The Black Panther Party for Self Defense established its Seattle chapter in the spring of 1968, after Aaron Dixon, Elmer Dixon, Anthony Ware, Garry Owens and several other future Panthers attended a memorial service in San Francisco for 17 year-old Bobby Hutton, who had been killed in a shootout with local police. While in Oakland, the Seattle youth met BPP Chairman Bobby Seale, whose subsequent visit to Seattle marked the beginning of the Seattle chapter, one of the first authorized chapters outside of California. The Seattle chapter also lasted longer than most, surviving until 1978.
This image show Seattle Black Panther Party members holding a press conference at Black Panther headquarters on July 1, 1968. Earlier that day, three Panthers--Aaron Dixon, Larry Gossett, and Carl Miller--were released on bail after being convicted of unlawful assembly at a sit-in at Franklin High school and sentenced to six months in prison. The men in the photograph are identified, left to right, as Lewis Jackson, Elmer Dixon, Willie Brazier, and Curtis Harris. At the press conference, Elmer Dixon, Aaron's brother, read the 10 objectives of the Black Panther Party.
Identifications by Elmer Dixon.
Caption information source: University of Washington Seattle Black Panther Party History and Memory Project at http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/BPP.htm Caption information source: "3 Franklin High Sit-ins are Jailed and Bailed Out," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 2, 1968, p. 14
