Police Harassment In The Civil Rights Movement

Register to read the introduction… Huey reflected upon the mis-treatment in his book To Die for the People; "The police were very brutal to us even at that age" (Newton 53). Police harassment and physical abuse of Black people became part of every day life for many Blacks across the country. Although the Civil Rights movement was mainly a Southern phenomenon, the non-violent ideology and integrationist focus of the movement became according to historians Floyd W. Hayes and Francis A. C. Kiene as "sources of increasing frustration and disillusionment for many Blacks in Northern and Western cities (Hayes and Kiene 159) ." As the Civil Rights Movement approached the end of the 1960's northern Blacks became angered by the television coverage of police beatings, incarcerations of Southern non-violent Blacks, employment discrimination along with the police brutalities in Northern Black neighborhoods (Brooks 136). Huey Newton recalls in his autobiography Revolutionary Suicide, "We had seen Martin Luther King come to Watts in an effort to calm the people and we have seen his philosophy of nonviolence rejected. Black people had been taught nonviolence; it was deep in …show more content…
with the immediate emphasis on the need for organizing black defense groups…to end police brutality. Huey and Bobby created a uniform for the Panthers demonstrating the seriousness and discipline of the Party's platform. The Black Panthers' first action was to follow Oakland Police cars, either on foot or in cars, while dressed in black pants, black leather jackets, starched blue shirts and black berets, carrying loaded shot guns. The Oakland Black community's response to the new Panther Party was intense. The BPP's uniform and operations served as a testament that Blacks could stand up to the police. Sundiata Acoli, an ex-panther said that one of the Panthers' greatest accomplishments was that the party "created an image of Black manhood that people could be proud of (Acoli 1)." Huey had a profound knowledge of political thought and a unique grasp of social issues. His sharp thinking led him to create an organization to building Blacks confidence and self-esteem. As the Party's chief theoretician, Huey's thinking and the Black Panther outlook are significant because they represent the continuation of radical African American political thought, which dates back to