October 15, 1966: The Black Panther Party Is Founded

Bobby Seale (left) and Huey Newton

October 15, 1966, 60 years ago: The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is founded in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. Its core practice was its open carry patrols. That is, the open carrying of firearms, calling the patrols "copwatching," designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department.

From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.

In 1969, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the party as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country." The FBI sabotaged the party with an illegal and covert counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, all designed to undermine and criminalize the party.

The FBI was involved in the 1969 assassinations of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, who were killed in a raid by the Chicago Police Department. Black Panther Party members were involved in many fatal firefights with police. Newton allegedly killed officer John Frey in 1967, and the Party's Minister of Information, Eldridge Cleaver, led an ambush in 1968 of Oakland police officers, in which two officers were wounded and Panther treasurer Bobby Hutton was killed.

Cleaver's collection of essays, Soul On Ice, was published in 1968, and was practically a sacred text for what became known as the Black Power movement. However, while many found the movement, and the Black Panthers, to be liberating, the book's essays were written in prison, and included details of the crimes that put him there. Cleaver was an excellent writer, but, at the time, he was not a good person.

Party membership peaked at around 5,000 in 1970, and gradually declined over the next decade, due to vilification by the mainstream press, and infighting, largely fomented by COINTELPRO. The Party dissolved in 1982.

Newton was murdered in Oakland in 1989, by another black activist. Cleaver became a Mormon and a Republican, and died of cancer in 1998. Seale, who became one of the Chicago Eight, is still alive. If he is still alive next Thursday, he will reach his 90th birthday.

What would all of today's white right-wing "open carry" advocates say if they saw a bunch of military-looking black men with big guns on the streets? Probably, "Mommy!"