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The year 2006 marked the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. After the disintegration of the party in the 1970s, cofounders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale went their separate ways. Newton became a drug addict and wax murdered in 1989. Today, at age 70, Seale, formerly a black studies lecturer at Temple University, remains active on the college lecture circuit.
In 1966 the Black Panther Party was founded in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby G. Scale. Responding to incidents of police brutality against black men in the city, armed Panthers patrolled the streets of Oakland and other California cities. The Panthers also operated schools, opened medical clinics, and provided free breakfasts to children in ghetto neighborhoods.
The Panthers quickly became targets of the police and the FBI. They were effectively infiltrated by informers and in short order internal mistrust destroyed the cohesion of the group. After gunfights with police, several Panther leaders were forced into exile or underground to avoid arrest. By the early 1970s the disintegration of the Black Panthers as...