How Did The Black Panther Party Impact Society

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The impact of the Black Panther Party, along with other Black Nationalist groups and leaders, can still be felt today. Research, movies, and documentaries continue to be made on the impact of race on American society, and how it is intertwined with the BPP especially. With movements like the Black Lives Matter movement, and songs like Beyoncé’s ‘Formation’, Americans continue to look into the racial past of the United States and the FBI’s goal to obliterate the Black Panther Party, as the argument of whether or not they were equivalent to terrorist and hate groups like the KKK still goes on today.
The Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) seeks to fight against many of the same principles that the Black Panther Party once stood for. Formed in …show more content…

Despite the FBI’s fear of the BPP’s Breakfast for Children Program, a few years afterwards, the same free breakfast for children program became something that was incorporated into the nation’s public school system. The U.S. Government, “Inspired in part by the ideas and actions of the Black Panthers in the 1960s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture started the School Breakfast Program [in 1975].” The Black Panther Party was revolutionary, as social welfare programs like the free breakfast for children were programs never seen before in the United States, and were groundbreaking in that they sought to help to the poor. The program had been extremely successful, and that’s was scared J. Edgar Hoover the most. He feared that the BPP would be viewed positively, as he realized the group made a positive impact on society when he wanted public opinion of the BPP to be negative. The Black Panther Party’s ideas had been “…taken up by state and institutionalized.” The government, embarrassed and in fear of the BPP, tore the group apart, and then proceeded to take programs the group had created for their