and buses for families who needed transportation to visit loved ones in prison. These programs served thousands of Black Americans across the country and propelled the organization into the vanguard of a burgeoning revolutionary movement. Indeed, the Black Panther Party dedicated its activities to the survival of the Black community “pending revolution.”

“Black Panther Party "survival programs" included food programs, health clinics, and buses for families who needed transportation to visit loved ones in prison.”

Huey Newton was pivotal in rooting the Black Panther Party's political activities in the science of Marxism and class struggle. Newton spoke often of class. In his essay critiquing the white anarchist movement (1968), Newton clearly highlights the importance of class in the US:

This is a class society; it always has been. This reactionary classthe colonial peoples in Vietnam, China, and Algeria who were embattled in national liberation struggles against the colonial powers. Newton applied the works of Karl Marx and Frantz Fanon to the particular conditions of Black America, leading the Black Panther Party to set up solidarity offices in Algeria and the DPRK. The organization also offered Black Panther members to fight alongside the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam against US military forces. He justified the action simply:

A small ruling circle of seventy-six major companies controls the American economy. This elite not only exploits and oppresses Black people within the United States; they are exploiting and oppressing everyone in the world because of the overdeveloped nature of capitalism. Having expanded industry within the United States until it can grow