# Black Pather Party: Over all, good or bad. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 12, 2016, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-pather-party-over-all-good-or-bad/745932 "2016-02-12T14:37:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2016, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-pather-party-over-all-good-or-bad/745932/41 "2016-02-20T03:54:36Z")
Overall I’d say they didn’t achieve what they wanted. Still, The Milford Act shows the crazy shit Republicans will do to keep guns out the hands of black folk. Which amuses me. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2016, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-pather-party-over-all-good-or-bad/745932/42 "2016-02-20T03:57:02Z")
Mulford act! God damn phone autoincorrect! ---
**Author:** ![chaika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chaika/32/405_2.png) [@chaika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaika)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2016, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-pather-party-over-all-good-or-bad/745932/43 "2016-02-20T21:56:18Z")
As a community organization, the Black Panther Party implemented a variety of social programs that were entirely positive: free breakfasts for children, free health clinics, etc. As an organization dedicated to raising awareness, the BPP helped bring to public consciousness the issues of police brutality and unequal treatment within the criminal justice system. Sadly, these issues are still with us and in some ways have become much worse. The use of armed individuals as a self-defense force was quite a brilliant (and intentionally provocative) strategy. They used the legal right to carry weapons to their advantage. Although personally I am a tremendous proponent of gun control, I do entirely understand the BPP’s motivations for arming themselves in the context of the 1960s (the conflicts within the civil rights movement, liberation struggles throughout the world, the revolutionary fervor of the day, the very real sense of disempowerment and oppression within the black community, etc.). Some individuals within the party were more extreme than others, undoubtedly, and I can’t condone the use of violence. However, I definitely sympathize with the underlying motivations that inspired the founding of the BPP. The FBI behaved atrociously in its attempts to destroy the BPP, including but not limited to the assassination of Fred Hampton. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2016, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-pather-party-over-all-good-or-bad/745932/44 "2016-02-20T22:18:44Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Anything targeted by Hoover’s COINTELPRO can’t be all bad. > **[COINTELPRO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO)** > > COINTELPRO (a syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political organizations that the FBI perceived as subversive. Groups and individuals targeted by the FBI included feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti-Vietnam War organi The FBI has used covert ... > [@](#): > > Overall, COINTELPRO encompassed disruption and sabotage of the Socialist Workers Party (1961), **the Ku Klux Klan** (1964), the Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party (1967), and the entire New Left social/political movement, which included antiwar, community, and religious groups (1968). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-pather-party-over-all-good-or-bad/745932.md?page=2)