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The FBI's Attacks on the Black Panthers

As stated by Charles Jones and Judson Jeffries, the Black Panther Party (BPP) was "arguably the leading Black leftist organization in the African-American liberation struggle" because it "captured the imagination of oppressed people throughout the world."[1] The thesis explored in this qualitative literature-based analysis is that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) undertook a focused, overt war targeting the Black Panther Party, using such weapons as illegal surveillance, assassination, and media propaganda to discredit this movement and to put an end to the perceived threat that it posed to law and order in the United States.

Laura Pulido views the BPP as a nationalist movement that was beset by intra-organizational conflicts, including a famous split between Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver and internal class tensions reflecting the continuous struggle experienced by many BPP members who saw themselves as essentially a state of war.[2] Nevertheless, the BPP was seen by many in the American government as posing a very real threat to the country and had the power to ignite a full-scale race war, which the FBI believed was a legitimate rationale for eliminating the organization.[3]

The FBI's activities against the Black Panthers represent what Ward Churchill considers to be nothing more than an ongoing racist struggle to defeat leftists and to marginalize protest movements emanating from the African-American community. Under the rubric of COINTELPRO, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI sought to eliminate groups such as the Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and Dr. Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).[4]

Key issues to be addressed herein include an analysis of various efforts under COINTELPRO, the assassination of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago, and the all important rift between Oakland's Huey Newton and New York's Eldridg...

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The FBI's Attacks on the Black Panthers. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 08:26, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/2000168.html