A tasteless sauce....

The Black Panthers were a violent group that cared little about people.

The widow of the co-founder of the Black Panthers, the militant 1960s civil rights group, has been accused of exploiting the party's legacy by trademarking a slogan linked to the movement's bloodiest chapters - Burn Baby Burn - to market a spicy sauce.

The phrase, long associated with the inner city race riots of the 1960s that left scores dead and wounded, is being used by the Huey P Newton Foundation, named after the co-founder of the party, to sell the condiments.

Burn Baby Burn Revolutionary Hot Sauce is due for release within the next few weeks but its launch has ignited a fiery row between Frederika Newton and David Hilliard, a Black Panthers founder, and fellow party members who championed the movement's cause.

They accuse the pair of "ripping off the movement's legacy" and trying to "privatise the party so only they can use it".

Billy Jennings, 54, who runs It's About Time - Black Panther Party Legacy and Alumni, said that he had been inundated with calls from former members who were upset, disillusioned or "shaking their heads" at the foundation's "sell-out" mentality.

"It's a shame what they have come down to, trying to make a buck on the backs of 30 people who died in the struggles," he said. "They are not interested in the legacy. What they are doing is wrong." The party, founded in 1966 by Newton and Bobby Seale to protect communities from racism, soon developed into a Marxist revolutionary group.

Burn Baby Burn, a phrase originated by a popular disc jockey, Magnificent Montague, was adopted by rioters who screamed it as they looted and set fire to buildings during violent civil rights uprisings, particularly the 1965 Watts riot in Los Angeles that lasted six days and left 30 dead and thousands injured.