Fact check: was barack obama a black panther?

Claim: A photograph captures a young Barack Obama as a Black Panther party member. A photograph of young Barack Obama as a Black Panther party member is another item that many might dismiss

as an obvious bit of political parody, but the number of "Is this real?" inquiries we've received from readers indicates that quite a few people are confused about its

authenticity (or lack thereof): All other evidence aside, accepting this photograph as genuine would require quite a bit of suspended disbelief, given that: * One would have to accept that

Barack Obama managed to go through all the public scrutiny associated with a two-year-long national campaign and was well into his term as President before anybody noticed that he'd

once been a Black Panther (despite the existence of evidence such as the purported newspaper photograph shown above). * Barack Obama, who was born in 1961, was a mere schoolchild during the

heyday of the Black Panther Party (1966 to 1972). Knowing the proper context makes the original, unaltered image easy to locate: it's a late 1960's Associated Press photograph of

Black Panther Party co-founders Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, not Darcus Howe and Barak [sic] Obama: This iconic pose was replicated by actors Courtney B. Vance and Marcus Chong in

conjunction with the 1995 film _Panther_. The altered image displayed above actually originated with a submission to a Photoshop contest based on the theme of "Earn your own entry on

Snopes.com."