![]() ![]() 11 Another history states that 9 police officers were killed and 56 wounded in violent confrontations with the Panthers over a 2 ½ year period running through 1969. But at the same time they would pass some of their cash on to us.” 9 Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver deliberately recruited members with criminal inclinations, and said he wanted those who survive “off what they rip off, who stick guns in the faces of businessmen” and “don’t want a job.” 10 The Encyclopedia of Third Parties in America reported that 28 Panthers may have died because in gun battles with law enforcement. Co-founder Huey Newton stated the organization benefitted from thefts carried out by Oakland’s criminals: “In order to survive, they still had to sell their hot goods. The Panthers were frequently associated with violence and crime, particularly after late 1967. 7 The Panthers used boycotts, firebombing and violence against local business owners who did not voluntarily contribute to the free breakfast program. 6 Survival programs later included K-8 schools, free medical clinics and ambulance services, sickle-cell anemia testing, and other social services. A free breakfast program for schoolchildren grew to serve 10,000 Oakland children daily and expanded to nearly three dozen other cities. So-called “survival programs” were the Black Panthers’ other major community outreach program and successful recruiting tool. Open carrying of firearms was legal in California at the time, but in response to the Panthers’ actions, the state of California enacted a law banning open carry. The behavior created verbal confrontations with police, but no exchange of gunfire. The Panther teams would observe the police/citizen interactions, ostensibly to remind individuals of their constitutional rights and prevent police abuses. The Black Panthers’ first popular program and successful recruiting tool was arming members with firearms, criminal law books, cameras and recording devices, and then sending them to follow police patrols. 1 A 1969 SDS resolution declared the Panthers the “vanguard force” in the “black liberation movement” and the “vanguard in our common struggles against capitalism and imperialism.” 2 One historian described Panther members as “a cross-section of young African Americans, some who were law-abiding and sincerely interested in being of value to the Black community, others who had no qualms about breaking the law if it could be rationalized as a revolutionary activity, and still others who were just plain ruthless and criminal.” 3 At peak popularity, the Panthers claimed 5,000 members in approximately three dozen chapters across the nation, and a 1970 Louis Harris poll revealed that 25 percent of African Americans “felt the Black Panther Party represented their views.” 4 The Black Panther Party was a communist Black militant organization founded in 1966 that allied with extremist New Left organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and communist regimes abroad. ![]()
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