THE LEADERS AND STRUCTURE OF THE PARTY | BY: KAEYLN CONWAY

May 11, 2020

The Black Panther Party was an internationally recognized civil rights organization that was active throughout the 1960s to the 1980s. The party was founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale as a response to the racism, discrimination, and police brutality the African American community faced. Newton based many of the Party’s ideas and the Ten Point Plan on Malcolm X and Marxist ideas. These ideas shaped the organizational structure, membership, and how the government viewed the Black Panther Party. 

Huey P. Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana and moved to Oakland, California during his childhood. Newton attended a variety of schools before earning a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Cruz. One of the colleges Newton attended was Merritt College. At Merritt, Newton joined the Afro-American Association where he met Bobby Seale. At this point, Newton was already a black militant activist. Newton and Seale were unhappy with the pro-capitalist form of black nationalism that the leader of the Afro-American Association supported and decided to form their own organization based on the ideas of Malcolm X. The Black Panther Party for Self Defense was formed in October 1966 with Seale as the Chairman and Newton as the Minister of Defense. The Black Panther Party outlined their goals in the Ten Point Program that included ideas like providing better housing, education, employment. They were different from most civil rights groups because they believed that violence might be needed to bring about the changes they wanted to see. 

Under the leadership of Newton, the Black Panther Party went from a local, community-based group to an internationally recognized organization. Newton and Seale used grassroot tactics to grow the Party and expand into communities around the United States. At its peak in 1969, the Black Panther Party had an estimated 5,000 members in thirty-four to forty chapters throughout the country. Later in his life, Newton was accused of committing a variety of crimes including assault and murder. He was forced to leave the country to escape prosecution in Cuba. In Newton’s absence, Elaine Brown took over leadership of the Party, which at this point had around 200 members. She was able to reestablish the Black Panthers as a community service organization, which allowed it to receive funding from both the government and private sources. After Newton’s return to the United States in 1977, Newton took back his position as the leader of the Black Panther Party. Under his leadership, the Party further declined due to mismanagement and violence and officially ended in 1982. 

The Black Panther Party operated using a three-tiered leadership structure. The top tier consisted of the Central Committee. The Central Committee was the party’s governing body located in Oakland, California where the party was formed. This Central Committee was made up of a large number of formal positions including the Chairman, who was the overall leader of the Black Panther Party, a prime minister, minister of defense, and minister of education. Each minister at the national level dealt with a different facet of the Black Panther Party’s goals. The second leadership tier consisted of the regional members. Each state chapter had a chapter leader that was appointed and approved by a member of the Central Committee. The third tier was the local level, where city chapters were run by branch leaders who worked with both the regional and national party leaders. The overall structure of the regional and local party chapters depended on the goals in each city and the number of members the chapter had. This structure was able to function effectively because the Black Panther Party was able to recruit educated leaders while still maintaining support and generating membership in the working poor class. Much of the party’s recruitment efforts were aimed at the most marginalized communities within the larger African American community, such as unemployed men and gang members. 

The organizational structure and outlined goals of the Black Panther Party allowed it to be more successful than previous iterations of the Black Panthers. Before the Oakland chapter was formed, the most prominent chapter of the Black Panthers was the Harlem Panthers. Due to the establishment of regional chapters, the Oakland Black Panther Party became the center of the Black Panther movement. The party in Oakland also outlined the ideas of the party into their Ten Point Program, allowing their message to be easily spread. They were also successful because of their emphasis on community service, which could be implemented in every city throughout the country. At its peak, the Black Panther Party was one of the most influential civil rights groups and helped to shape future group’s organizational structure and, because of its aggressive tactics that often involved direct confrontation with people in power, helped people in oppressed communities overcome their sense of fear of the power structure. 

The structure and ideas of the Black Panther Party were heavily influenced by Marxism-Leninism. The main structural idea of Marxism-Leninism is a transition from capitalism to socialism, led by a central group. Members are then recruited from the lower classes. In the Black Panther Party, a majority of the power was held by the Central Committee that led the party of the national level. General members were drawn from more marginalized groups. The Black Panthers were anti-capitalist, and many of the points outlined in the Ten Point Program reflected socialist ideas. Community services such as breakfast programs, housing programs, and medical clinics were all provided for free. Their socialistic ideas made the Black Panther Party a threat to the United States during the Cold War Era. Under the counterintelligence program COINTELPRO, the federal government attempted to create division in the party to undermine general support for the party. 

Throughout its history, the Black Panther Party was generally thought of a “super masculine group of men who were violent and fought the authorities''. However, due to the Marxist ideas the party was based on, the Black Panther Party supported equal rights for all people, including women. Women were very involved in the party as “rank-and-file” members who were never seen in newspapers or on television but had a profound impact on the Black Panther Party. Women in the party were often in charge of daily operations in jobs like administrators and organizers. The women in the Black Panther Party were also heavily involved in the “Free Huey” movement, after Huey Newton was arrested and being held for assault and murder charges. This work was an extension of much of the work they were already doing. Women helped to spread news about rallies both through canvassing and going from door to door and through The Black Panther, a newspaper for the party. 

Although women in the Black Panther Party were forced to deal with misogyny from some of the leaders of the organization, some eventually held leadership positions. Elaine Brown became a member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panthers after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She then helped to set up the first Free Breakfast for Children program in addition to the Free Busing to Prisons Program and the Free Legal Aid Program. Brown became editor of The Black Panther for Southern California as well as a member of the Central Committee as the Minister of Information. When Newton was forced to flee to Cuba, he appointed Brown as the leader of the party. After Newton returned, Brown stepped down and later quit the party due to the sexism in the Black Panther Party. A woman holding the highest leadership position in any organization was extremely rare in the very patriarchal era of the 1960s and 1970s. No other civil rights group including the NAACP and the Southern Leadership Conference had a woman leader. 

The Black Panther Party was an influential civil rights party operated based on Marxism-Leninist ideas that were very radical in the United States during the 1960s and 1980s. These socialist ideas influenced the community focused, free programs the party established and the overall structure of the party. At its peak, the Black Panther Party was internationally recognized and had chapters spread throughout the United States. Through its radical actions and programs, the Black Panthers fought for civil rights for marginalized and oppressed groups.