Power to the People - Thoughts on the Black Panther Party and Black Power Movement.

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Power to the People - Thoughts on the Black Panther Party and Black Power Movement. During the civil rights movement, local whites harassed the peaceful and non-violent marchers while the police turned a blind eye and arrested the activists as troublemakers. This trend was becoming too much and what they needed was some form of liberation, that came through the agile activities of Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panther Party. Following the influence of Malcom X towards the end of his life, the Black Panthers Party was formed to protect local communities from police brutality and racism. It was not all about violence as most people relate the group to. They ran medical clinics and provided free food to school children and within a couple of years the Black Panthers in Oakland were feeding over 10,000 children every day before they went to school. In Chicago, Fred Hampton, one of the famous leaders of the Black Panthers Party established a community service program. A program which provided free breakfast for school children and a medical clinic that did not charge patients for treatment. Hampton also taught political education classes. One of Hampton's greatest achievements was to persuade Chicago's most powerful street gangs to stop fighting against each other and he also made the “Rainbow Coalition Pact”, a nonagreesion deal that included the black community, Puerto-Rican and poor youths. So what I am trying to point at here is that the Black Panthers was not all about violence and the white supremists were only scared of the rise and awareness that the black community was developing and so they labelled it a terror gang and threat to national security. It was the FBI and CIA who incited the party into illegal activities, they wanted by all means to bring down the party and the movement. The government had problems with the Party because the Party was

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