Formed in the San Francisco Bay Area by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was originally constituted with the avowed purpose of protecting African American neighborhoods from police violence. The Panthers spread throughout the country and had a membership of 10,000 at their peak in 1969. Their newspaper, edited by Eldridge Cleaver, had a circulation of 250,000, and the Panthers were an internationally recognized part of the Black Power movement and the counterculture. The organization was Marxist- socialist and originally espoused Black Nationalism but moved away from this position and became more focused on socialism without regard to race.