Black Panther Chapter Summary

Dissertation First Chapter Draft:

Violence between BP and different groups (US and Blackstone Rangers) and my argument that it revealed a lack of structure of control in the federal government and a disregard for federal and constitutional law by the FBI:

On September 9, 1968, Director Hoover wrote in the pages of the New York Times, that the Panther’s are regarded as “the greatest [single] threat to the internal security of the country”, Hoover’s intention in this was to increase the tension and instability that had been sown in the ranks of the Black Panther’s even since the initiation of COINTELPRO-Black Hate in 1967. Hoover, and in effect the FBI, wished to create social unrest, part of this unrest was the incitement of violence between

The truce that Wallace and Karenga created was inevitably broken after the killing of a BPP prominent member, John Savage. Again, actions of the US Organisation, in the eyes of the Panthers were responsible for the killing which, was the aim of the FBI. Evidence suggests that the killings of Carter, Huggins, Savage, and many more, was the product of FBI infiltration combined with deliberate manipulation of differences between the BPP and US Organisation. Richard Wallace Held, leader of the LA division of COINTELPRO took credit for the killing of Bunchy and Carter and after the death of Savage, theories emerged to suggest that the US Organisation or at least a faction of the US Organization handled the killings, and was a deliberate group set up by the FBI in order to eliminate targets within the BPP. Provocateurs such as Earl Anthony suggested theories such as this, the credibility of which is questionable, given Anthony’s role as a provocateur. However, credible evidence that has emerged finds flaws within the federal government and how the FBI broke the law which they upheld. Deputy Associate Director of the FBI’s Intelligence Division, James Adams, revealed in the Peterson Committee Report on COINTELPRO that “none of our programs have contemplated violence, and the instructions prohibit it”, but conflicting reports sent from

The FBI’s Chicago office spread misinformation to both sides that the other side was not doing enough for the black community, so through this Bureau encouraged “violence through inaction [which had now] give way to incitement to violence”. Although tension existed in the face of Bureau efforts to disrupt both groups, the FBI enacted on the power struggle that emerged between Fred Hampton of the BPP and Jeff Forte of the Blackstone Rangers. Memorandums sent between the Chicago Field Office to headquarters in Washington, DC saw the possibility of violence between the Panthers and the Rangers as “second nature” to them; showing that, if given the ‘right direction’, violence would escalate to a point where targets of the FBI would be assassinated or the groups would be destabilized by the events. The efforts by the FBI to create violence between the BPP and the Rangers was combined with a sowing of dissension within the ranks of the BPP as to destroy the effective leadership of Hampton. Together, the FBI created a sense of mistrust that contributed a decline in membership, but Hampton still grew in prominence and rank in the Black Panthers, who before his assassination, was BPP Chief of Staff. Hampton became an ‘official’ target of the FBI because of his strength to form cohesion between different factions of black radicals, a threat that