Why was the black power movement so successful in Oakland? What needs of the city's black community did it meet? 

In answering these questions, you may choose to focus on the successes of campus activism, the Black Panther Party, or both. To fully answer the questions, you will need to explore the history of Oakland's black community, and how past experiences shaped the community's needs and its activism in the 1960s.

 

The Black Power revolution was inspired by a desire for protection and sovereignty. It couldn't be contained inside the redlined African American quarters. The advocates of Black Power had formed black-owned libraries, food cooperatives, fisheries, the newspaper, schools, hospitals, and ambulances. The movement had a foreign influence, like the Trinidad and Tobago Black Power Revolution. 

By the late 1960s, Black Power became the demand for more immediate aggression against white oppression in America. Malcolm X's critique of the nonviolent resistance tactics of Martin Luther King Jr. inspired much of these theories. The murder of Malcolm X in 1965, along with the 1964 and 1965 urban revolts, set the revolution on fire. New groups, including the Black Panther Party, were popular who promoted Black Power philosophies from socialism and black nationalism.While the early Black Power movement was inspired by black American thinkers such as Robert F. Williams and Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party and its views have been generally recognized as the core. The Cuban Revolution, and the decolonization of Africa were inspired by philosophies like the whole of Africanism, the black nationalism, and socialism and current events.

History of black community in Oakland

Although it was not until 1966 that the real term "Black Power" was commonly used, Black Power theories were not fresh. And in the 1940s, A. The African American Labor organizer Philip Randolph called for a march to Washington to force President Franklin D. Roosevelt to ban federal job racial discrimination. Randolph imagined that the march will be a Negro-like revolution that instills a sense of self-confidence and tears down the slave psychology and inferiority complex of black Americans, which is provided to and fed by white people. While Randolph himself escaped black nationalism, the aims of autonomy and ethnic pride would become fundamental to the ideologies of Black Power. A non-fiction chronicle of his journeys to the gold coast of Africa, which would become Ghana, was also published, by the author Richard Wright, in 1954, in the book Black Power. The value of black power theory of the relations between Africans and African Americans and of the centrality of decolonisation. After decades of European colonial rule, African countries became independent in the 1950s and 1960s. African Americans such as Richard Wright and later Malcolm X drew a connection between Africans' efforts to abolish stayed vestiges of colonial colonialism and African Americans' struggles to transcend the system of white dominance in the US.

Stokely Carmichael and Willie Ricks, founders and speakers of the non-violent student coordination committee, used the word "Black Power" for the first time as a social and racial slogan. Carmichael led the marchers in a chant for the black power broadcast nationwide in a speech in Greenwood, Mississippi, on the 16th of June 1966, during the March Against Fear.

The Nation of Islam organisation, which was influenced by later organisations, originated as a black national movement in the 1930s. The drastic growth in membership between the early 1950s and beginning of the 1960s is largely due to Malcolm X. Malcolm X fled the nation in March 1964 because of differences with Eliyah Mohammed, citing his involvement, among other things, in collaborating with other civil rights activists, that Muhammad had blocked them. Later, Malcolm X also said that Muhammad had engaged with young Nation secretaries in extramarital relations, which were a profound breach of the teachings of the Party. In the Audubon ballroom of Washington Heights, New York, Malcolm X was shot and killed on the 21st of February 1965. Three citizens of the Country have been accused of murder. Nevertheless, speculation and alleged government participation have long existed.The forty police officers at the scene were told to stand down" by their commanding officers when the shooting took place. Since the Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1965, the Student Nonviolent Organizing Committee voted to break links from the mainstream civil rights movement. They argued that blacks had to create their own force instead of seeking accommodation from the power system. After the mid-1960s, SNCC migrated from a non-violent philosophy into a more radical one. Radical organizations such as Students of a Democratic Society have formed links with the organisation. The Black Panther Party was founded in late October, 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. They also benefited from their encounters with many Black Power groups in formulating a new policy.Initially, the Black Panther Party used open weapons laws to discourage public protection of members of the party and nearby Black populations. Party members have reported police brutality incidents in distant neighborhood prostitution by police vehicles. In February1967, the group offered Betty Shabazz, a widow of malcolm X and a keynote speaker at a conference held in his memory, an armed escort at San Francisco Airport. Numbers rose somewhat.

Black power movement so successful in Oakland

• Chronology 1966

The BPP was founded on 15 October 1966. They started their first police monitoring patrols several months back. 

January 1967: In the first Oakland store the BPP opened its Official Offices. The first edition of Black Panther, Black Cultural News Media, was released. 

February 1967: officers of the BPP represent Betty Shabazz as security escorts. 

April 1967: Denzil Dowell in Richmond protest. 

May 1967: Thirty BPP members head to the state capital of California with guns, bringing first exposure to the national media.

The party's early strategies exploited contemporary open arms legislation to shield supporters of the party while police were applied. This move was made to monitor police brutality cases by remotely tracking police cars in the vicinity. In the presence of a cop, the members of the group quoted legislation to prove that they had done nothing wrong and to intimidate any officer who abused its rights. In Oakland, between late 1966 and early 1967, a small handful of participants were attracted by the Black Panther Party for Self-military Defense's police patrols. In February 1967, the number increased marginally when Betty Shabazz's Widow Malcolm X and keynote speaker for a congress held in his honor gave an armed escort at San Francisco Airport.

The Black Panthers' emphasis on militancy was often seen as open animosity that fostered the image of violence, while early actions of the Panthers were largely directed at encouraging social questions and exercising their right to bear weapons. The Panthers used the California law which allowed a rifle or weapons loaded, as long as it was shown openly and no one was indicated. This was usually achieved while observing and monitoring police actions, with Panthers claiming that this focus on violent militancy and the open use of their guns was important to safeguard individuals from police brutality.

• Chronology 1967

July, 1967: Conference held in Oakland United Front Against Fascism. 

The Federal Office of Science (FBI) is launching the COINTELPRO programme in August 1967. 

April 1968: murdered by Martin Luther King. Nationally, protests break out. April June, 1968: Panthers' squad led by Eldridge Cleaver ambushes police officers from the Oakland area. Hutton murdered Panther Bobby.

• In July 1969, the BPP arranged a conference of about 5,000 participant delegates from a variety of organizations in Oakland, United Front Against Fascism.John Frey, Oakland police chief, was shot to death in an altercation with Huey P. Newton on 28 October 1967, after a traffic stop where he had suffered gunfire from Newton and backup officer, Herbert Heanes. At the point, Newton believed he'd been wrongly charged contributing to the Party's "Free Huey!" movement. He was convicted of volunteer murders at trial, but his charges were eventually reversed. The assassination of the police got the progressive American left ever more recognition of the party. After three years, his conviction was overturned on appeal, Newton was released.
• In 1968, the Black Panther Party tried to shorten its name and concentrate on political events. Members were urged to bear weapons to stand up for abuse. The party was comprised primarily of brothers outside the block. An influx of college students joined the group. In the party, this generated some friction. Some members wanted to support the social services of the Panthers, while others wanted to preserve their street mentality.
• Iconography and panther slogans spread. At the Summer Olympics in 1968, two American medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave the American National Hymn the black power salute. They were disqualified from any future Olympic Games by the International Olympic Committee.

Needs of the city's black community met

• Survival programs

The children's free breakfast initiative was particularly important as it acted as a space to teach young people about the Black community's present situation and the steps taken by the party in tackling this condition. "As they ate their meals, [the Party's] founders gave them lessons of emancipation consisting of party messages and Black culture. The Party has been able through this initiative to manipulate youthful minds and develop their links with societies, as well as to generalize support for their philosophies.

Community clothing delivery, democratic classes and the economy, free medical clinics, self-defense and first-aid courses, transportations of prisoners to upstate jails for family members, emergency service ambulance programs, prevention of opioid and alcohol and the testing of sickle-cell disease, were all included in survival programs. The free medical clinics were particularly valuable as they modeled on how the future should function with free medical facilities, which were ultimately set up in 13 locations around the globe.

• Black Panther Party Liberation Schools

The Black Panther Party (BPP) actively advocated mass education, largely because of its belief in the need for private organizations to catalyze community progress. They demanded a fair education for all Black people in their ten-point program which laid down the principles and priorities of the Party.

• Intercommunal Youth Institute

The Richmond Black Panthers opened the first Emancipation School in July 1969 with students getting brunch and snacks. On July 17 of the next year another school was opened in Mount. Vernon New York. These schools were casual and closer to kindergarten or summer activities. While these schools were the first to be opened, the Oakland Unified School District, one of California's lowest scoring districts, opened the first full-time and longest-term Libération school in January, 1971.

• Oakland Community School

In 1974, when the school was more interested in enrolling, the administrators agreed to change the name of the school to Oakland Community School in a larger building. The school graduated its first class within this year. While between 1974-1977 the student body continued to range from 50 to 150, the fundamental values of individualized education were still in place. In September 1977, Governor Edmund Brown Jr. and the California Legislature gave the school a special award for 'setting the benchmark for state-level primary education.