The Black Panther Party
was founded in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Deale. The Black Panthers held firm to
Leninism and refered to themselves as the 'vanguard.' Their initial purpose was to control
the inner city ghettos. The first establishment was organized in Oakland California, where
incidents of police brutality against blacks reached peak levels. Black Panthers sought to
end police brutality by continuously patroling neighborhoods with unconcealed, loaded,
automatic weapons, which was legal at the time. The Panthers would watch policemen from
afar, and when an incident took place, they would rush to the scene and confront the
police. The patroling of the Black Panthers resulted in many standoffs with the police,
sometimes resulting in gunfire and death.
The murder of Martin Luther King Jr. marks one of the largest riots America has
seen. "The assanation of Martin Luther King Jr. was an act of war," riots swept
168 ghettos after his death. "Sheer rage set off the worst outburst of arson
and looting in the nation's history, resulting in 46 deaths and 21,000 injuries. 24,000
federal troops and 35,000 National Guardsmen were deployed. 711 fires were recorded (Power
on the Left, Lawrence Lader; W.W. Norton and Company, New York 1979: p. 244-245). The
Black Panthers played the role of breaking up these riots, as they did not want to see any
more bllodshed.
Primarily, the Black Panthers sought control of the ghettos. By the late
sixties, they were seeking to improve black communities by providing breakfast houses and
schooling for childerdn. As for the Civil rights movement, they concerned themselves with
whoever was supressing them. In most cases it was the police, and the results of their
confrontations were almost always violent.
