workingclasshistory:

On this day, 15 October 1966, in Oakland, California, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton met and set up the Black Panther Party for Self Defence. The Party would exist, despite heavy repression, until 1982 and ran a variety of programmes from free breakfasts for school children and community health clinics to armed citizen patrols and monitoring of the police. The group advocated for revolutionary socialism, and for the liberation of Black and all other oppressed peoples. Another little-mention fact about the group is that in the 1970s a majority of its membership were women and girls. It was eventually broken by violent state repression, including being targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation, with many of its members killed or imprisoned.
Learn more about the Panthers in these books by former members: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/black-panthers https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.294735704044920/1831153317069810/?type=3