The Black Panther Party

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The Black Panther Party

• 1960 - 1971

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• Feb 1st 1960 In Greensboro, N.C. four black
  students from N.C. Agricultural and Technical
  College begin a sit-in at a segregated
  Woolworths lunch counter. Although they are
  refused service, they are allowed to stay at the
  counter. This incident triggers many similar
  protests at different integrated public
  facilities throughout the south. Six months later
  the six students are served at the same original
  Woolworths counter.
• April 1960 In Raleigh, NC, the Student
  Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is
  founded at Shaw University. This provided young
  blacks with a place in the civil rights movement.
  The SNCC later grows into a more radical
  organization under the leadership of Stokely
  Carmichael (1966-1967).

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• May 4th 1961 Freedom Riders, a program
  sponsored by The Congress of Racial Equality
  (CORE) and the SNCC involving more than 1000
  volunteers, black and white, begin taking bus
  trips through the south to test out new laws that
  prohibit segregation in interstate travel
  facilities including bus and railway stations. Of
  course several of the groups were attacked by
  angry mobs along the way. Stokely Carmichael was
  a member of the Freedom riders and was arrested
  and jailed for 49 days in the Parchman
  Penitentiary.
• Oct 1st 1962 James Meredith becomes the first
  black student to enroll at the University of
  Mississippi which resulted in violence and riots
  causing President Kennedy to send 5,000 federal
  troops.

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• April 16th 1963 Martin Luther King writes his
  seminal Letter from Birmingham Jail arguing
  that individuals have the moral duty to disobey
  unjust laws. The letter was written while he was
  jailed due to being arrested during an
  anti-segregation protest in Birmingham, Alabama.
• May 1963 During civil rights protests in
  Birmingham, Alabama, Commissioner of Public
  Safety Eugene Bull Connor uses fire hoses and
  police dogs on black demonstrators. These images
  of brutality which were televised and published
  widely helped gain attention from around the
  world to the civil rights movement.
• June 12th 1963 37 year-old Medgar Evers who was
  Mississippis NAACP filed secretary was murdered
  outside his home in Jackson. It took 30 years
  after being tried twice with 2 hung juries until
  Byron De La Beckwith is convicted of Evers
  murder.

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• June 12th 1963 37 year-old Medgar Evers who was
  Mississippis NAACP filed secretary was murdered
  outside his home in Jackson. It took 30 years
  after being tried twice with 2 hung juries until
  Byron De La Beckwith is convicted of Evers
  murder.
• Aug 28th 1963 A 200, 000 person congregation at
  the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC join in on
  the March on Washington listen to Martin Luther
  King Jr. deliver his famous I Have a Dream
  speech.
• Sept 15th 1963 Four young girls (Denise McNair,
  Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae
  Collins) attending Sunday school at the 16th St
  Baptist Church in Birmingham, Al are killed when
  a bomb explodes at the popular location for civil
  rights movements. Several riots in Birmingham
  occur after the bombing resulting in 2 more black
  youths deaths.

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• 1964 The Lowndes County Freedom Organization
  (LCDO) was established by Stokely Carmichael in
  Alabama. This organization later changed its name
  to the Black Panther Party.
• Jan 23rd 1964 The 24th Amendment had abolished
  the poll tax which originally had been instituted
  in 11 states after Reconstruction to make it
  difficult for poor blacks to vote.
• Summer 1964 The Council of Federated
  Organizations (COFO), a network of civil rights
  groups that includes CORE and SNCC, launches a
  massive effort to register black voters during
  what becomes known as the Freedom Summer.

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• July 2nd 1964 President Johnson signs the Civil
  Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits the
  discrimination of all kinds based on race, color,
  religion or national origin. The also provides
  the federal government to enforce desegregation.
• Aug 4th 1964 The bodies of 3 civil rights
  workers, two white and one black, are found in an
  earthen dam six weeks into a federal
  investigation backed by President Johnson. The 3
  workers, James E Chaney 21, Andrew Goodman 21 and
  Michael Schwerner 24 had been working to register
  black voters in Mississippi and on June 21st had
  gone to investigate the burning of a black
  church. They were arrested by the police on
  speeding charges, incarcerated for several hours,
  and then released after dark into the hands of
  the Klu Klux Klan, who murdered them.

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• March 7th 1964 Blacks in Selma, Alabama begin a
  march to Montgomery in support of voting rights
  but are stoped at the Pettus Bridge by a police
  blockade. Fifty marchers are hospitalized after
  police use tear gas, whips and clubs against
  them. The incident is dubbed Bloody Sunday by
  the media. This was considered to be the catalyst
  for pushing through the voting rights act in Aug
  that year.
• Aug 10th 1964 Congress passes the Voting Rights
  Act of 1965 making it easier for southern Blacks
  to register to vote. The act made literacy tests,
  poll taxes and other such requirements which were
  used to restrict black voting, illegal.

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• Feb 21st 1965 In Harlem, NY, Malcom X, black
  nationalist and founder of the Organization of
  Afro-American Unity, is shot to death while
  giving a speech. It is believed that the
  assailants were members of the Nation of Islam,
  which Malcom had abandoned in favor of orthodox
  Islam.
• Aug 11th-17th 1965 Race riots in Watts, CA
  erupt in a black section of Los Angeles.
• Sep. 24th 1965 President Johnson issues order
  11246, which enforces affirmative action for the
  first time. The order requires government
  contractors to take affirmative action toward
  prospective minority employees in all aspects of
  hiring and employment.

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Oct 1966 The Black Panthers are founded by
Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.
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• 1968 Aaron Dixon becomes first leader of Black
  Panther Party branch in Seattle. The Rev. Martin
  Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis,
  Tenn., unleashing violence in more than 100
  cities. In response to King's death, Seattle
  residents hurled firebombs, broke windows, and
  pelted motorists with rocks.
• Ten thousand people also marched to Seattle
  Center for a rally in his memory. Rally at
  Garfield High in support of Dixon, Larry Gossett,
  and Carl Miller, sentenced to six months in the
  King County Jail for unlawful assembly in an
  earlier demonstration. Before the speakers were
  finished, firebombs and rocks were flying toward
  cars coming down 23rd Avenue. Sporadic riots in
  Seattle's Central Area during the summer.

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• Seattle magazine profiled the Black Panther Party
  and captain Aaron Dixon in its October 1968 issue

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1968 Franklin High School
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Video

• 1968 sit-in at Franklin High School by the UW
  Black Student Union and subsequent imprisonment
• http//depts.washington.edu/civilr/aaron_dixon.htm
  

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BPP Seattle Slide Show

• http//depts.washington.edu/civilr2/teach/bpp/BPPt
  eachwmv_files/frame.htm

Seattle, April 1968
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Garfield High School in 1969
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• As the state legislature debated a bill that
  made it a crime to exhibit firearms "in a manner
  manifesting an intent to intimidate others," a
  contingent of armed Panthers led by Elmer Dixon
  traveled to the state capitol on February 29,
  1969. These pictures belong to the Washington
  State Archives.

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April 20, 1971

• The Supreme Court, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenbu
  rg Board of Education, upholds busing as a
  legitimate means for achieving integration of
  public schools. Although largely unwelcome (and
  sometimes violently opposed) in local school
  districts, court-ordered busing plans in cities
  such as Charlotte, Boston, and Denver continue
  until the late 1990s.