The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally established as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in October 1966, arose during the so-called Black Power era. But the Panthers were not a Black Power group as such. In fact they were, almost from the beginning, at odds with nearly all Black Power organizations, primarily because Panther leaders Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver gave priority to class over race in their political analysis and were early advocates of working with white radicals. On the crucial question of opposition to the escalating war in Vietnam, the Panthers and key sectors of the Students for a Democratic Society, the main organization of white leftists in the late 1960s, developed in symbiosis a revolutionary, anti-imperialist position on what became the most pressing issue of the day.

Black Power groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) also...