The Civil Rights Movement: The Black Panther Party

Great Essays
Born from the dynamic political climate of the United States in the 1960s, the Black Panther Party developed within a very particular historical moment– one framed by the failures of the Civil Rights Movement, strong anti-imperialist sentiment galvanized by the ongoing war in Vietnam, the frustration and anger felt by disenfranchised black urban communities across the nation, and the upsurge of militant demands for self-determination in the face of pervasive structural racism. Once the Panthers began instituting models of community self-sufficiency by 1968 in the form of their various community survival programs, the federal government had realized the immense threat that the Black Nationalist group posed to the legitimacy of centralized state …show more content…
Edgar Hoover publically announced in 1969 that of all the Black Nationalist groups, “The Black Panther Party, without question, represents the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” There was even a special “Panther unit” created by the Justice Department specifically to facilitate federal/local cooperation in ‘containing’ the black liberation movement. “Hence, although many anti-Panther actions around the country appealed to be purely local police initiatives, most were actually coordinated by the FBI’s COINTELPRO operatives in each locality.” Though the effectiveness of state repression programs are difficult to evaluate and measure, in September 1969 alone, police across the nation arrested Panthers on 46 separate occasions, with at least 348 Panthers being arrested during that whole year. Furthermore, by the beginning of 1970, most of the Party’s top leadership had been arrested, jailed or killed due to police and FBI persecution. Eventually, under the weight of such extreme, coordinated and relentless state repression, the BPP simply collapsed. Though there continued to be an organization in Oakland bearing the Black Panther name, after 1972, the BPP could no longer be considered a viable political

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