Who Were The Black Panthers? – American Black Movement in 60’s

The Black Panthers were members of a controversial American revolutionary group that emerged in the 1960s to fight for the rights of black people.

The most controversial point of the doctrine of the group was the defense of armed resistance against the oppression of blacks. 

Founded in October 1966 the group promising to patrol the ghettos was born (black neighborhoods) to protect its residents against police violence. The movement spread to America and reached its greatest period of popularity in the late 1960s, when it grew to 2,000 members and offices in major cities. 

Soon the fights with the police led to the shootings in New York and Chicago, and between 1966 and 1970 at least 15 police officers and 34 ”Panthers” were killed in urban warfare. 

These scandals, coupled with the harsh persecution of the FBI (in 1968, the agency official called the Black Panthers as ”the greatest threat to American national security”), made the move and lose militants into disrepute. The solution was to renounce violent and engage in social services in poor black communities. However, the organization continued to lose importance in the black movement and ended officially disbanded in the early ’80s.

American black movement used different methods to challenge racism in the 60 

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT 

KEY LEADERS – Martin Luther King Jr. 
PROPOSALS – The Baptist minister led a moderate current, believer in nonviolence, which advocated achieving racial equality through peaceful means, with the extension of voting rights to all blacks and the use of tactics such as boycotts and civil disobedience without violence 
RESULTS – Despite the assassination of King in 1968, their struggle led to the adoption of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that ended the discrimination against minorities 

NATION OF ISLAM 

KEY LEADERS – Malcolm X 
PROPOSALS – This sect practiced political struggle by legal means, but accepting violence for self-protection. Refusing to racial equality, the group advocated the supremacy and black separatism 
RESULTS – Years later, Malcolm X admitted the possibility of coexistence with the white society, arousing the ire of former followers. He was killed by one of them during a rally in 1965.

              Malcom X

BLACK PANTHERS 

KEY LEADERS – Huey Newton and Bobby Seale 
PROPOSALS – Defending the supply of arms to all blacks, the radical militant group that has demanded the release of all African American prisons and paying reparations to black families for the period of slavery 
RESULTS – The violent methods have generated fierce persecution by the police and the FBI. Drained, the organization disbanded in the 1980s