Tours Feature Sites Key to History of Black Panther Party

Tours featuring landmarks and street corners significant to the history of the Black Panthers--the revolutionary political party of the 1960s--began Saturday.

Sponsored by the Huey P. Newton Foundation, the bus and self-guided walking tours include the homes where party founders Newton and Bobby Seale spent their childhoods and the bakery that was once a Black Panther office.

They also include the intersection where a police officer was shot and killed during a struggle with party members in 1967 and the Center Street sidewalk where a drug dealer killed Newton eight years ago.

It’s not surprising that such tours would be established, organizers say.

“We are very much a part of California history and certainly a part of Oakland history,” said David Hilliard, the Black Panthers’ first chief of staff and director of the foundation.

For those who are old enough to remember, the foundation wants to temper the pervasive media image of armed thugs storming the statehouse or shouting down politicians on national TV.

The tour offers evidence of the good they did, such as founding the first community-based free breakfast program for inner-city children in the nation.

But tour stops at the shootout sites and desolate corner where Newton died after years of legal and drug troubles acknowledge that the organization had frequent brushes with violence and tragedy.