The FBI also launched an aggressive counter-intelligence program aimed at dismantling the Black Panther Party through misinformation, infiltration, and by facilitating violent attacks against the group. Edgar Hoover called the group “the most dangerous threat to the internal security of the country” in the late 1960s. In the 1968-69 school year, the Black Panther Party fed as many as 20,000 children.ĭespite their goals of community empowerment and self-help, the Party was condemned by President Lyndon B.
BLACK PATHER PARTY FREE
The Party founded youth centers and free breakfast programs, organized legally-armed patrols to guard against police brutality in Black neighborhoods, and became popular among Black urban youth as chapters spread throughout the country. Spurning civil rights tactics of marches, sit-ins, and boycotts, the Black Panther Party was inspired by the self-determination philosophy of Malcolm X and the “Black Power” speeches of Kwame Ture (born Stokely Carmichael). Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in Oakland, California, in 1966. In a statement released after the shooting, Edward Hanrahan, the Cook County state’s attorney who had ordered the violent raid, said: “The immediate, violent, criminal reaction of the occupants in shooting at announced police officers emphasizes the extreme viciousness of the Black Panther Party.” Clark’s assassinations on December 4, seven Panthers at the apartment that night, who had allegedly wounded two officers, were charged with attempted murder.
Hampton had been asleep next to his fiancé, who was eight-months-pregnant when he was killed.įollowing Mr. Though the Party members were asleep at the time and posed no threat, the officers fired over 90 bullets into the apartment, killing Fred Hampton, 21, and Mark Clark, 22-two leaders of the Black Panther Party-and critically wounding four other Party members. Jones, Ava Kinsey, Duncan MacLaury, Sarah Nicklas, John Preusser.Around 4:30 am on December 4, 1969, plainclothes officers from the Chicago Police Department armed with shotguns and machine guns kicked down the door of the Chicago apartment where several Black Panther Party members were staying and opened fire on them. This third book, The Black Panther Party in a City Near You, raises the number of BPP branches that Jeffries and his contributors have examined to seventeen.Ĭontributors: Curtis Austin, Judson L. Nonetheless, when Jeffries undertook this project, chapter-level scholarly investigations of the BPP were few and far between. In point of fact, no other organization of the Black Power era had as great an impact on American lives as did the BPP. During this time, no other Black Power Movement organization fed as many children, provided healthcare to as many residents, educated as many adults, assisted as many senior citizens, and clothed as many people. The BPP reportedly had a presence in some forty places across the country. They have mined BPP archives and interviewed members to convey the daily ups-and-downs related to BPP's social-justice activities and to reveal the diversity of rank-and-file BPP members' personal backgrounds and the legal, political, and social skills, or baggage, that they brought to the BPP. The contributors examine official BPP branches and chapters as well as offices of the National Committee to Combat Fascism that evolved into full-fledged BPP chapters and branches. The cities covered in this volume are Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, and Washington, D.C. Like its predecessors ( Comrades: A Local History of the Black Panther Party and On the Ground: The Black Panther Party in Communities across America ), this volume looks at Black Panther Party (BPP) activity in sites outside Oakland, the most studied BPP locale and the one long associated with oversimplified and underdeveloped narratives about, and distorted images of, the organization.
Jeffries's long-range effort to paint a more complete portrait of the most widely known organization to emerge from the 1960s Black Power Movement.
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