October 1966: The Founding of the Black Panther Party

In October 1966, two young men in Oakland, California, wrote a ten-point program that would grow into one of the most influential and most targeted Black political organizations in American history: the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.

Two Young Men in Oakland

Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale met as students at Merritt College in Oakland. Both had come to California as children of Southern families who joined the Great Migration. Both had been active in campus Black student groups and were frustrated that speeches and meetings were not changing life on the streets of West Oakland. Early members included Bobby Hutton, a teenager who became the party's first recruit, and later Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, Elaine Brown and Fred Hampton in Chicago.

The Ten-Point Program

The party began as a response to police abuse. Its founding document, the Ten-Point Program, demanded freedom and self-determination for Black communities, full employment, decent housing, education that taught "our true history," an end to police brutality, and fair trials. It closed by quoting the Declaration of Independence.

October 1966

Newton and Seale drafted the program on October 15, 1966. Within two years the party had chapters in dozens of cities. By the late 1960s it counted thousands of members across the country.

Patrols, Papers and Breakfasts

The Panthers' first and most famous tactic was armed "police patrols." California law then allowed people to carry loaded guns openly, so members followed police cars, stood at a legal distance during arrests, and read residents their rights. In May 1967, armed Panthers walked into the California State Capitol to protest a bill aimed at ending open carry. The bill, the Mulford Act, passed anyway, with the support of Governor Ronald Reagan.

The party soon broadened its work. Its "survival programs" included the Free Breakfast for Children Program, free health clinics, sickle cell anemia testing, clothing drives and schools. At their height the breakfast programs fed thousands of children every week.

The federal government answered with force. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called the Panthers the greatest threat to the country's internal security, and the bureau's COINTELPRO program spied on, infiltrated and disrupted the party. In December 1969, Chicago police killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in a predawn raid planned with FBI help. Arrests, trials, internal splits and that pressure weakened the party through the 1970s, and it closed in 1982.

The Women Who Built the Party

Women were central to the Panthers from the start, and by 1969, Kathleen Cleaver estimated, they made up about two-thirds of the membership. They ran breakfast programs, clinics and schools, sold the newspaper, organized chapters and filled leadership posts, often while pushing back against sexism inside the party.

Kathleen Cleaver, who left the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to join in 1967, became the party's communications secretary and the first woman on its Central Committee. She spoke for the Panthers in the press and led the campaign to free Huey Newton. Elaine Brown, a Los Angeles member, became minister of information and, from 1974 to 1977, chaired the party, the only woman ever to lead it. She expanded its community programs and placed women in key posts. Ericka Huggins directed the Oakland Community School, the party's acclaimed school for children.

Angela Davis, a philosopher and activist, worked with the Los Angeles chapter in the late 1960s before joining the Communist Party. Her 1970–72 prosecution and acquittal made "Free Angela" a worldwide cause, and the Panthers' campaign against political imprisonment helped carry it.

Why the Panthers Still Matter

The Black Panther Party shifted the Black freedom struggle's focus toward self-defense, community control and the daily needs of poor neighborhoods. Its breakfast program helped push the federal government to expand school breakfasts. Its demands on policing, housing and education still sound current, and its story shows how far the government would go to crush Black political organizing. As we say at HistorianSpeaks, the past is present.