ABSTRACT
Since many of the black wartime migrants remained in the Bay Area after the end of international hostilities in 1945, the population boom of the 1940s and 1950s became a permanent feature of Bay Area society. The children of the migrant generation, black teens in the 1960s became the base of that decade’s Black Revolution. At the pinnacle of that revolution was the Black Panther Party (BPP). Organized in the fall of 1966, the BPP would become an international sensation by the end of the decade, but its roots stretched back far into the history of African Americans in the Bay Area. In 1969, Bobby Seale unveiled a new series of party programs that addressed the employment, housing, education, and social service needs of the Bay Area’s low-income communities. The party’s Community Survival Programs ranged from the famous Free Breakfast for Children Program to Free Food and Free Shoes programs, Free Sickle Cell Anemia Tests, and legal aid projects.
