Black Panther Party

The Black Panthers were a black, socialist and revolutionary nationalist party active in the United States between 1966 and 1982. Although in the beginning their main activity was to form patrols of armed citizens to monitor the behaviour of the police toward African-Americans, in 1969 they established far-reaching social programmes. However, the FBI considered the Panthers ‘the greatest threat to the internal security of the country’, while the left saw them as a powerful force that opposed racial segregation and the Draft (military conscription). Their ideology was condensed in their Ten-Points Program, which claimed the right to freedom, employment, protection, housing, education, health and the end of police brutality for oppressed black communities.