A Brief History of the Founding of the Black Panther Party (BPP)

The Black Panther Party was created in Lowndes County Alabama in 1965. It was the result of the voter registration drive launched by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), later changed to Student National Coordinating Committee. This effort was spearheaded by Kwame Ture (then known as Stokely Carmichael). It is important to note that Lowndes Co. was 97+% African --- but totally controlled by the European 2+ percent. In Alabama as in many parts of this country, our people were not allowed to register and therefore had no vote. The state of Alabama was dominated by the Alabama Democratic Party who symbol was the "White Cock" a white rooster. This symbol represented white supremacy. In Alabama there was a state law that said that in any given county a prerequisite number of county residents could come together and form their own political organization for that county. This meant they could run their own candidates, register voters and what have you. The SNCC workers took this law, and organized a county convention in Lowndes. Out of that convention an organization called the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) was created. The LCFO subsequently nominated and selected candidates to run for the county offices: assessor, sheriff and so on. Now SNCC and LCFO were confronted with the problem of mass illiteracy among our people in the area...so they came up with the idea that since so many could not read they need an icongraph or picture that they could readily identify as their organization. The symbol of the Black Panther was selected because of the color, because of the panther's skills as a fighting cat, and because the image was likely to motivate people. The LCFO registration was an immediate success with the African population. Naturally the enemy hated it and did all they could to destroy the LCFO. They evicted sharecroppers, tenant farmers, attempted to foreclose people illegally, ---- and threatened to kill any African who registered. In response to these circumstances the leadership of LCFO instructed its members and supporters to arm themselves, but not to precipitate any violence. This was a strategy necessitated strictly for SELF-DEFENSE. To summarize the people carried a piece for protection, registered and then returned to their place of residence.

SNCC, in June of the next year, in Jackson MS, made the famous call for Black Power. A few months later SNCC issued a paper explaining their call for Black Power. Among the things they called for in the Black Power position paper was the establishment of Black Panther Parties throughout our communities across the USA.

Now among the many courageous African student volunteers working with SNCC in the original Lowndes Co. project was Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seales. They were so impressed with the Lowndes Co. experience that they begin to organize the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland. They advocated that Africans should carry a gun and a legal textbook to defend our Constitutional rights. Key SNCC leaders were invited to serve in select positions. For example Kwame Ture was asked to be the Prime Minister of the Party, and others such as Brother H. Rap Brown were drafted. At this point in history the enemy classes infiltrated agents epitomized by individuals such as Eldridge Cleaver into the party and rapidly diverted the ideological emphasis of the BPP movement from Black Power and Pan-Africanism to reactionary, decadent integrationist under the slogan of a red white and blue revolution. This ideological struggle broke out into the open around the question of the Free Huey movement. Using European blood money, the backward Cleaver line emerged as the temporary victor. After Cleaver achieved this purchased ideological and organizational influence in the Black Panthers, some 39 Panther militants were killed, starting with 17 year old Bobby Hutton, stripped nude and killed by Oakland police, while accompanying Cleaver.  This general pattern was repeated in many chapters, for example in Chicago where agents such as William O'Neal worked to sabotage and assassinate Panther members.  Some of this responsibility must be traced to the ideological and organizational errors of the anti-Pan-Africanist, anti-revolution forces that dominated the BPP leadership in the USA. BUT THE PAN-AFRICANISTS would not be discouraged. They continued to work with the leaders of the African Revolution and for the redemptive benefits of Black Power. We knew that this setback would only be temporary.