What is the importance of the Black Panther Party in the memoir, The Beautiful Struggle?

According to Coates, his father was a Vietnam veteran, married to Linda with two children when he decided to join the Black Panther Party, a movement that appealed to him for its bold, militant stand on civil rights and its revolutionary talk. He became the leader of the local chapter in Baltimore leading him to lose a union job at the airport. Coates writes that the Panthers lived in communes where free sex was the order of the day. They stood for the unmaking of society, the fall of the family, the government and the economy. He eventually disassociated with the Panthers when violence turned inward and Panthers were killing each other. He was condemned by the Black Panther Party for leaving them.