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The start of the Black Panthers
The Black Panther organization was created in Oakland, California in 1966. Huey P, Newton Seale, and Bobby Seale are the creators of this organization, it brought in the ideology of Black Nationalism, Socialism, and Armed Self-Defense for Black Americans. They would use this, especially against police brutality, and was a major part of the Black Power movement. -
Black Panther Name Change
The Black Panther Party delete "for self defense¨ from its name in 1967, the group still remained as a partially militarized organization. -
Cointelpro
In August 1967 the FBI targeted the Panthers when it launched its COINTELPRO operations designed to prevent "a coalition of militant black nationalist groups" and the emergence of a "black messiah" "who might unify and electrify these violence-prone elements. -
Leader Change
On Oct 28th, 1967 Huey Newton was arrested after being charged with murder from a small skirmish with the police. Seale and Cleave were given his title in his place. Who were a former prison activist and Malcolm X follower that had become the Panthers' minister of information. -
Stokely Carmichael
In February 1968. The former SNCC leader by the name of Stokely Carmichael challenged Cleaver's role as the dominant spokesman for the party After being asked by Cleaver and Seale to appear at "Free Huey" rallies. -
Newtons sentencing
In September 1968 Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to from two to fifteen years in prison. -
SNCC-Panther alliance
An SNCC-Panther alliance was announced at one of the February rallies but it had been broken up the next summer. This had happened cause the Panthers branded Ron Karenga, the head of a Los Angeles-based group called the US, a "pork-chop nationalist," which caused the fight between the two groups to get worse. -
battle on the UCLA
In January 1969 a gun battle on the UCLA campus left two Panthers dead. -
Two Chicago leaders Deaths
In the December following Newton's conviction, two Chicago leaders of the party, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed in a police raid. By the end of the decade, according to the party's attorney, twenty-eight Panthers had been killed. -
Newtons release
After the release of Newton in 1970, he had sought to revive the party by rejecting Cleaver's inflammatory rhetoric emphasizing immediate armed struggle. -
The Black Panthers end
At its peak in 1968, the Black Panther Party had roughly 2,000 members. Though the organization had later declined in 1982 because of internal tensions, deadly shootouts, and FBI counterintelligence activities that were aimed to weaken the organization.