The Black Panthers emerged as a group that advocated armed resistance against black oppression. Founded in October 1966, the group was born promising to patrol black-majority neighborhoods to protect their residents against police violence.
The movement spread across the US and reached its peak in the late 1960s, when it had 2,000 members and offices in major cities across the country. But soon fights with the police led to shootings in New York and Chicago, and between 1966 and 1970 at least 15 police officers and 34 «panthers» died in urban conflicts.
To the violence of the conflicts was added the harsh persecution of the FBI. In 1968, the agency’s director classified the Black Panthers as «the greatest threat to American homeland security». Gradually, the number of militants decreased. The blackest movement mainstreamrepresented by Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. and his policy of moderation and non-violence, gained progressively more space in the struggle for civil rights – and, despite having suffered his own dose of pressure from the FBI (and violence: Dr. . King was assassinated), was considered by government agencies to be a “less controversial” form of protest.
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Later, the leaders of the Black Panthers themselves renounced violent forms of demonstration and changed their focus, dedicating themselves to social assistance services in black communities, but they did not manage to recover the initial space of the movement. The organization was officially disbanded in the early 1980s.
Today, the legacy of the Black Panthers is considered fundamental in the conquest of rights by black Americans, and the group’s name remains a great symbol of the fight against racism worldwide.
Other black activism movements in the US:
NATION OF ISLAM
LEADER – Malcolm X
PROPOSALS – This religious strand practiced political struggle by legal means, but defended any form of self-protection for blacks against racial violence. Refusing racial equality, the focus of the movement led by X was to promote the idea that only blacks could bring about the liberation of blacks themselves. In practice, the group advocated black supremacy and the creation of a separate nation.
RESULTS – Years later, Malcolm X admitted the possibility of coexistence with white society, arousing the anger of former followers. He was killed by one of them during a rally in 1965.
CIVIL RIGHTS
TOP LEADER – Martin Luther King Jr.
PROPOSALS – The Baptist pastor led a moderate current, adept at non-violence, which defended the achievement of racial equality by peaceful means, with the extension of the right to vote to all blacks and the use of tactics such as boycotts and civil disobedience without acts violent.
RESULTS – Despite King’s assassination in 1968, his fight led to the approval of the Civil Rights Act, in 1964, which prohibited the existing segregation systems in different American states. It was forbidden to prevent, in any part of the American territory, people from being served and received in restaurants, hotels, stores based on skin color, religion, nationality or gender.
The Civil Rights Act of ’64 also prohibits, on these same grounds, anyone from being denied a job or the right to vote.