October 15, 1966: The Black Panther Party Is Founded

Bobby Seale (left) and Huey Newton

October 15, 1966: The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is founded in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. Its core practice was its open carry (of firearms) patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department.

From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.

In 1969, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the party as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country." The FBI sabotaged the party with an illegal and covert counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, all designed to undermine and criminalize the party.

The FBI was involved in the 1969 assassinations of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and Mark Clark, who were killed in a raid by the Chicago Police Department. Black Panther Party members were involved in many fatal firefights with police. Newton allegedly killed officer John Frey in 1967, and the Party's Minister of Information, Eldridge Cleaver, led an ambush in 1968 of Oakland police officers, in which two officers were wounded and Panther treasurer Bobby Hutton was killed.

Cleaver's collection of essays, Soul On Ice, was published in 1968, and was practically a sacred text for what became known as the Black Power movement. However, while many found it, and the Black Panthers, to be liberating, the book's essays were written in prison, and included details of the crimes that put him there. Cleaver was an excellent writer, but, at the time, he was not a good person.

Party membership peaked at around 5,000 in 1970, and gradually declined over the next decade, due to vilification by the mainstream press and infighting largely fomented by COINTELPRO. The Party dissolved in 1982.

Newton was murdered in Oakland in 1989, by another black activist. Cleaver became a Mormon and a Republican, and died of cancer in 1998. As of October 15, 2022, Seale, who became one of the Chicago Eight, is still alive.

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October 15, 1966 was a Saturday. The baseball season had ended 6 days earlier, with the Baltimore Orioles sweeping the World Series from the Los Angeles Dodgers. No NFL or AFL games were played. These notable college football games were:

* Number 1 Michigan State beat Ohio State, 11-8 at Ohio Stadium in Columbus. Michigan State won the Big Ten Conference title, but the Big Ten then had a rule that the same team could not represent it in the Rose Bowl 2 years in a row, and another rule that they could only send teams to the Rose Bowl, so despite finishing the season without losing a game -- although being tied at the end of the regular season, 10-10 by Notre Dame -- Michigan State didn't got to a bowl game. Those stupid rules were repealed in time for the 1975 season.

* Number 2 Notre Dame beat North Carolina, 32-0 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana. Notre Dame refused all bowl invitations in those days, not accepting one until the 1969 season.

* Number 3 Alabama beat Tennessee, 11-10 at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville. 'Bama won the Southeastern Conference title.

* Number 4 UCLA, the University of California at Los Angeles, beat Penn State, 49-11 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

* Number 5 USC, the University of Southern California, which also played home games at the L.A. Coliseum, beat Stanford, 21-7 at the original Stanford Stadium in the San Francisco suburb of Palo Alto, California. USC went on to win the Pacific-Eight Conference title. In 1982, UCLA began playing home games at the Rose Bowl in nearby Pasadena.

* Number 6 Nebraska beat Kansas State, 21-10 at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln. Nebraska won the Big Eight Conference title, but despite that usually meaning a bid to the Orange Bowl, they went to the Sugar Bowl instead, where they lost to Alabama. Despite finishing unbeaten and untied, Alabama did not win the National Championship. Nor did Michigan State. Both the AP and UPI gave it to Notre Dame.

* Number 7 Georgia Tech beat Auburn, 17-3 at Clifford Hare Stadium (later Jordan-Hare Stadium) in Auburn, Alabama.

* Number 8 Florida beat North Carolina State, 17-10 at Carter Stadium (later Carter-Finley Stadium) in Raleigh, North Carolina. Florida went to the Orange Bowl, where they lost to Georgia Tech.

* Number 9 Purdue beat Michigan, 22-21 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. As the 2nd-place team in the Big Ten, behind Michigan State, which had gone to the Rose Bowl the season before, Purdue was sent to the Rose Bowl instead, where they beat USC. It remains their only Rose Bowl win.

* Number 10 Baylor had the week off.

* Southern Methodist University beat Rice University, 28-24 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. SMU won the Southwest Conference title

* Among the service academies, Army beat Rutgers, 14-9 at Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway, New Jersey; Navy beat Pittsburgh, 24-7 at Pitt Stadium; and Air Force lost to Oregon, 17-6 at Falcon Stadium in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

* Colgate beat Princeton, 7-0 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton, New Jersey.

* In a rivalry game, Arkansas beat Texas, 12-7 at Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas.

* In another rivalry game, for the bronze pig trophy named Floyd of Rosedale, Minnesota beat Iowa, 17-0 at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis.

* The night before, Georgia lost to the University of Miami, 7-6 at the Orange Bowl stadium in Miami. That would be their only loss of the season, but, even though it wasn't a league game, the fact that they didn't play Alabama during the regular season meant that Alabama, with the higher national ranking, were awarded the SEC title. That 1 loss may have cost Georgia the National Championship, as they beat SMU in the Cotton Bowl, and finished ranked Number 4. Had they gotten just 1 more field goal against Miami, they might have edged Notre Dame (and Michigan State, and Alabama) for the National Championship.

The NHL season started 4 days later. The Boston Celtics opened the NBA season by defeating the San Francisco Warriors, 121-113 at the Boston Garden. Rick Barry scored 41 points for the Warriors, but, as usual, the Celtics had a more balanced team, led by 29 points from Sam Jones.

Bill Russell scored only 8 points, but he had other things on his mind. Namely, he was now a player-coach, the 1st black coach in NBA history, and, unless you count Fritz Polland of the 1st NFL Champions, the 1920 Akron Pros (and the NFL was hardly a major league at that point), the 1st black coach in the history of North American major league sports. That this happened on the birthday of Willie O'Ree, and in the building he also called home with the Bruins, is interesting, but not especially relevant to Russell's story.

The Celtics would fall to the Philadelphia 76ers in the Eastern Conference Finals this season, but Russell would lead them to the NBA title in 1968 and 1969 -- making him the most recent player-coach to lead a team to a World Championship.

Alas, while Bill Russell is still one of the Top 10 players in NBA history, he didn't do so well as a coach when he didn't have Bill Russell as a player: With himself playing, his coaching record is 162-83, for a winning percentage of .661; otherwise, with the 1974-77 Seattle SuperSonics and the 1987-88 Sacramento Kings, he's 100-122, .450; overall, 341-290, for a winning percentage of .540.

Also on this day, the Chicago Bulls made their NBA debut. Guy Rodgers scored 36 points, and they beat the St. Louis Hawks, 104-97 at the Kiel Auditorium. For most of their history, the Bulls will be at least good, and, at times, historically good.

Also on this day, the English soccer team I would one day begin supporting, Arsenal, lost 3-1 to Yorkshire team Leeds United at the Arsenal Stadium, nicknamed Highbury for its neighborhood, in North London. This was the senior Arsenal debut for left back Bob McNab, who would be a key figure on the Arsenal team that won the 1970 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, and both the Football League and the FA Cup, "the Double," in 1971.

April 29, 1972: Diahann Carroll's Party for Shirley Chisholm

April 29, 1972: Singer and actress Diahann Carroll hosts a party for Representative Shirley Chisholm of New York, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President.

Shirley Anita St. Hill was born on November 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York City. Her father was from British Guiana, now the South American nation of Guyana. Her mother was from the Caribbean island of Barbados. Both countries received their independence from Great Britain in 1966. Her parents met in Barbados before coming to America, and moved back there, with Shirley living there from ages 5 to 9, before the family returned to Brooklyn.

Shirley earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brooklyn College, and a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University, both in New York City. In 1949, she married Conrad Chisholm, a Jamaican immigrant who was working as a private investigator. The marriage produced no children, and lasted until a divorce in 1977.

Shirley worked in child care, and in 1953, she worked on the successful campaign to elect Lewis Flagg Jr. as the 1st black Judge in Brooklyn. She joined the Brooklyn Democratic Club and the League of Women Voters. In 1964, she was elected to the New York Assembly. In 1968, with the campaign slogan, "Unbought and Unbossed," she became the 1st black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1971, she became a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Women's Political Caucus.

Chisholm announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President on January 25, 1972. She was the 1st woman, and the 1st black person, to enter a major party's Primaries. Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine had her name placed in nomination for President at the 1964 Republican Convention, and she received 27 Delegates, making her the 1st woman to receive such an honor from either major party; but she did not enter any Primaries.

In her announcement speech in Brooklyn, Chisholm declared, "I am not the candidate of Black America, although I am Black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that."

She didn't enter the New Hampshire Primary. She thought she could do well in Florida, which had a lot of black voters and a lot of ex-New Yorkers. She got 3 percent of the vote there. She also got 3 percent in Massachusetts. She didn’t top that until May, after several candidates had dropped out.

Enter Diahann Carroll. The Bronx native had starred alongside Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte in Carmen Jones, the all-black film version of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen; and with Dandridge, Sidney Poitier (with whom Carroll was then having an affair), Sammy Davis Jr. and Pearl Bailey in the 1959 film version of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.

In 1962, for starring in No Strings, she became the 1st black woman to win the Tony Award for Best Actress in a musical. From 1968 to 1971, she starred as the titular nurse in the NBC sitcom Julia. She was a black woman and a star, and a widowed single mother, but not a slave or a servant. This was huge. And she'd had hit songs, and had sung them on The Ed Sullivan Show. So she had some pull in show business.

As political analyst Juanita Tolliver put it, in an article for Ms. Magazine to promote her book A More Perfect Party: The Night Shirley Chisholm and Diahann Carroll Reshaped Politics:

She knew what it meant to be a Black woman driving substantive, positive change that resisted social norms and stereotypes. Having carved through the steel of discrimination and structural limitations in the entertainment industry, Carroll saw clear parallels between her career and Chisholm’s political goals.

So she threw the fundraising party for Chisholm at her estate in the Hollywood Hills. But this would be no ordinary party. The usual Los Angeles business lords, including studio executives, were going to have to mix with people of her choosing, including actors like Paul Newman and Goldie Hawn; David Frost, the edgy British journalist who was Carroll's current boyfriend; Berry Gordy Jr., who had just moved the company he founded, Motown Records, from his hometown of Detroit to the new media center of L.A.; and Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton. As Tolliver put it:

Carroll leveraged her social capital to create an audience of heavy hitters for Chisholm, and Chisholm had them all enthralled as only she could. She knew that by engaging these figures with Carroll’s support, her reach could expand to their fans across music, film, television and media.

Did the fundraising party help? Not much. Chisholm got just 7 percent of the vote in North Carolina. She won the New Jersey Primary on June 6, but only one other candidate entered it, as most remaining candidates chose to focus on California, whose Primary was held on the same day. There, she got 4 percent. It was Senator George McGovern of South Dakota who was building a coalition of old liberals and young activists -- a coalition that would fall apart as the younger ones acted up at the Democratic Convention in Miami Beach.

Later in life, Chisholm said she got more backlash from being a woman running for President than from being a black person who had run. She continued to be re-elected until retiring in 1982, and died in 2005, at age 80. Carroll built a career as a nightclub singer, married singer Vic Damone and toured with him, and died in 2019.

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April 29, 1972 was a Saturday. These baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Minnesota Twins, 2-0 at Yankee Stadium. Jim Kaat allowed 4 hits over 6 innings, and Dave LaRoche finished the 4-hit shutout, outpitching Fritz Peterson. Harmon Killebrew went 2-for-3 with a walk and 2 RBIs. Rod Carew went 1-for-4. Rusty Torres had 2 of the Yankees' 4 hits, with Bobby Murcer and Gene Michael getting the others.

* The New York Mets lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers, 11-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Tommy John went the distance for the win, while Jerry Koosman couldn't get out of the 1st inning. In his lone season with the Dodgers, Frank Robinson went 3-for-4 with a solo home run.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the California Angels, 6-1 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Mike Cuellar outpitched Andy Messersmith. Brooks Robinson went 2-for-4 with a walk and 3 RBIs. Don Baylor went 3-for-3 with a home run, a walk and 3 RBIs.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 9-5 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Hank Aaron went 1-for-5 with a walk and an RBI. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-4 with a walk. Willie Stargell went 2-for-5 with a home run and 2 RBIs.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox, 6-1 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Mickey Lolich went the distance for the win, while knuckleballer Wilbur Wood didn't get out of the 3rd inning. Al Kaline went 0-for-2, but had a walk and an RBI on a sacrifice fly. Mickey Stanley and Bill Freehan hit home runs.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Cubs, 3-2 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The normally sure-handed Cub shortstop Don Kessinger mishandled Ted Uhlaender's ground ball in the top of the 9th inning, allowing Cesar Gerónimo to score the winning run. Pete Rose went 0-for-4. Johnny Bench went 2-for-4.

* The Oakland Athletics beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 2-1 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Jim "Catfish" Hunter was the winning pitcher. Reggie Jackson went 1-for-5.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Kansas City Royals, 3-1 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

* The Texas Rangers beat the Boston Red Sox, 7-6 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas. Ken Suarez singled Dave Nelson home with the winning run in the bottom of the 9th inning.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Houston Astros, 4-2 at the Astrodome in Houston. Pitcher Ken Forsch mishandled a bunt by Joe Hague, allowing Luis Meléndez to score the winning run in the top of the 11th inning. Lou Brock went 0-for-4, but drew a walk and stole a base. Joe Torre went 3-for-5 with a home run and 2 RBIs.

* The San Diego Padres beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-0 at San Diego Stadium (later Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium). Steve Arlin pitched a 5-hit shutout, outpitching Steve Carlton. That season, the Phillies losing was the usual, but Carlton losing wasn't: He went 27-10. He also got 2 of the Phils' 5 hits that day.

* And the Montreal Expos beat the San Francisco Giants, 2-1 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Mike Torrez outpitched Steve Stone. Willie Mays went 0-for-3 with a walk. Willie McCovey did not play.

Football was out of season. The NBA Finals were between Games 1 and 2, and the Los Angeles Lakers would beat the New York Knicks in 5 games. The American Basketball Association Playoffs were in progress, and 1 game was played: The Virginia Squires beat the New York Nets, 116-107 at the Hampton Coliseum outside Norfolk in Hampton, Virginia. Ray Scott led the Squires with 26 points, while Rick Barry scored 34 for the Nets.

The Stanley Cup Playoffs were between the Semifinals and the Finals. The Boston Bruins would beat the New York Rangers in 6 games.