Formed OTD in 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a revolutionary political organization founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in Oakland, California. “A crowd of onlookers gawked from the pavement as four young black men dressed in black leather jackets and berets leapt from a Volkswagen, each of them wielding shotguns with bandoliers strapped across their bodies. The young men surrounded two white police officers who had accosted a black man & had him spread-eagled against a building. The young men did not say a word as the police officers watched them nervously, their eyes fixed on the shotguns. One of the young men held a large law book in his hand…This was the Black Panther Party in ideal action. The real story – the whole story – was both more and less heroic.”

So begins Black Panthers for Beginners. The late 1960s, when the Panthers captured the imagination of the nation’s youth, was … More