Blackhawk128716

Black Panther Party

For this page, I plan on implementing new information in the Black Panther Party article that I believe is not focused on as much as it should be. I will be doing this more so with people rather than events that happened.

Found: The killing of Bobby Hutton. This specific section can go more into detail about who Bobby Hutton was, his association with the BPP, as well as how he died and the impact that had.

Killing of Bobby Hutton

Bobby Hutton was born April 21, 1950 in Jefferson County Arkansas. At the age of three, he and his family moved to Oakland, California after being harassed by racist vigilante groups associated with the Ku Klux Klan. In December of 1966, he became the first treasurer and recruit of the Black Panther Party at the age of just 16 years old. He became the first member of the party that was killed by police. On April 6, 1968, two days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and with riots raging across cities in United States, Hutton was traveling with Eldridge Cleaver and other BPP members in a car.  The group confronted Oakland Police officers and during the confrontation, two police officers were shot.  Hutton and Cleaver fled to an apartment building where they engaged in a 90-minute gun battle with the Oakland Police Department.

Ultimately, Cleaver was wounded, and Hutton voluntarily surrendered.  According to Cleaver, although Hutton had stripped down to his underwear and had his hands raised in the air to prove that he was unarmed, Oakland Police shot Hutton more than 12 times, leading to his death.   On April 7, 1968,sixteen-year-old Panther national treasurer Bobby Hutton was killed, and Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther Party Minister of Information, was wounded in a shootout with the Oakland police. Two police officers were also shot. Although at the time the BPP claimed that the police had ambushed them, several party members later admitted that Cleaver had led the Panther group on a deliberate ambush of the police officers, provoking the shoot-out.^{[76][77][78][79][80]} Seven other Panthers, including chief of staff David Hilliard, were also arrested. Hutton's death became a rallying issue for Panther supporters.^[81] https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/hutton-bobby-1950-1968/

Found: Biography of Bobby Seale: This section goes into detail about who Bobby Seale was as well as his affiliation with the Black Panther Party. There was no record of him in the original Black Panther Party so this has been added.

The Trial of Bobby Seale

Bobby Seale was born on October 22, 1936 in Dallas, Texas. hHe first lived in Texas before moving to California where he would attend Merritt College in Oakland. That is where he heard Malcolm X speak in 1962. That was the point when he became immersed in radicalism. He was known as an African-American political activist, and national chairman of the Black Panther Party. Not longer after that, he founded the Black Panthers in 1966. He was indicted in Chicago for conspiracy to incite riots during the Democratic national convention in 1969. The court refused to allow him to have his choice of lawyer. When Seale repeatedly rose to insist that he was being denied his constitutionalright to counsel, the judge ordered him bound and gagged. He was convicted of 16 counts of contempt and sentenced to four years in prison. In 1970–71 he and a codefendant were tried for the 1969 murder of a Black Panther suspected of being a police informer. The six-month-long trial ended with a hung jury. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bobby-Seale

Resources

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bobby-Seale

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/hutton-bobby-1950-1968/