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JOHN YANG: In the 1960s, civil
rights movement, some concluded

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that non-violence and the focus
on integration had failed.
Rather than integrating society,

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they wanted to fundamentally
change it, and they
didn't renounce violence

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and self-defense. Their
cry was Black Power, rather
than we shall overcome.

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One of the most prominent of
these groups was the Black
Panther Party. It was also

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perhaps one of the most
misunderstood and most vilified
by the white establishment

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for Black History Month.
That's the topic of
tonight's Hidden Histories.

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JOHN YANG (voice-over):
The Black Panther Party
was revolutionary and
both its goals and its

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tactics. It began in 1966.
In response to both the
assassination of Malcolm
X, a leading advocate of

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black separatism, and
the killing of an unarmed
black 16-year-old named
Matthew Johnson during

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a San Francisco police stop.
Founders Bobby Seale and
Huey Newton were college
students at the time.

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HUEY P. NEWTON, Co-Founder,
Black Panther Party: We have
a Black Panther Party. As

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long as the evil Tetra
and corrupt officials,

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as long as the oppressor
makes the laws the people are
not bound to respect them,

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we are bound to transform
society and erect a system where
people will receive justice.

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JOHN YANG (voice-over): Their 10
Point program leaned heavily on

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Marxism. They saw black
American struggles as part of
a global liberation movement.

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HUEY NEWTON: In America,
Black people are treated
very much as the Vietnamese

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people are any other
colonized people because
where you were brutalized,

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the police in our community
occupy our area our
community as a foreign
troop occupies territory.

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JOHN YANG (voice-over):
They provided community
services called Survival

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Programs to promote
self-determination, free
food, especially breakfast
for schoolchildren,

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free health care and
voter registration
drives. They established
schools in nine cities.

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MAN: I cannot stand you
these oppressor foreign
troops in our community.

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JOHN YANG (voice-over):
Women made up roughly
half of the Panther
membership of about 2,000,

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and they often held leadership
roles. From 1974 until 1977,

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Elaine Brown was the head of the
National Party, but it was the

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group's paramilitary
displays that drew the
white establishments,
attention and alarm.

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Members patrolled
neighborhoods and black
jackets and black berets,

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openly and legally carrying
weapons. For many white
Americans, a photo of

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stern looking Newton holding
a rifle and a spear became
their image of Black Panthers.

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FBI Director J. Edgar
Hoover called the party the

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greatest threat to internal
security in ordered
surveillance to expose, disrupt,

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misdirect, discredit,
or otherwise neutralize
the Black Panthers.

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Tensions with local police
led to deadly clashes. In
Chicago a police raid killed

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rising party star Fred
Hampton and party member
Mark Clark. In 1982, the
federal government paid

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$1.8 million to settle a
lawsuit alleging that the FBI
had a role in the Chicago raid.

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Plagued by internal disputes
and power struggles the
party was essentially

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defunct by the late 1970s. It
was formally disbanded in 1982.

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But many see parts of its
legacy living on today in
groups like Black Lives Matter.

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JOHN YANG: Party members are
among the first to openly
challenged police violence often

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converging on the scene
when officers stopped young
black men on the streets.

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Donna Murch is an associate
professor of history at
Rutgers University and
the author of "Living

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For The City, Migration,
Education and the Rise of
the Black Panther Party
in Oakland, California."

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Donna, from your perspective,
what is the greatest legacy
of the Black Panther Party?

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DONNA MURCH, Author, "Living For
The City": I think the greatest
legacy was a youth movement,

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a young organization composed
mainly of people in their
late teens and early 20s

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working class youth that
had migrated from the
south, who found themselves

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having unprecedented
access to high school and
college in California.

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And out of that, they helped
form a study group and create
a new type of organization

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and youth movement that
was focused on serving the
community. It started with

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confronting police violence,
because that's what the
community saw as its
single biggest problem.

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This is the era of the
urban rebellions, you
know, the party is formed a
year after Watts, and they

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were willing to perform a form
of activism in order to empower
others. But very quickly,

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after the police patrols,
the Panthers shifted into
something called Survival
Pending Revolution,

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which meant founding free
breakfast programs, Freedom
Schools, and the longest running

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institution of the Black Panther
Party was a school in Oakland
that ran for almost a decade.

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JOHN YANG: Can you put the
Black Panther Party in sort
of the context of the civil

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rights movement of where
they stood, what role the
organization filled what
their contributions were?

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DONNA MURCH: I think
one of the best ways to
understand the Panther Party

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is to think about the
Black Freedom Movement, as
having a large geography

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and time period. So the party
is formed year after the passage
of the Voting Rights Act.

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But you know, the dismantling
of legal segregation
in the South did not
dismantle the problems of

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economics, and access in the
north and in the West. And one
of the central issues about this

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was both police violence, and
people not having equal access
to the social welfare state.

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So, I would describe the
Panthers as emerging in
this moment, post-civil

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rights after the accomplishments
of the civil rights
movement of the successful

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passage of the Civil Rights Act,
and also the Voting Rights Act.

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But I would be remiss to
not talk about the global
link to the Panthers.
They're formed in 1966. And

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this is after over a
decade of decolonization of
African countries winning
their independence. And

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also very importantly, they
look to Asia. The Panthers are
formed in Northern California,

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and they were adamant in their
opposition to the Vietnam
War and American imperialism.

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They identified with the
Vietnamese, the Viet Men
and with Hoochie Men,

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and they actually looked a lot
to Vietnam, to China, and to a
vision of anti-colonialism and

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a socialist state that
would serve the people. So,
I think that's one of the
most important contexts.

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The other thing I really
want to stress because the
popular representations of

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the Panthers is wrong. So
many people find out about the
Panthers through Forrest Gump,

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they're represented as
anti-white black militants.

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But the truth is, is that
the party of all the 60s
organizations, they had the

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strongest ties to creating a
multiracial coalition, what
was called in this period,

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the rainbow coalition that
Jesse Jackson later picks
up on. So they united with

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white radical youth who they
called Mother Country Radicals
to oppose the Vietnam War.

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And this was incredibly
threatening to the government
of the time, you know,

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to J. Edgar Hoover in
particular, because
you basically saw
multiracial coalition

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uniting to stop anti-communism
and violence in the global
south. So I think that would

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also be the Panthers legacy,
a model of multiracial
coalition building.

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JOHN YANG: You mentioned the
free breakfast program that
they ran in communities,

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which is not that far,
apart from the federal
free breakfast program

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that's being run now. But
there was also a political
vision. And that wasn't there.

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DONNA MURCH: Yes, that's
such an important point. They
were arguing that the social

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welfare state as it existed was
not serving the people and that
they as teenagers could provide

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free breakfast. And when
they started their freedom
schools, so many of the

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low income children who
went to Panther schools
had not had breakfast,
and they couldn't learn.

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And so they were shaming
the state. And although
we don't have the direct

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documentary evidence, it is
thought by many scholars,

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that that shaming of the
state prompted the issuing
of free school lunch.

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JOHN YANG: Are there groups
today that you see as
direct descendants of the

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Black Panther Party
that can draw a direct
line from them to today?

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DONNA MURCH: Yeah, I would
say, you know, my first book
was about the party's Genesis

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in Oakland. It's called Living
For The City. But my second
book is about the last 10 years,

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and it's about the Black
Lives Matter movement and
why they chose Assata Shakur,

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who was a rank and file Panther
member from New York City.

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So she's not from Oakland,
where the Panthers were
formed. She's from New York,

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and she wasn't part of the
traditional male leadership,
and especially over

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the last 10 years in the fight
against state violence and
murder and mass incarceration,

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Assata has become the best
known of the Panthers. And
it's from a poem that she

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wrote in Cuba in the 1980s
that so many of these
movement organizations
opened their meetings.

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It is our duty to fight for our
freedom. It is our duty to win.

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We must love and protect
one another. We have nothing
to lose but our chains.

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JOHN YANG: Donna Murch
of Rutgers University.
Thank you very much.

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DONNA MURCH: Thank you.
It's truly my pleasure.