Assorted documents found in the FBI files of Stokely Carmichael from 1966 provide a glimpse of the degree to which the federal government under the Lyndon B. Johnson administration sought to curtail and liquidate the advancing civil rights and black power movements of the time period.

The BPP’s revolutionary legacy offers many useful lessons in organizing work to create a just and emancipated world. But radical organizations and organizers should be wary of the BPP’s top-down leadership approach. Moreover, the party was ill-advised in believing that the lumpen, especially the criminal elements, could serve as a revolutionary force.