The Roots of the Black Panther Party

US History – The Black Panther Party, 1966-82

In this course, Dr Joe Street (Northumbria University) explores the Black Panther Party, the Black Power political organisation established by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton on October 1966 in Oakland, California. In the first module, we think about the political and intellectual origins of the Black Panther Party, before turning in the second module to the Black Panthers' Ten-Point Program. In the third module, we consider the extent to which the Black Panthers were different from other civil rights groups operating at the time, while in the fourth module, we explore the Black Panthers' practice of patrolling the police. In the fifth module, we focus on the figure of Huey P. Newton, who became an international celebrity following the 'Free Huey' campaign of the late 1960s, before turning in the sixth and final module consider the scope and depth of FBI interference in the activities of the Black Panther Party, and the extent to which these were responsible for the disintegration and collapse of the party by 1982.

The Roots of the Black Panther Party

In the module, we think about the origins of the Black Panther Party, focusing in particular on: (i) the foundation of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California on 15 October 1966; (ii) the traditional view of the Black Panther Party as the violent alternative to the non-violent Civil Rights Movement led by figures such as Martin Luther King Jr.; (iii) the intellectual influences on the founders of the Black Panther Party: Malcolm X, Robert F. Williams, Mao Zedong, Frantz Fanon and Che Guevara; and (iv) the extent to which the Black Panther Party were influenced in part by the Civil Rights Movement, in part by third world liberation movements, and in part by the local circumstances in which they found themselves, e.g. high levels of unemployment among black Oaklanders, police brutality, etc.