Black Panther Party for Self-Defense - Black History

The Black Panther Party during the sixties and seventies was a symbol of pride, power and purpose. It was reportedly founded by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton on October 15, 1966 and the organization initially set forth a doctrine calling primarily for the protection of Black communities from police brutality, a problem that persists to this day.

Other than Booby Seale and Huey P. Newton, other notable members included Angela Davis, H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, Assata Shakur, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Fred Hampton.

The organization started social service programs in the communities they were active and their free breakfast program for impoverished children is credited with later being copied and implemented by the U.S. federal government. They also operated free clinics.


The Black Panther Party would ultimately become undone by the FBI's notorious and brutal COINTEL program instituted by the cross dressing and reported closet homosexual FBI Director J Edgar Hoover.

Portrait of Robert Williams, Negro with a Gun

photo: John H. Williams/ITVS

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As Africa and Arab nation rebel against their oppressors, some, not many, are asking if the black community is prepared to rebel against the oppression, enslavement and brutality that it still faces in America. Right wing extremist and their House Negroes continue to assault the Black community with coded and not so coded racist propaganda. They are openly hostile to a black President who has done very little to address the oppression and discrimination afflicting Blacks and Latinos and has continued some of the policies enacted under Republicans and George W. Bush in the so-called War on Terror.

While all of this going on, while police murder Black men and black babies, while right wing groups murder Latin American immigrants, while they threaten a revolution because a Black man is President, the majority of 21st century Negroes are doing nothing to prepare for what may come.

Tonight Black Talk Radio looks back at a true freedom fighter, Robert Williams, a Black man from North Carolina who dared to pick up a gun and argue for violent self-defense against violent oppression. Sharing audio excerpts of the PBS Independent documentary "Negroes With Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power."