The rapid rise and fall of the Black Panthers

1. Circa 1970, “43 percent of blacks under 21 years of age [have]…a great respect for the [Black Panther Party].”  Many thousands of young black people joined the party.

2. The North Vietnamese “discussed releasing POWs in exchange for the release of Panthers from U.S. jails.”

3. Algeria granted the Panthers national diplomatic status and an embassy building of their own.

4. By mid-1972, the Party “was basically a local Oakland community organization once again.”

5. The Party formally closed its last office in 1982.

That is all from Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, pp.2-3.  Here is my previous post about the Black Panthers.