The Black Liberation Army emerged around 1970–1971 as an underground armed formation, growing out of the crisis that FBI repression and internal conflict had produced within the Black Panther Party. As the March 1971 split between Huey Newton's Oakland-based leadership and Eldridge Cleaver's international faction tore the party apart, members who believed the moment called for clandestine armed struggle went underground.
Unlike the Panthers' public organization, the BLA had no formal above-ground structure; it operated as a decentralized network of cells drawn from Panther veterans and other Black revolutionaries. Its stated aim was to take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of Black people in the United States, and its members saw themselves as combatants in a war against a repressive state.