BLACK PANTHER
In late October 1966,
Huey P. Newton and
Bobby Seale
founded the Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for
Self-Defense). In formulating a new politics, they drew on their
experiences working with a variety of Black Power organizations.
Newton and Seale first met in 1962 when they were both students at
Merritt College.
October 15,
1966, the Black Panther Party's core practice was its armed citizens'
patrols to monitor the behavior of police officers and challenge police
brutality in
Oakland, California. In 1969, community social programs became a core activity of party members.
The Black Panther Party instituted a variety of community social programs, most extensively the
Free Breakfast for Children Programs, and community
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director
J. Edgar Hoover called the party "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country",
and he supervised an extensive program (
COINTELPRO) of
surveillance,
infiltration,
perjury,
police harassment,
and many other tactics designed to undermine Panther leadership,
incriminate party members, discredit and criminalize the Party, and
drain the organization of resources and manpower. The program was also
accused of using assassination against Black Panther members
Government oppression initially contributed to the growth of the party
as killings and arrests of Panthers increased support for the party
within the black community
In August 1967, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) instructed its program "
COINTELPRO"
to "neutralize" what the FBI called "black nationalist hate groups" and
other dissident groups. In September 1968, FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover described the Black Panthers as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country".
By 1969, the Black Panthers and their allies had become primary COINTELPRO targets, singled out in 233 of the 295 authorized "
Black Nationalist" COINTELPRO actions.
The goals of the program were to prevent the unification of militant
black nationalist groups and to weaken the power of their leaders, as
well as to discredit the groups to reduce their support and growth. The
initial targets included the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Revolutionary Action Movement and the
Nation of Islam. Leaders who were targeted included the Rev.
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Stokely Carmichael,
H. Rap Brown, Maxwell Stanford and
Elijah Muhammad.
Part of the
COINTELPRO
actions were directed at creating and exploiting existing rivalries
between black nationalist factions. One such attempt was to "intensify
the degree of animosity" between the Black Panthers and the
Blackstone Rangers,
a Chicago street gang. They sent an anonymous letter to the Ranger's
gang leader claiming that the Panthers were threatening his life, a
letter whose intent was to induce "reprisals" against Panther
leadership. In Southern California similar actions were taken to
exacerbate a "gang war" between the Black Panther Party and a group
called the
US Organization.
It was alleged that the FBI had sent a provocative letter to the US
Organization in an attempt to increase existing antagonism between US
and the Panthers.
COINTELPRO also aimed to dismantle the Black Panther Party by
targeting the social/community programs they endorsed, one of the most
influential being the Free Breakfast for Children Program. The success
of the Free Breakfast for Children Program served to "shed light on the
government's failure to address child poverty and hunger—pointing to the
limits of the nation's War on Poverty".
The ability of the Party to organize and provide for children more
effectively than the U.S. government led the FBI to criticize the
program as a means of exposing children to Panther Propaganda. In
response to this, as an effort of disassembling the program, "Police and
Federal Agents regularly harassed and intimidated program participants,
supporters, and Party workers and sought to scare away donors and
organizations that housed the programs like churches and community
centers"
In Chicago, on December 4, 1969, two Panthers were killed when the Chicago Police raided the home of Panther leader
Fred Hampton. The raid had been orchestrated by the police in conjunction with the FBI. Hampton was shot and killed, as was Panther guard
Mark Clark. A federal investigation reported that only one shot was fired by the Panthers, and police fired at least 80 shots.
Hampton was subsequently shot twice in the head at point blank range
while unconscious. He was 21 years old and unarmed at the time of his
death. Coroner reports show that Hampton was drugged with a powerful
barbiturate that night and all indicators point toward FBI infiltrator
William O'Neal as the source of the drugging.
Former FBI agent
Wesley Swearingen asserts that the Bureau was guilty of a "plot to murder" the Panthers.
Cook County State's Attorney
Edward Hanrahan,
his assistant and eight Chicago police officers were indicted by a
federal grand jury over the raid, but the charges were later dismissed.
In 1979 civil action, Hampton's family won $1.85 million from the city of Chicago in a wrongful death settlement
KKK
The
Ku Klux Klan (
KKK), or simply "
the Klan", is the name of three distinct past and present movements in the
United States that have advocated extremist
reactionary currents such as
white supremacy,
white nationalism, and
anti-immigration, historically expressed through
terrorism aimed at groups or individuals whom they opposed.
All three movements have called for the "purification" of American society, and all are considered
right wing extremist organizations.
The first Ku Klux Klan flourished in the
Southern United States
in the late 1860s, then died out by the early 1870s. It sought to
overthrow the Republican state governments in the South during the
Reconstruction Era, especially by using violence against
African American leaders. With numerous chapters across the South, it was suppressed around 1871, through
federal enforcement. Members made their own, often colorful, costumes: robes, masks, and
conical hats, designed to be terrifying, and to hide their identities.
[11][12]
The second group was founded in 1915, and flourished nationwide in
the early and mid-1920s, particularly in urban areas of the Midwest and
West. It opposed
Catholics and
Jews, especially newer immigrants, and stressed opposition to the Catholic Church.
This second organisation adopted a standard white costume and used similar code words as the first Klan, while adding
cross burnings and mass parades.
The third and current manifestation of the KKK emerged after 1950, in
the form of small, local, unconnected groups that use the KKK name.
They focused on opposition to the
Civil Rights Movement, often using violence and murder to suppress activists. It is classified as a
hate group by the
Anti-Defamation League and the
Southern Poverty Law Center.
It is estimated to have between 5,000 and 8,000 members as of 2012.
The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent reference to the America's "
Anglo-Saxon" blood, hearkening back to 19th-century
nativism.
Though members of the KKK swore to uphold American values and Christian morality, virtually every
Christian denomination officially denounced the KKK
First KKK
The first Klan was founded in
Pulaski, Tennessee, some time between December 1865 and August 1866 by six former members of the
Confederate army[17]
as a fraternal social club inspired at least in part by the then
largely defunct Sons of Malta, from which parts of the initiation
ceremony were borrowed, with the same purpose: "ludicrous initiations,
the baffling of public curiosity, and the amusement for members were the
only objects of the Klan."
[18] The name is probably derived from the
Greek word
kuklos (
κύκλος) which means circle.
[19]
According to
The Cyclopædia of Fraternities (1907) "Beginning
in April, 1867, there was a gradual transformation... The members had
conjured up a veritable Frankenstein. They had played with an engine of
power and mystery, though organized on entirely innocent lines, and
found themselves overcome by a belief that something must lie behind it
all—that there was, after all, a serious purpose, a work for the Klan to
do."
[18]
Although there was little organizational structure above the local
level, similar groups rose across the South and adopted the same name
and methods.
Klan groups spread throughout the South as an
insurgent movement during the
Reconstruction era in the United States. As a secret
vigilante group, the Klan targeted
freedmen and their allies; it sought to restore
white supremacy by threats and violence, including murder, against
black and white
Republicans. In 1870 and 1871, the federal government passed the
Enforcement Acts, which were successfully enforced in prosecuting and suppressing Klan crimes.
The first Klan had mixed results in terms of achieving its
objectives. It seriously weakened the black political establishment
through its use of assassinations and threats of violence; it drove some
people out of politics. On the other hand, it caused a sharp backlash,
with passage of federal laws that historian
Eric Foner
says were a success in terms of "restoring order, reinvigorating the
morale of Southern Republicans, and enabling blacks to exercise their
rights as citizens."
Historian George C. Rable argues that the Klan was a political failure
and therefore was discarded by the Democratic leaders of the South. He
says:
the Klan declined in strength in part because of internal weaknesses;
its lack of central organization and the failure of its leaders to
control criminal elements and sadists. More fundamentally, it declined
because it failed to achieve its central objective – the overthrow of
Republican state governments in the South
Second KKK
In 1915, the second Klan was founded in
Atlanta, Georgia.
Starting in 1921, it adopted a modern business system of using
full-time paid recruiters and appealed to new members as a fraternal
organization, of which many examples were
flourishing
at the time. The national headquarters made its profit through a
monopoly of costume sales, while the organizers were paid through
initiation fees. It grew rapidly nationwide at a time of prosperity.
Reflecting the social tensions pitting urban versus rural America, it
spread to every state and was prominent in many cities. The second KKK
preached "One Hundred Percent Americanism" and demanded the purification
of politics, calling for strict morality and better enforcement of
prohibition. Its official rhetoric focused on the threat of the
Catholic Church, using
anti-Catholicism and
nativism.
[3] Its appeal was directed exclusively at white Protestants; it opposed Jews, blacks, Catholics, and newly arriving
Southern European groups such as
Italians.
[24]
Some local groups threatened violence against rum runners and notorious
sinners; the violent episodes generally took place in the South.
The second Klan was a formal
fraternal organization,
with a national and state structure. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the
organization claimed to include about 15% of the nation's eligible
population, approximately 4–5 million men. Internal divisions, criminal
behavior by leaders, and external opposition brought about a collapse in
membership, which had dropped to about 30,000 by 1930. It finally faded
away in the 1940s.
Klan organizers also operated in Canada, especially in
Saskatchewan in 1926-28, where Klansmen denounced immigrants from
Eastern Europe as a threat to Canada's British heritage
Third KKK
The "Ku Klux Klan" name was used by numerous independent local groups opposing the
Civil Rights Movement and
desegregation, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, they often forged alliances with Southern police departments, as in
Birmingham, Alabama; or with governor's offices, as with
George Wallace of Alabama.
Several members of KKK groups were convicted of murder in the deaths of
civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964 and children in the
bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. Today, researchers estimate that there may be 150 Klan chapters with upwards of 5,000 members nationwide.
Today, many sources classify the Klan as a "subversive or terrorist organization".
[31][32][33][34] In April 1997,
FBI
agents arrested four members of the True Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in
Dallas for conspiracy to commit robbery and conspiring to blow up a
natural gas processing plant.
In 1999, the city council of
Charleston, South Carolina passed a resolution declaring the Klan to be a terrorist organization
In 2004, a professor at the
University of Louisville began a campaign to have the Klan declared a terrorist organization in order to ban it from campus.
Klan members adopted masks and robes that hid their identities and
added to the drama of their night rides, their chosen time for attacks.
Many of them operated in small towns and rural areas where people
otherwise knew each other's faces, and sometimes still recognized the
attackers by voice and mannerisms. "The kind of thing that men are
afraid or ashamed to do openly, and by day, they accomplish secretly,
masked, and at night."
[52]
The KKK night riders "sometimes claimed to be ghosts of Confederate
soldiers so, as they claimed, to frighten superstitious blacks. Few
freedmen took such nonsense seriously."
[53]
The Klan attacked black members of the
Loyal Leagues and intimidated southern Republicans and
Freedmen's Bureau
workers. When they killed black political leaders, they also took heads
of families, along with the leaders of churches and community groups,
because these people had many roles in society. Agents of the Freedmen's
Bureau reported weekly assaults and murders of blacks.
"Armed guerrilla warfare killed thousands of Negroes; political riots
were staged; their causes or occasions were always obscure, their
results always certain: ten to one hundred times as many Negroes were
killed as whites." Masked men shot into houses and burned them,
sometimes with the occupants still inside. They drove successful black
farmers off their land. "Generally, it can be reported that in North and
South Carolina, in 18 months ending in June 1867, there were 197
murders and 548 cases of aggravated assault."
Klan violence worked to suppress black voting, and campaign seasons
were deadly. More than 2,000 persons were killed, wounded and otherwise
injured in
Louisiana within a few weeks prior to the Presidential election of November 1868. Although
St. Landry Parish
had a registered Republican majority of 1,071, after the murders, no
Republicans voted in the fall elections. White Democrats cast the full
vote of the parish for President Grant's opponent. The KKK killed and
wounded more than 200 black Republicans, hunting and chasing them
through the woods. Thirteen captives were taken from jail and shot; a
half-buried pile of 25 bodies was found in the woods. The KKK made
people vote Democratic and gave them certificates of the fact.
[55]
In the April 1868
Georgia gubernatorial election,
Columbia County cast 1,222 votes for Republican
Rufus Bullock. By the
November presidential election, Klan intimidation led to suppression of the Republican vote and only one person voted for
Ulysses S. Grant.
[56]
Klansmen killed more than 150 African Americans in a county in
Florida,
and hundreds more in other counties. Freedmen's Bureau records provided
a detailed recounting of Klansmen's beatings and murders of freedmen
and their white allies
By 1868, two years after the Klan's creation, its activity was beginning to decrease.
[59]
Members were hiding behind Klan masks and robes as a way to avoid
prosecution for freelance violence. Many influential southern Democrats
feared that Klan lawlessness provided an excuse for the federal
government to retain its power over the South, and they began to turn
against it.
[60] There were outlandish claims made, such as Georgian
B. H. Hill stating "that some of these outrages were actually perpetrated by the political friends of the parties slain
In the mid-1870s, new groups of insurgents, local paramilitary organizations such as the
White League,
Red Shirts, saber clubs, and rifle clubs, emerged, continuing to intimidate and murder black political leaders.
[80]
The White League and Red Shirts were distinguished by their willingness
to cultivate publicity, working directly to overturn Republican
officeholders and regain control of politics.
Goals
The Second Klan saw threats from every direction. A religious tone
was present in its activities: "two-thirds of the national Klan
lecturers were Protestant ministers," says historian Brian R. Farmer.
[89]
Much of the Klan's energy went into guarding "the home;" the historian
Kathleen Blee said its members wanted to protect "the interests of white
womanhood."
[90] The pamphlet
ABC of the Invisible Empire,
published in Atlanta by Simmons in 1917, identified the Klan's goals as
"to shield the sanctity of the home and the chastity of womanhood; to
maintain white supremacy; to teach and faithfully inculcate a high
spiritual philosophy through an exalted ritualism; and by a practical
devotedness to conserve, protect and maintain the distinctive
institutions, rights, privileges, principles and ideals of a pure
Americanism
Costumes and a burning cross
The distinctive white costume permitted large-scale public activities
– especially parades and cross-burning ceremonies while keeping secret
the membership rolls. Sales of the costumes provided the main financing
for the national organization, while initiation fees funded local and
state organizers.
The second Klan embraced a burning
Latin cross as a dramatic display of symbolism, with a tone of intimidation.
[109]
No crosses had been used as a symbol by the first Klan. Additionally,
the cross was henceforth a representation of the Klan's Christian
message. Thus, its lighting during meetings was often accompanied by
prayer, the singing of hymns, and other overtly religious symbolism.
[110]
In
The Clansman novel Dixon had invented the notion that the
first Klan had used fiery crosses. Film director Griffith brought this
image to the screen in
The Birth of a Nation. Simmons adopted the symbol wholesale from the movie. The symbol has been associated with the Klan ever since
- The 1951 Christmas Eve bombing of the home of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) activists Harry and Harriette Moore in Mims, Florida, resulting in their deaths.[150]
- The 1957 murder of Willie Edwards, Jr. Klansmen forced Edwards to jump to his death from a bridge into the Alabama River.[151]
- The 1963 assassination of NAACP organizer Medgar Evers in Mississippi. In 1994, former Ku Klux Klansman Byron De La Beckwith was convicted.
- The 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four African-American girls. The perpetrators were Klan members Robert Chambliss, convicted in 1977, Thomas Edwin Blanton, Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry, convicted in 2001 and 2002. The fourth suspect, Herman Cash, died before he was indicted.
- The 1964 murders of three civil rights workers, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, in Mississippi. In June 2005, Klan member Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter.[152]
- The 1964 murder of two black teenagers, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore in Mississippi. In August 2007, based on the confession of Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards, James Ford Seale,
a reputed Ku Klux Klansman, was convicted. Seale was sentenced to serve
three life sentences. Seale was a former Mississippi policeman and
sheriff's deputy.[153]
- The 1965 Alabama murder of Viola Liuzzo. She was a Southern-raised Detroit
mother of five who was visiting the state in order to attend a civil
rights march. At the time of her murder Liuzzo was transporting Civil
Rights Marchers.
- The 1966 firebombing death of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer Sr., 58, in Mississippi. In 1998 former Ku Klux Klan wizard Sam Bowers
was convicted of his murder and sentenced to life. Two other Klan
members were indicted with Bowers, but one died before trial, and the
other's indictment was dismissed.
- The 1967 multiple bombings in Jackson, Mississippi of the residence of a Methodist activist, Robert Kochtitzky, and those at the synagogue and at the residence of Rabbi
Perry Nussbaum on Old Canton Road were executed by a Klan member named
Thomas Albert Tarrants III who was convicted in 1968. Another Klan
bombing was averted in Meridian the same year.
