Black Panther Party

The Black Panther Party (BPP) was an African American political organization founded on October 15, 1966, in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. The organization emerged at a time of widespread poverty, police brutality, and limited opportunity in Black urban neighborhoods across the United States. The BPP articulated its goals in a Ten-Point Program that called for full employment, decent housing, quality education, an end to police brutality, and freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county, and city prisons. Members wore a distinctive uniform of black berets and black leather jackets. At its height, the BPP had chapters in 68 cities across the United States. Among the BPP's most enduring contributions were its community programs, most famously the Free Breakfast for Children Program, which fed approximately 20,000 children per day by 1969 — helping demonstrate to the country the enormous scale of childhood hunger and pushing the federal government to expand and fully fund its own school breakfast program. The organization also operated free health clinics, ambulance services, clothing drives, and legal aid programs in communities with limited access to these resources. The BPP faced intense opposition from law enforcement, including a sustained campaign by the FBI's COINTELPRO program, which FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called necessary against what he labeled the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States. The combination of government pressure, internal conflicts, and legal battles led to the organization's decline through the 1970s. It officially disbanded in 1982. The BPP's community programs and its vision of Black self-determination have continued to influence social movements and community organizing in the decades since.