Essay Questions

Why was the Black Panther Party formed?

Fed up with the oppression and economic struggles of the African American people, the Black Panther Party was founded in 1966 by activists Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. It was created as a way to fight against police brutality perpetrated against the African American community. Specifically, the Black Panther Party's goal was to get African American people to patrol their neighborhoods and protect residents from police brutality when they saw it occur. However, the group quickly morphed into a Marxist revolutionary group which called for massive changes in the United States.

What was COINTELPRO?

COINTELPRO was a counterintelligence program operated by the FBI in the United States between 1956 and 1971 which was designed to discredit and destroy organizations deemed by the FBI--but particularly by the agency's director, J. Edgar Hoover--to be dangerous to the political stability of the United States. Director Hoover, in fact, considered the Black Panther Party to be the biggest threat to U.S. National Security, ordering the FBI to use the program to destroy the Black Panthers. Hoover went so far as to declare that 1969 would be the last year that the Black Panthers existed, and that wasn't far from the truth, as activity and membership dwindled in the 1970s and 1980s.

How are the Black Panthers and Black Lives Matter (BLM) alike?

Both the Black Panthers and BLM were founded to work against police brutality and, for a lack of a better term, police the police. Both organizations were created almost immediately following the deaths of young Black men. The death of Matthew Johnson in 1966, for example, spurned the creation of the Black Panthers. In 2013, the death of George Zimmeran resulted in Black Lives Matter being created. Each organization has also called for radical change in how people and systems in the United States treat Black people. Both also brought particular attention to what they perceive as over policing of African American communities and the over incarceration of Black people, but particularly Black men.