Black Panthers Reunite 40 Years Later

Former Black Panther Party national chairman Bobby Seale holds a February 1967 photo at his home in Oakland, Calif., Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006, of himself, left, wearing a Colt .45, and his Black Panther co-founder Huey Newton, right, with a bandoleer and shotgun in Oakland. The Black Panther Party officially existed for just 16 years. Seale never expected to see the 40th anniversary of the Black Panther Party. Seale and other party members are to commemorate the anniversary when they reunite in Oakland this week. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma) (Paul Sakuma - AP)

The Panthers are often remembered for gun fights with police that left casualties on both sides.

Still, former members point out that they were about more than guns. They ran breakfast programs for children, set up free health clinics, and arranged security escorts for the elderly and testing for sickle cell anemia _ along with holding their police conduct review boards.

At its high point, the party had about 5,000 members across the country, Seale says.

Looking back, he still thinks the guns were necessary. A year before the Panthers were founded, he says, another group called Community Alert Patrol tried monitoring police activity, armed with tape recorders, walkie-talkies and law books.

"After a month of them doing this, they in effect got their law books taken and torn up, their tape recorders and their walkie-talkies smashed up, with billy clubs their heads were cracked up and drug downtown and locked up," he says.

A number of factors led to the Panthers' demise, starting with government opposition, Jones says. In 1967, the FBI launched a counterintelligence program against what it termed "black hate groups" as well as other activists.

Internal disagreement on tactics and leadership weakened the party further and, "ultimately, people just got burned out. It's hard being a full-time revolutionary in the United States," Jones says.

Several Panthers were arrested on a variety of charges and some still remain in jail.

Seale and others were charged with conspiring to murder a party member who was believed to be a police informant, but those charges were later dropped. Seale, who turns 70 this month, moved back to Oakland in the 1990s and keeps busy with speaking engagements.

Newton was convicted of manslaughter in the 1967 death of an officer shot when police stopped a car Newton was driving. That verdict was overturned. Newton struggled with addiction and was shot to death by a drug dealer in Oakland in 1989.

Continued interest in the Panthers is "a fascinating phenomenon," says Jones, editor of an anthology, "The Black Panther Party (Reconsidered)." For him it comes down to "a certain kind of boldness. It really stems from their community organizing, their commitment to serving not only black folks but all oppressed people."