Search

Berkeley, CA: Campus Friends of SNCC, [1966]. 2 pages (single sheet, printed both sides). 8-1/2 by 11 inches. In 1966, Stokely Carmichael, a leader and later head of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, set up the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), in rural Alabama. The group organized the black residents of an overwhelmingly African American region of the state to secure voting rights and elected offices. By state law, the LCFO was required to adopt an emblem. They chose the black panther to contrast with the ruling Democratic Party's white rooster.

This flyer announces an organizational meeting to support the LCFO, emphasizing its informal name, the "Black Panther Party." Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed their Black Panther Party three months later, on October 15, 1966. Rare with no copies in OCLC (although copies are in the Litwack collection at Yale and the Yuen archive at UC Berkeley). This is one of the first uses of the black panther as a political symbol in the San Francisco Bay Area and directly connects the (mostly white) local SNCC organization with the origins of the Black Power movement. ISBN: 281AIB1021042.