By the mid-1960s, many in the civil rights movement felt that the nonviolent civil disobedience embodied by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was insufficient to respond to the entrenched, pervasive racial inequality in the United States. The gains made by the civil rights movement engendered a white backlash that included an increase in police violence and other white supremacist violence against Black people. A series of uprisings in Northern cities—characterized as riots in the press—occurred as Black communities recognized that redlining and other discriminatory policies had locked them out of American prosperity.

The Black power movement arose within this context. While it was always a diverse movement comprising many often-conflicting viewpoints, it was predicated on the belief that Black communities must build self-sufficiency and must be prepared to defend themselves against white supremacist violence, using violence in response when necessary. Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party (BPP) in 1966, and this organization became movement’s primary base of power. Assata Shakur first joined the BPP in Oakland, CA, shortly after graduating from the City College of New York. Though she was often at odds with BPP leadership, the Party was a key influence on her evolving political ideology, and she in turn had a profound influence on the direction of the Party.