Black Panther Party at 60: How Oakland's Huey Newton and Bobby Seale Started It in 1966, Explained

Sixty years ago, in 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland. This October, Oakland marked the anniversary with a week of events and an honorary renaming of Broadway between 14th and 17th streets in the party's honor, KQED and CBS San Francisco reported.

How it started

Newton and Seale met in 1962 as students at Merritt College in Oakland. Their earliest goal was to challenge police brutality and misconduct by the Oakland Police Department toward Black residents. Members openly carried firearms while monitoring police stops, and 16-year-old Bobby Hutton was the party's first recruit, according to the history compiled on Wikipedia. By January 1967 the party had opened its first headquarters in an Oakland storefront and started its newspaper, The Black Panther.

Sacramento, 1967

On May 2, 1967, a group of 26 armed Panthers led by Seale went to the State Capitol in Sacramento to protest the Mulford Act, a bill to ban publicly carrying loaded guns. The widely publicized protest drew national attention; at the time, the party had fewer than 100 members. The party's Ten-Point Program, “What We Want, What We Believe,” called for freedom along with demands such as employment and housing for Black and other communities, KQED notes.

Free breakfast and clinics

The party soon expanded into community programs: free groceries, health clinics, education and the Free Breakfast for Children Program, which KQED notes pressured the government to establish a similar program. The breakfast program began in Oakland in January 1969. Between 1968 and 1971 the party became a national organization with chapters in many major cities. It was also targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO program, and some members were involved in deadly shootouts with police. The party officially disbanded in 1982.

The 60th anniversary in Oakland

The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation and It's About Time BPP organized events including a panel and film screening at the Oakland Main Library, workshops along Broadway, a gala and a community day at Bobby Hutton Park in West Oakland, a place where the Panthers held rallies decades ago. CBS reported the Oakland City Council voted unanimously for the Broadway designation.

“We are making a statement that Oakland and the Black Panther Party are synonymous,” Xavier Buck, executive director of the Newton Foundation, told KQED.