Huey Newton and Bobby Seale Found the Black Panther Party
Two Oakland community college students draft a Ten Point Program and arm themselves to police the police
Quick facts
- Location
- Oakland, California
- Founders
- Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale
- Founding document
- The Ten Point Platform and Program
What happened
Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, who met as students at Merritt College in Oakland, founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in October 1966. The National Archives records that they drafted a Ten Point Platform and Program calling for full employment, decent housing, and an end to police brutality against Black communities, and organized armed patrols to monitor police conduct, a legal exercise of California's open-carry laws at the time. The party built "survival programs" offering free breakfasts for schoolchildren, health clinics, and transportation, alongside its confrontational stance toward law enforcement, and it grew into a national organization with chapters well beyond Oakland by the end of the decade.
Why it matters
The Panthers represented the furthest public break from the movement's earlier nonviolent consensus, combining armed self-defense with community service programs, and their rapid growth and equally rapid suppression by federal and local law enforcement, including FBI COINTELPRO operations, became one of the most contested chapters of the era.
How we know
The National Archives holds over 2,400 records relating to the Black Panther Party, including FBI files, and documents the party's founding location and founders directly.
Sources
- National Archives. The Black Panther Party · Primary source (author-declared)archives.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- HISTORY (A&E Networks). Black Panthers · Reputable sourcehistory.com · The domain "history.com" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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