(CNN)Fifty years ago today, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was founded in Oakland, California, by activists Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. The group quickly shortened its name to the Black Panther Party (BPP) and emerged as the most iconic revolutionary organization to come out of the Black Power era and the larger global political maelstrom of the 1960s -- and one whose causes still resonate today.
The Panthers, inspired by Malcolm X's revolutionary black nationalism and the socialist revolutions in Cuba, Africa and across the Third World, issued a 10-point program, divided into sections titled "What We Want" and "What We Need," that called for ending police brutality, decent housing for black people and the radical reform of the criminal justice system.
Yet in a very real sense the Panthers were ahead of their time in organizing against institutional racism, war and violence by any means necessary. Inspired by Malcolm X, the Panthers adopted a dual strategy for black liberation that featured armed selfdefense and engaged community organizing. Their 10-point program reads like a rough policy outline to create a new world. Thousands of young black women and men undertook this mission, against long odds, during the 1960s and 1970s. Like their modern day BLM counterparts, the Panthers raged against not only racial injustice but the ideology of white supremacy that normalized black oppression.
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