THE BLACK PANTHER

In the late 1960s, black protesters show a new aggressiveness, very diverse from the nonviolence activists originally implemented. In 1966, the Black Panther Party forms in Oakland, California. They created essential breakfast programs, and guns, the group aggressively monitors police actions in the black community, serves the poor and needy, publishes a newspaper, and earns a following. Its founders,Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, present a ten-point program for improving social and economic conditions for African Americans. Soon, their movement spreads to 25 cities across the nation.

As they question and monitor police actions, the Panthers' boldness and militancy make many in the white and the law enforcement communities nervous. Carrying loaded weapons in public is legal in California, where Ronald Reagan is governor. But the Panthers' appearance, fully armed, makes lawmakers rush to ban the practice. In 1969, the F.B.I. names the group the number one threat to the nation's internal security. Some law enforcement officials feel this gives them justification to break the law and destroy the Panther organization.

In Chicago in December 1969, two Black Panther Party leaders are killed in a pre-dawn raid by police acting on information supplied by an FBI informant, William O'Neal. The men, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, are executed and four of the seven other people in the apartment are wounded. All surviving Panthers are charged with assault and attempted murder. Though the police insist they shot in self-defense, a controversy grows when activists present evidence that the sleeping Panthers put up no resistance. Although the police are never tried, the charges against the Panthers are dropped, and later the families of the dead win a $1.8 million settlement from the government..