TheLoop21.com

By: Brooklyne Gipson (Add to your loop)
Mon, 02/16/2009 - 01:00

Did the FBI really infiltrate the Black Panthers?

Bloggers and message boards are some of the best places to find important and interesting stories mainstream media hasn't picked up on. It's also a giant breeding ground for rumors. 


To keep you up to date, The Loop wants to highlight some interesting stories the Web is buzzing about and let you know the truth behind these claims.

Want us to bust or prove an Internet rumor? E-mail us at info@theloop21.com.

What They're Saying: The Black Panther Party, a black power group that focused on promoting self defense and self preservation in African American communities during the 1960’s, generally gets a bad rap when it comes to re-telling their history. They’re viewed by many as a militant, radical, and violent group that plagued society. However, in all reality their programs geared toward education and feeding and clothing the community were seen as a beacon of hope for many during that time.

It’s rumored that a partial reason why their reputation is so bad is because the FBI and it’s operatives, acting as BPP members misrepresented it’s real members and tore the organization apart from it’s core.

Rumor Control: This one is true.

During his tenure as Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover did some questionable things with his power, one of those being the institution of COINTELPRO, or the counter-intelligence program, which sought to infiltrate and deconstruct groups that were considered to be a national threat. Only problem was, the program targeted certain groups that weren’t necessarily all that bad, like the Black Panther Party and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for example.

According to a 1974 Time magazine article: “COINTELPRO was expanded in 1961 to include as targets the Socialist Workers Party and, in 1964, ‘white hate groups,’ such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Minutemen and the American Nazi Party. In 1967 the FBI turned its attention to what it called ‘black extremist organizations,’ but which included not only the militant Black Panthers but the moderate Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).”

The article goes on to describe some of the questionable tactics used, “The Rev. Hosea Williams, a leading figure in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, maintains that the FBI infiltrated the mass gathering of the poor in Washington in 1968 and persuaded young people to throw tear-gas grenades at the police, who retaliated with a barrage of their own.”

Another Time magazine article from 1977, titled FBI Dirty Tricks revealed that “In the early 1970s the leadership of the Black Panthers was so riddled with FBI informants that the bureau virtually ran the organization. Some of the informants viewed their association with the FBI as a license to plunder Black Panther funds and stash away small fortunes before the treasury was drained.

Although the FBI has never wanted to comment on CONINTELPRO, former Democratic Congressman Don Edwards declared in a Judiciary subcommittee meeting on civil and constitutional rights once that CONINTELPRO was a prime example of the necessity for “Much stricter oversight of the FBI.”

An understatement to say the least. 

Brooklyne Gipson is The Loop's editorial assistant.