
In 1969, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover labeled the Panthers “the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States.” After that, the federal response moved quickly. COINTELPRO, the FBI’s covert operations program, sent informants into Panther chapters, made copies of membership lists, and monitored every major leader. Agents wrote fake letters to turn members against each other, spread false rumors about affairs and betrayals, hoping to break apart friendships inside the organization. Some chapters didn’t realize they had multiple informants reporting on the same meeting.
Police raids intensified. Los Angeles, Chicago, and Oakland saw some of the most aggressive actions. In Chicago, a 1969 raid killed Fred Hampton, the 21-year-old leader of the Illinois Panthers known for his community programs and cross-racial organizing, and Mark Clark, another Panther member who was helping run those programs. The raid was carried out while Hampton was asleep and was coordinated with FBI intelligence. Evidence later came out that he had been drugged the night before the raid. In Los Angeles, officers fired hundreds of rounds into the Panther office before anyone inside could surrender. Many raids were carried out with flimsy warrants or none at all, and members often spent months in jail fighting charges that were eventually dropped.
The Panthers were the focus of the FBI’s most aggressive tactics, but the surveillance net covered far more people. The FBI also kept extensive files on Martin Luther King Jr., despite the fact that King had no connection to the Black Panthers and did not share their strategy. Hoover treated almost any civil rights activity as suspicious. King’s phones, home, and offices were wiretapped. His travel was tracked. Agents monitored his speeches, meetings, and friendships. The same pattern extended to NAACP leaders, student organizers, and local activists who marched, taught workshops, or registered voters.
The pressure took a toll. COINTELPRO operations fueled distrust inside Panther chapters, and the constant legal battles drained time and resources. Some chapters collapsed under the weight of internal conflicts that were made worse by outside interference. Others struggled to keep community programs running while dealing with arrests, raids, and surveillance.
Even with all of that, Panther community programs continued. Children still lined up for breakfast before school. Clinics stayed open. Volunteers handed out groceries, monitored neighborhoods, and helped residents navigate housing and legal problems. Government pressure slowed the movement, but it didn’t erase the work that had already taken root in Black communities across the country.
Government pressure had weakened chapters across the country. Leaders were arrested, exiled, or drained by constant legal battles. By the early 1980s, the national organization dissolved. But the ideas stayed alive.
FBI: Freedom of Information/Released Files. “Black Panthers”
This document describes movements and activities of Black Panther members and associates.
Location unknown.
Police checking the paperwork of Black Panther demonstrators.
Listen the NPR broadcast: The Real Black Panthers
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Why It Matters
The Black Panther Party showed that the fight for civil rights didn’t move in just one direction. While Martin Luther King Jr. used marches, boycotts, and moral pressure, the Panthers focused on daily survival and neighborhood control — the parts of life that protests and speeches alone couldn’t always fix.
They also exposed the limits of patience. When progress moves too slowly or not at all, people experiment with new strategies. The Panthers pushed the country to face uncomfortable questions about policing, poverty, and dignity — questions that didn’t go away once the cameras left. Their uniforms and patrols grabbed attention, but their community work showed the deeper message: real change comes when people decide they deserve better and act on it.
Civil Rights Advice Column drops students into real Civil Rights–era problems and challenges them to choose whether Martin Luther King Jr. or the Black Panthers has the better strategy for each one. By responding to four advice-style letters and rewriting one from the opposite point of view, students see how each leader’s approach shaped the fight for justice.
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