Black Panthers For Beginners

A crowd of onlookers gawked from the sidewalk as four young black men dressed in black leather jackets and berets leaped from a Volkswagen, each of them wielding shotguns with bandoliers strapped across their bodies. The young men surrounded two white police officers who had accosted a black man and had him spread-eagled against a building.The young men did not say a word as the police officers watched them nervously, their eyes fixed on the shotguns. One of the young men held a large law book in his handThis was the Black Panther Party in ideal action. The real story--the whole story--was both more and less heroic.So begins Black Panthers For Beginners. The late 1960s, when the Panthers captured the imagination of the nations youth, was a time of regulation.