Black Panther Party Research Essay Research Paper

Black Panther Party Research Essay, Research Paper

Guns, Social Welfare, and Revolution: The Black Panther Party

In late September of 1966, at a small poverty center in North Oakland, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale began to draft the Ten-Point Platform and Program, thus creating the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. From this creation rose a complex nationalist organization with chapters throughout the United States that sought to educate the people politically, and from that education give the people the desire to rage a revolution in order to have their needs and political agenda fulfilled. The Black Panther Party was the epitome of the nationalist option throughout the late 60s and 70s, and they had the need to create change within what they believed to be the racist power structure of the United States. The Black Panther Party was able to organize the people, and take part in actions that would help to implement social change. The Panthers created opportunistic programs for the Black youth in order to help build up the community. In addition, the Panthers also staged many demonstrations and protests that not only brought together the Black community, but also benefited the cause of equal rights. Despite all of the beneficial aspects that the Black Panther Party brought to the Black community and civil rights movement (or maybe because of these aspects), the F.B.I. and United States government believed the Panthers to be one of the United States greatest internal problems. In hindsight, it becomes obvious that the US power structure was flawed in their understanding of the Black Panther Party and their goals. Yet, in spite of this misunderstanding, the Black Panther Party was able to somewhat prevent the government s flawed way of examining political groups to prevail into the future by means of the Panther s legacy. The Black Panther Party was created on the belief that the United States was structurally racist, and that this racism was attempting to genocide the Black race. The Black Panther Party believed that to counteract this racism, they needed to destroy the power structure, and replace it with a just system of government.

Racism was not just some self-conceived notion taken up among the members of the Black Panther Party. Racism had been occurring in America by means of the slave trade even before the United States was called the United States. With the end of slavery, it was expected that Blacks would be able to integrate into the rest of American society and be provided with the guarantees of all men living in the United States as determined by the Constitution. However, it was not expected that the white community would be as opposed to this change as they were . The ultimate form of racism was portrayed in the White supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan. This group terrorized Black people throughout the south, as well as any sympathizers of the Black struggle. In 1930 Dr. Arthur Raper was commissioned to produce a report on lynching, at the time a much too frequent practice in the south. He discovered that there were 3,724 people reported lynches in the United States from 1889 through to 1930. Over four-fifths of the peopled that were lynched were Negroes, and less than one-sixth of whom were accused of rape. Practically all of the lynchers were whites. Of the tens of thousands of lynchers and onlookers, only 49 were indicted and only 4 have been sentenced . In 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt refused to support an anti-lynching bill because he argued that the white voters in the south would never forgive him and refuse to vote for him at the next election . The tolerance that the police and the government had for lynching showed the neglect of the President and Congress in making appropriate legislation and enforcing that legislation to stop the practice of lynching. As the oppressed began to fight back against the oppressors throughout the Civil Rights movement, the practice of lynching began to slowly decrease, however, the violence against Blacks persisted. Thirty years after Dr. Raper s report on lynches, mob violence and police brutality against Blacks still occurred regularly in the United States; the government was still not looking out for Black Americans.

In 1966, police brutality was a problem in many areas of the country. The newly formed Black Panther Party for Self Defense sent a strong message in addressing this problem: they wanted police brutality to stop, and to do this they proposed the tactic of self-defense. The idea of self-defense, along with the group s nationalistic views is portrayed in the Black Panther Party s ten-point program. The Ten-Point Program was based on simplicities that any citizen of the United States would desire. Composed by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the Ten-Point Program became a key component in the organization of the group. The program stresses freedom for those who were being oppressed, and an end to the repressive government. The Program also strongly advocated the use of guns for self-defense and stressed the 2nd Amendment. With thousands of copies of the Ten-Point Program in hand, Newton, Seale, and Bobby Hutton went throughout the Black community articulating the Program to the people, gathering support. The three then went on to set up the 1st official headquarters of the Black Panther Party in North Oakland. After the creation of this office in Northern Oakland, interest in the B