The Protest

The first big act of the black panthers was their protest in Sacramento in 1967. Panthers marched to the capital building carrying fully armed guns protesting the outlaw of carrying loaded weapons in public.The Police responded to this by arresting all armed black panthers right after Bobby Seale's statement of protest.

Huey Newtons Arrest

Huey was arrested in october of 1967 for killing an Oakland Cop. This started the "Free Huey" movement which was where most of there attention was directed for a while. During this time the party began to spread quite vigorously. Stokely Charmichael, who was former chairman for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, joined the panther party during this time period and later became the party's prime minister.

COINTELPRO(Counterintelligence program)

The FBI was set on taking down the panther party so they started destroying it's followers, the programs that followed the panthers example. To work to kill of these other groups they would literally kill the leaders of the groups and then they would commit a series of arrests and then a period of psychological warfare to split the party politically and mentally.

Death of Bobby Hutton

At 17 years old lil' Bobby Hutton was shot by the Oakland police during a 90 minute gun battle on April 6, 1968. However Bobby was unarmed, after his house was set on fire he was forced to run out of his house into the fire of bullets. 10 bullets were shot into Huttons body.

Free Breakfast

The beginning of 1969 the Panthers set up a Free Breakfast program for school children in St. Augastines church in Oakland. Panthers had set up Kitchens across the nation and by the end of 1969 they were feeding over 10,000 school children breakfast every morning before they went to school.

FBI's Forgery

The FBI started sending letters to party members saying it was from other party member. Letters would state things about how poorly the group was being run and how reform needs to take place immediately. Most of the letters were targetted to Eldridge Cleaver who was living in exile in Algiers. The letters Worked and Cleaver was eventually expelled from the committee and later started his own Black Liberation Army. 

Huey's End

Huey started having self doubt about his leadership and didn't want to be a leader of the Black Panthers anymore. Everyone else dissagreed with him though and wanted him to stay leader. Huey eventually got heavily addicted to drugs. He was shot dead on August 22, 1989 in a drug distpute on the streets of Oakland.