Black Panthers Party

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorCollege, Undergraduate February 2008

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The Black Panther Party was first formed in 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in Oakland California but in which its effects and calls for Black nationalism soon spread to all corners of the country and which resonated within the big cities of America; Chicago and New York in which a large population of minorities were disenfranchised and in which they felt unwanted and uncared for, by their own country and its policies. The Black Panther party pushed their socialist programs and a call for social change within the cities and African American communities. This was attempted through their ?Ten Point Program? in which the need for better housing, the end to poverty, black on black crime, the exemption from military service, police brutality and the need for a better social structure within African American communities. What started out as a need to supply only African Americans with the services and needs of their efforts, was soon labeled as ?black racism?, not only by the white establishment but from within the leaders of the Black Panthers as well.

As a result, the Black Panthers soon expanded their sphere of influence to previously disenfranchised white groups, usually Communist and other socialist groups which had been set on the fringe of society by America. The focus in the latter years of the Black Panthers was on social issues as their Ten Point Plan will attest. Even though the reign of influence within the Black Panther party, as it related to a national movement, lasted less than a decade, in that time, positive social change eventually sprang up from its origins and efforts of the masses The death of Malcolm X created a void in the struggle for Black Nationalism as well as the desire to secure additional rights for African Americans.