Black Panther Party Stalwarts Gather to Honor Founding and Community Programs

The Black Panther Party, founded Oct. 15, 1966, in Oakland, California, is being honored by its stalwarts who aim to draw attention beyond its iconic imagery to the community programs that served the poor and uplifted disenfranchised populations. The organization's legacy continues through initiatives like a Seattle medical center established to address systemic health disparities.

Formerly known as the Sidney Miller Free Medical Clinic, the center was founded in 1969 and implemented the Black Panther Party's Ten-Point Program. Now operating as the Carolyn Downs Family Medical Center, alongside the affiliated Country Doctor Community Clinic, it serves tens of thousands of patients annually.

Fredrika Newton, widow of co-founder Huey P. Newton, emphasized that the party sought to meet the fundamental needs of the Black community and other oppressed groups. "Children were going to school hungry. People couldn’t get medical care. People were sleeping in the streets, just like today," she told The Associated Press. This included establishing free medical clinics, advocating for sickle cell anemia testing, providing free school breakfasts, and creating community schools focused on education and literacy.

A four-day conference in Oakland is scheduled to commemorate the founding, with surviving original members and other veterans expected to attend.

Co-founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, then students at Merritt College, established the Panthers during the Civil Rights Movement. They believed the movement had not adequately addressed the plight of Black communities in the Western and Northern United States. As minister of defense and chair, respectively, Newton and Seale advocated for political and economic empowerment and initiatives to improve the lives of Black residents, while also confronting what they perceived as racist policing.

"We knew that Black people were getting brutalized by the police," Fredrika Newton stated. "We wanted to make sure that they were getting educated and taught how to protect themselves."

In 1967, Seale led armed Panthers into the California state legislature to assert the Second Amendment right to bear arms for Black individuals. These public actions, while galvanizing Black support, also concerned many white Americans. The FBI targeted the Black Panther Party, placing leaders and members under surveillance and conducting campaigns to disrupt and discredit the organization.

John "Bunchy" Crear, who joined the party at age 19 in 1970, recalled an encounter with FBI agents who questioned him about his membership and acquaintances. He described their warning: "'Well, John, if you stay in school and get you a good job, you’ll never hear from us again.'"

The Black Panther Party established safe houses and centers for community survival programs that addressed food insecurity, healthcare access, educational inequality, and other issues in Black communities. Chapters were formed in approximately 70 cities, with the Seattle chapter launching one of the 13 original healthcare clinics founded by the party nationwide. It remains the only one still in operation.

Brandy Taylor, chief executive of the Carolyn Downs Family Medical Center and Country Doctor Community Clinic, noted the interconnectedness of the challenges faced by Black individuals in the 1960s and 70s. "It wasn’t just about medical care. It was about free speech, social services, food security and knowing your rights. There were so many doors closed that you couldn’t survive without addressing them all," she said.

The Black Panther Party officially disbanded in 1982, following years of FBI surveillance, declining membership, internal conflicts, and allegations of embezzlement. Huey P. Newton was implicated in scandals and charged, and his struggles with addiction preceded his murder in Oakland in 1989.

In 2021, a bronze bust of Huey P. Newton was unveiled in Oakland. Some observers see parallels between the conditions that led to the Black Panthers' formation and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement after the 2013 acquittal in the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Fredrika Newton, who also leads the Huey P. Newton Foundation, expressed a desire to educate younger generations about the party's history and methods. "This is not a blueprint for what they can do now, but they can certainly see what we did, take what we did, apply them to the conditions today and organize," she said. "Organize around the needs that exist today."