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Abstract
Abstract
The Black Panther Party for Self‐Defense (BPP), founded October 15, 1966 by the late Dr. Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California, arguably represented the premier Black left organization of the African American freedom struggle. Throughout its 16‐year history (October 1966 through June 1982) the BPP situated Black protest within a global framework. An important, yet often ignored, aspect of the legacy of the Black Panther Party has been its international dimensions and global role in the New Left Activism of the late 1960s. This essay illuminates the international character of the BPP through the prism of the “world‐historical movement” construct developed by George Kalsiaficas in The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 (Boston: South End Press, 1987). This conceptual framework permits one to ascertain the convergence of Panther politics‐ideas, tactics, and goals‐with those of the global insurgency of the 1960s. We examine the global emulators of the Panther model of political activism and analyze the Revolutionary theorists and activists that shaped Panther praxis. The essay concludes with a discussion of the international linkages which prominently situated the BPP within the New Left global network.