Newton in October in Oakland, California. From onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. In , J. Edgar Hoover , the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI , described the party as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country. Huey Newton allegedly killed officer John Frey in , and Eldridge Cleaver Minister of Information led an ambush in of Oakland police officers, in which two officers were wounded and Panther treasurer Bobby Hutton was killed.
The party suffered many internal conflicts, resulting in the murder of Alex Rackley. Government persecution initially contributed to the party's growth among African Americans and the political left, who both valued the party as a powerful force against de facto segregation and the US military draft during the Vietnam War. The party's history is controversial. Scholars have characterized the Black Panther Party as the most influential black power organization of the late s, and "the strongest link between the domestic Black Liberation Struggle and global opponents of American imperialism ".
The sweeping migration transformed the Bay Area as well as cities throughout the West and North , altering the once white-dominated demographics. As the wartime and post-war jobs which drew much of the black migration "fled to the suburbs along with white residents", the black population was concentrated in poor "urban ghettos" with high unemployment and substandard housing and was mostly excluded from political representation, top universities, and the middle class.
Civil rights tactics proved incapable of redressing these conditions, and the organizations that had "led much of the nonviolent civil disobedience ", such as SNCC and CORE , went into decline. In late October , Huey P. Dissatisfied with the failure of these organizations to directly challenge police brutality and appeal to the "brothers on the block", Huey and Bobby took matters into their own hands. After the police killed Matthew Johnson, an unarmed young black man in San Francisco, Newton observed the violent insurrection that followed.
He had an epiphany that would distinguish the Black Panther Party from the multitude of Black Power organizations. Newton saw the explosive rebellious anger of the ghetto as a social force and believed that if he could stand up to the police, he could organize that force into political power.
