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Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, University of Duisburg-Essen, course: A Survey of American History, language: English, abstract: America in the sixties was above all a time of protest in which the minorities includingAfro- Americans as well as women began to plead for equal rights. Manyorganizations were founded during this time and every movement applied its ownmethods in order to achieve its goal. The Black Panther Party was one of theseorganizations which developed out of the Black Power Movement, a radicaliseddevelopment in the Civil Right Movement, which was until then famous to use nonviolentmethods of resistance in order to achieve their aims. This essay will deal withthe importance of the Black Panther Party for the emancipation of Afro-Americansduring the time of the Civil Rights Movement, which success the Party could achieveto end the discrimination of blacks and which impact the party or their leaders stillmight have today. In the first part the social situation of Afro-Americans in the sixtieswill be described in detail and in which areas racism became obvious. Next there willbe a historical overview of main events during the Civil Right Movement andespecially of the different positions that began to develop within the movement. Inparticular, the importance of Malcolm X for the Black Power will be mentioned. BlackPower is famous as a slogan and an idea but also resulted in a movement. Thesecond part of this essay will deal with the development of the Black Panther Party.Here it is important to know from which social background the founders came fromand which kind of people they wanted to address with their ideology. Furthermore, Iwill focus on the theories on which the ideologies and strategies of the Black PantherParty are based on. While the second part concentrates mainly on the theory behindthe party's activities the third part gives an idea of their actions and campaigns andas well as of important events that marked the history of the Party and demonstratedthe great impact of the Black Panther Party on Afro-Americans. The last chapterdescribes the loss of the party's influence, their division and the dissolution of theparty in the beginning of the 1980ies. Finally, I will give a comment on the importanceand lasting impact of the Black Panther Party for the present situation of Afro-Americans.[...]
