Black Panther Party

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Sava
I wish some people would gain experience before jumping to such conclusions. Two friends of my family were Black Panthers. As Uber said, it was a radical reaction to a radical situation. It's easy to call them THUGS and Neo-Nazis, but you have to consider the times, and the sh1t they had to put up with.

You know when people are into that whole, "murder and torture people" thing I think it's safe to call them THUGS.

But hey a couple of bad apples shouldn't spoil the bunch right?

Of course chegitz will tell you it's all the governments fault.

[Ted Striker]

In May of 1969, Black Panther founder and national chairman Bobby Seale (who had already been indicted for his alleged participation in demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968) made a trip from Oakland to New Haven, Connecticut, to speak at Yale University. The Black Panthers were by then nationally known, a focus of media attention, and under the active surveillance of the FBI. (J. Edgar Hoover had publicly declared several months earlier that he considered the Panthers "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.") Rumors of police informants and government spies having infiltrated the party were rampant, and a man named Alex Rackley, a member of the Panthers' New York chapter, fell under suspicion. Rackley was taken to the home of Warren Kimbro (a "community organizer and aspiring Panther") where he was held captive for 24 hours, beaten, and scalded with boiling water in an effort to force him to confess. Rackley was then taken to a marsh in Middlefield by Kimbro, George Sams (Panther field marshall and, according to some, himself a police informant), and Lonnie McLucas (a Panther member from Bridgeport), where Sams ordered Kimbro and McLucas to kill the suspected informant. (Who did the actual killing has always been disputed; McLucas reportedly fired the first shot, but Kimbro admittedly delivered the bullet to the head that killed Rackley.) Rackley's body was discovered the next day by fishermen, and fourteen Black Panthers were arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy.

Think you omitted a few "minor" details.

They are no better than the clan.


THUGS

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/panthers.htm

[chequita guevara]

I wonder why rumors of police informants infecting the party were rife? Perhaps because they were? Geronimo Pratt was railroaded for a murder he didn't committ and spent 23 years in prison soley on the word of an FBI rat, despite witnesses giving Pratt an alibi 600 miles away at the time the murder was committed. Mark Clark and Fred Hampton were murdered by police in their beds, using information a police informant had given them.

What I find interesting is that your quote only speaks of the Panthers being indicted, not being convicted. Indictments mean nothing.

But hey a couple of bad apples shouldn't spoil the bunch right?

Well heck, using this measure, the police are nothing but a bunch of murdering, torturing thugs, since, after all, the actions of a few are more important than the overall impact of the group. So, I expect you will be out at your local military base, screaming baby-killers at the soldiers. After all, the actions of a few are more important than the organization. I guess the Catholic Church is nothing more than a bunch of child molestors, and Muslims are nothing more than terrorists, etc.

But why let reality stand in the way of your hate-on?

BTW, snopes is not necessarily an authoritative source. It's a good read, but when they get in the realm of politics, they always tend to side with the official story.

[chequita guevara]

From the same Snopes piece . . .

What has been overlooked (or deliberately ignored) in the piece quoted here is that even though fourteen Black Panthers were arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy in connection with the murder of Alex Rackley, only two of them were put on trial (the others plead to lesser charges, or the charges against them were dropped): Bobby Seale and Erika Huggins. Why only these two? Seale wasn't present at either the torture or murder of Alex Rackley; he maintained that he knew nothing about any plans to kill Rackley and wasn't even aware that Rackley was suspected of being a police informant. (Panther George Sams did claim he had told Seale about suspicions Rackley was an informant, however.) Erika Huggins wasn't present when Rackley was killed, either. She was accused of having taken part in the "interrogation" of Rackley, boiling the water used to scald him and kicking him while he was tied to a chair. Certainly her actions were both criminally wrong and morally reprehensible, but several other Panthers took a far more active hand in the torture and murder of Rackley (such as those who actually poured the boiling water onto him, beat him, and shot him in the head). Why were only these two people put on trial while the other Panthers were allowed to plead out or weren't even prosecuted at all?

Seale and Huggins were aquitted, BTW.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Think you omitted a few "minor" details.

Yeah, and you omitted some big details. Like the fact that the guys who committed the murder were not put on trial. Instead, it was the Panther's leaders who were arrested and put on trial.

From the Snopes article that you cited:

Even though fourteen Black Panthers were arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy in connection with the murder of Alex Rackley, only two of them were put on trial (the others plead to lesser charges, or the charges against them were dropped): [Black Panther founder and national chairman] Bobby Seale and Erika Huggins. Why only these two? Seale wasn't present at either the torture or murder of Alex Rackley; he maintained that he knew nothing about any plans to kill Rackley and wasn't even aware that Rackley was suspected of being a police informant. (Panther George Sams did claim he had told Seale about suspicions Rackley was an informant, however.) Erika Huggins wasn't present when Rackley was killed, either. She was accused of having taken part in the "interrogation" of Rackley, boiling the water used to scald him and kicking him while he was tied to a chair. Certainly her actions were both criminally wrong and morally reprehensible, but several other Panthers took a far more active hand in the torture and murder of Rackley (such as those who actually poured the boiling water onto him, beat him, and shot him in the head). Why were only these two people put on trial while the other Panthers were allowed to plead out or weren't even prosecuted at all?

[chequita guevara]

Great minds think alike . . . but small ones are easier to read.

[Joseph]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
I wonder why rumors of police informants infecting the party were rife? Perhaps because they were? Geronimo Pratt was railroaded for a murder he didn't committ and spent 23 years in prison soley on the word of an FBI rat, despite witnesses giving Pratt an alibi 600 miles away at the time the murder was committed. Mark Clark and Fred Hampton were murdered by police in their beds, using information a police informant had given them.

What I find interesting is that your quote only speaks of the Panthers being indicted, not being convicted. Indictments mean nothing.

But hey a couple of bad apples shouldn't spoil the bunch right?

You also left out the part that they kill the informant that was in San Quentin a few days before the trial in San Quentin.
A co-worker and friend of mine was a guard at SQ. He told us that two times George told him every thing was cool and just min. after Billy Brown left work, they killed the informant and the guard that replaced Billy.
Billy was black. He died a few years ago.
When the court thing went down, they called Billy to come to work and he said no, and they said he had to, and Billy said screw this and told them he quit on the phone. He was not going to hang around for the third time.

[Ted Striker]

You guys are right, I did leave out alot more.

Thus, with a sympathetic media always ready to construe negative information about the party as a racist conspiracy, leaders like Huey Newton were granted carte blanche to engage in atrocities. They beat, tortured, raped and killed many fellow Black Panthers. They robbed from blacks in the Oakland community. They sold drugs and extorted money from drug dealers.

Like the romantic white leftists who chose not to believe what was reported about Stalin's Russia, plenty of black people chose not to believe these facts about the Black Panther Party. They prefer to grant party miscreants a bye, due to the existence of racism.

http://www.salon.com/11/features/pearson2.html

I think you need to stop listening to the angry sista with the afro chegitz.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

Seale and Huggins were aquitted, BTW.

So was OJ.