Major funding for backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment

for the Humanities, the Joseph and Ruppert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Arthur

Vining Davis foundations.

From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this is backstory.

Welcome to backstory, the show that looks at the history behind today's headlines.

I'm Brian Bello.

I'm Nathan Connolly.

And I'm Joanne Freeman.

Each week, my co-host and I, all historians, explore a topic that's been in the news.

And today, our topic is going to be the history of protests.

We're going to begin in Sacramento, California 50 years ago.

The exact date actually is May 2, 1967.

That morning, 30 black men and women walked up the steps of the state house carrying loaded

guns.

Those men and women were members of the Black Panther Party, and they were protesting a gun-control

bill under consideration by the state legislature.

And they walked right in the front door.

There was no security that they had to pass, and walked right into the legislative chamber

while it was in session with their loaded guns.

This is Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at UCLA.

The Panthers weren't there to commit violence or to take hostages.

They were there as part of a political protest, and they wanted to make it clear that they

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