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 C

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ctor J. Edgar Hoover called the Black Panthers "the greatest single threat to the internal security of the country."[14] The FBI stated that the goals of COINTELPRO were (1) to prevent a coalition of militant black nationalist groups; (2) to prevent the rise of a black leader who could mobilize a militant nationalist movement; (3) to prevent violence on the part of black nationalist groups; (4) to prevent militant black nationalists from gaining popularity by discrediting them; and (5) to prevent the long-term growth of black militant groups.[15] As will be indicated below, the FBI used COINTELPRO to go far beyond its original goals and actually broke the law in its attempt to maintain order. The Assassination of Mark Hampton and Fred Clark On December 4, 1969, Chicago police raided the local headquarters of the Black Panther Party and in the process Chairman Fred Hampton and party member Mark Clark were killed and four others were seriously wounded. No policemen were injured in the raid. [16] Yet Chicago Police Sergeant Daniel Groth said "there must have been six or seven of them firing. The firing must have gone on ten or twelve minutes. If 200 shots were exchanged, that was nothing.... It's a miracle that not one p

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