Mark Comfort was active in the Oakland, California early 1960s civil rights movement and then moved to Lowndes County, Alabama. There he helped supporters of the Students Of The Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in forming the Lowndes County Alabama Black Panther Party. He asked Stokely Carmichael if he could use the Panther name and idea and Carmichael told him it belonged to "To The People And He Should Feel Free To Use It." He went back to Oakland and began his own Black Panther project in 1965 called the "Oakland Direct Action Committee." The first item of this pair is his 1966 campaign button for State Assembly reading "Free Oakland Now/Mark Comfort/For 15th Assembly A.D." The following year Comfort worked with Black Panther leaders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in a number of civil rights actions including the so-called "Invasion" of the California Assembly in Sacramento, Spring 1967 which brought the group into the national spotlight. The second button in this group was issued originally in 1966 by the Young Socialist Alliance in solidarity with the Lowndes County Alabama Black Panther Party. The original 1966 issue is a darker blue and this lighter blue version is c.1967-1969. Both buttons are Essentially Mint.