Moving Between Violence and Nonviolence in the Black Panther Party, 1966-1971

This paper will explore how the Black Panther Party (BPP) transformed its chief strategies for the Civil Rights Movement from violent to nonviolent throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States. The BPP has been infamous for Black Nationalism and armed struggles against racist violence, as opposed to the nonviolent methods for the Movement popularized by Martin Luther King Jr.

In contrast to the well-known armed demonstrations of the BPP, there were in fact serious debates within the group on the effectiveness of violent tactics, and the leaders of the group promoted more nonviolent actions. After the FBI’s counter-intelligence activities particularly targeted the BPP, incarcerations and murders of most of its leaders forced the group to nearly collapse and split off into the International Section. As a result, the BPP leaders became more divided on the issue of violence. Huey P. Newton strengthened the group’s relatively nonviolent strategies, such as their free breakfast programs. Eldridge Cleaver, however, reinforced revolutionary ideas influenced by Third World guerrillas, and maintained the BPP’s violent rhetoric and tactics during his exile in Algeria. The conflict between Newton and Cleaver was a result of the state’s effort to destroy the BPP, as well as the two men’s personal power struggle.

I intend to argue that the BPP did not have a fixed identity as an exclusively violent organization, but instead created multifarious concepts of black liberation inside and outside U.S. The state agencies, especially the FBI, deeply affected the process of its transformation by repressing the group. The dynamics and dialogues between Newton and Cleaver, which centered around the debate for and against violent strategies for the BPP, will be the key to understanding the interrelationship between the social movement’s militancy and the state’s oppression.