898 56th Street - Lil' Bobby Hutton's House

by Sara Azgui-Colwell
     

898 56th street Bobby Hutton lived at this house. He was famous because he was one of the first members and the youngest.

809 57th Street - Bobby Seale's House

by Sara Azgui-Colwell




















809 57th Street - Bobby Seale lived here. He was important to the Black Panther Party because he was the co-founder with Huey Newton.  This could be considered the 1st Black Panther Office.

"It's All Good" Bakery

By Talia Fuller

The "It's All Good" Bakery at 5624 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, is the site of the first Black Panther office.It was the first head quarters in the Black Panther Party that Huey Newton and Bobby Seale met up for the meeting and calls. they did community programs like the free breakfast program, so that children can eat and study more in school so that they won't go hungry.

The Murder of Huey Newton

  by Marionna Fields

Twenty years later, at 1456 Center Street, Dr. Huey Newton was murder at the age 47, a few blocks from where he first began organizing for the Black Panther Party
Lee Ackens son (Tyron Robinson) killed Huey Newton because Tyron wanted a reputation about himself.

Old Merritt Junior College

by Sara Azgui-Colwell

Old Merritt Junior College was located at 57th Street and Martin Luther King Junior Way (formerly Grove Street). It is now the site of Children's Hospital Oakland.  Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and David Hilliard all went to college here.  The City of Oakland decided to move Merritt to the Oakland Hills because city officials did not like all of the activism going on in such a central place.

Traffic Signal - Corner of 55th and Market Streets

by Sara Azgui-Colwell

This traffic light was placed here on August 1, 1967 because three or four kids got hit and killed by cars. It took the City of Oakland a long time to set up the street light but The Black Panthers directed the traffic until they did.

Office of Economic Development - 5500 Market Street

          The Office of Economic Development at 5500 Market Street was the first official Black Panther Party location.  It was also known as the North Oakland Neighborhood Anti-Poverty Center.   Here, on October 15, 1966, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, the founders of the Black Panther Party, wrote their 10-Point Program, which could be considered a combination of a Bill of Rights and a Declaration of Independence.  The Ten-Point Program reads:

What We Want Now!

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.
2. We want full employment for our people.
3. We want an end to the robbery by the white men of our Black Community. (later changed to "we want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our black and oppressed communities.")
4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.
6. We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.
7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people.
8. We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.
9. We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Black Communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.
10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.

What We Believe:

1. We believe that Black People will not be free until we are able to determine our own destiny.
2. We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the White American business men will not give full employment, the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
3. We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as redistribution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities: the Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered 6,000,000 Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50,000,000 Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.
4. We believe that if the White landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make a decent housing for its people.
5. We believe in an educational system that will give our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.
6. We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the White racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.
7. We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States gives us the right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self-defense.
8. We believe that all Black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
9. We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that Black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peers. A peer is a persons from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical, and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the Black community from which the Black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of “the average reasoning man” of the Black community.
10. When in the course of human events, it become necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, and that all men are created equal that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,--that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its power in a such a form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accused. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, and their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards of their future security.

If you look closely on the left side of the picture, you will see a traffic light.  This light was installed at the request of Newton, Seale, and other Black Panther Party members.  It is explained in another blog post.