Civil Rights Queen by Tomiko Brown-Nagin

Author:Tomiko Brown-Nagin [Brown-Nagin, Tomiko]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2022-01-24T16:00:00+00:00

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Not long after the couple embraced the Panthers, the FBI got involved. J. Edgar Hoover, then director of the FBI, in 1969 labeled the Panthers the “greatest threat” to the “internal security of the United States.” This assertion justified his effort to destroy the BPP through a counterintelligence program, called COINTELPRO, that aimed to sow discord within political organizations, and thus dismantle them. Hoover specifically targeted Black nationalist organizations and instructed all local offices to disrupt them. Following the FBI’s lead, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies made the infiltration and eradication of the Panthers a top priority. Mayhem ensued; law enforcement pursued the organization and its members through often-illegal surveillance, raids, and brutality. Many Panthers fell at the hands of the police. Three days after the assassination of Dr. King on April 4, 1968, the police killed seventeen-year-old Bobby Hutton—bullets blew off the boy’s face. The death provoked an enormous outcry and deepened the loyalty that many, including John and Ericka, felt to the Panthers.[15]

In 1969, an FBI-fueled campaign of chaos, fear, and violence against the Black Panthers ensnared Motley’s family. Enrolled in UCLA’s “High Potential” program, designed to recruit promising Black students to campus, John and Ericka used the campus as a base from which to organize students and “street brothers” in support of the Panthers. John rallied college students to “get their heads out of the sand” and “care” about the “problems of the ghetto.” The Panthers would collaborate with anyone committed to their economic and social justice program. One rival group, US, a Black nationalist organization led by UCLA graduate Ron Karenga, was after Black solidarity, and competed with the Panthers for recruits. Intent on destroying the BPP, the FBI tried to exploit the groups’ ideological differences.[16]

A government file, hundreds of pages long, documented the agency’s scheme. The FBI relied on informants, surveillance, wiretapping, tax investigations, and the tracking of property and weapons purchases, all undertaken in collaboration with state and local law enforcement. In a September 25, 1968, memo to FBI director Hoover, special agents in the Los Angeles field office noted that “there is considerable friction between the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the ‘US’ organization headed by Ron Karenga.” At that point, the bad blood was limited to vitriolic talk. The FBI’s L.A. bureau promised to ratchet up the conflict in order to “further this schism.” Two months later, in a memo dated November 29, 1968, FBI agents detailed a plan:

The Los Angeles Office is currently preparing an anonymous letter for Bureau approval which will be sent to the Los Angeles Black Panther Party (BPP) supposedly from a member of the “US” organization in which it will be stated that the youth group of the “US” organization is aware of the BPP “contract” to kill RON KARENGA, leader of “US,” and they, “US” members, in retaliation, have made plans to ambush leaders of the BPP in Los Angeles.

It is hoped that this counterintelligence measure will result in an “US” and BPP vendetta.

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