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Black Panthers Black Panther Party (BPP), a militant black political organization originally known as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. It was founded in Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in October 1966. Newton became the party’s defense minister, and Seale its chairman. The BPP advocated black self-defense and restructuring American society to make it more politically, economically, and socially equal. Newton and Seale articulated their goals in a ten-point platform that demanded, …

…majority in the party by the mid-1970s. By then most of the party’s original leaders had left or had been expelled from the group. The BPP lost even more support after newspaper reports appeared describing the illicit activities of party leaders, including extortion schemes directed against Oakland merchants. By the end of the 1970s, weakened by external attacks, legal problems, and internal divisions, the BPP was no longer a political force. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography**