>Since being a gun-carrying black militant was illegal for all practical
>purposes,
Yup, even if the law was technically on your side at first:
http://law.jrank.org/pages/4775/Black-Panther-Party.html
[...]
....HUEY P. NEWTON, age 23, a first-year law student. With his friend Bobby Seale, age 30, Newton founded the BPP, with the intent of monitoring police officers when they made arrests. This bold tacticalready being employed in Minneapolis by the nascent AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT (AIM)was entirely legal. Also legal under California state law was the practice of carrying a loaded weapon, as long as it was visible. But legal or not, the sight of Newton and Seale bearing shotguns as they rushed to the scene of an arrest had enormous shock value. To police officers and citizens alike, this represented a huge change from the previously nonviolent demonstrations of civil rights activists. Although they did not use the guns and maintained the legally required eight to ten feet from officers, the Panthers inspired fear. They also quickly won respect from neighbors who saw them as standing up to the predominantly white police force. The law books they carriedand from which they read criminal suspects their rightsappeared to many in the community to give the Panthers a kind of legitimacy.
[...]
Read more: <http://law.jrank.org/pages/4775/Black-Panther-Party.html#ixzz13glsIS5t>Black Panther Party - Further Readings - Panthers, Police, Fbi, Seale, and African http://law.jrank.org/pages/4775/Black-Panther-Party.html#ixzz13glsIS5t