- This country has never
cared about black people.
- [Voiceover] That's right.
- They don't give two damns
about us and all of us
always turn around, worrying
about what's good for
America, what's good
later for America.
What's good for black people?
- I know what they
gonna say, "not guilty"
'cause no one saw
him pull the trigger.
I'm tired of that.
Don't bow down anymore.
Hold your heads up.
We want our freedom now.
I don't wanna have to
go to another memorial.
I have children.
I love 'em.
Got to stand up.
- We must also realize
that the problems
of racial injustice
and economic injustice
cannot be solved without
a radical redistribution
of political and economic power.
- If you can't do for yourself
what the white man
is doing for himself
don't say you're equal
with the white man.
- [Voiceover] That's right.
- If you can't set up a
factory like he sets up
a factory, don't talk
that old equality talk.
♪ depression repression
♪ in the air
♪ they all hung in poverty
♪ strickened everywhere
♪ so much killin'
screamin' and dyin'
♪ going on
♪ the man started sayin'
♪ I ain't did no wrong
♪ takin' out the leaders
♪ takin' out the leaders
♪ one by one
♪ take away my livelihood
♪ takin' my livelihood
♪ makin' me run
♪ all this killin' and misgivin'
♪ ooh ooh ooh
♪ when is it going to end ♪
- Any black leader with
charisma was a target
of the government's
COINTELPRO program.
And that's stated in
their own objectives
of the program.
- Who are you?
- [Voiceover] Yeah.
- You don't know?
- [Voiceover] That's right.
- Don't tell me
negro. That's nothin'.
- [Voiceover] That's right.
- What were you before the
white man named you a negro?
And where were you?
And what did you have?
What was yours? What
language did you speak then?
What was your name?
It couldn't have been Smith
or Jones or Bunch or Powell.
That wasn't your name.
They don't have
those kind of names
where you and I came from.
No, what was your name?
- [Voiceover] Yes, sir.
And why don't you now know
what your name was then?
Where did it go?
Where did you lose it?
Who took it?
And how did he take it?
What tongue did you speak?
How did the man
take your tongue?
Where is your history?
How did the man wipe
out your history?
How did the man?
What did the man do
to make you as dumb
as you are right now?
- They killed a brother
because he had began to
take meaningful steps
towards gaining the
freedom for his people.
He was takin' steps
to internationalize
the black man's
struggle and to take it
to the United Nations,
to take it diplomatically
to the other countries
around the world so
that meaningful pressure
could be brought to bear
on the United States
government and to force
them to let his people go.
- We can't prove for sure
that the FBI COINTELPRO
program or an agent of the
FBI actually killed Malcolm X.
They were certainly
trying to reach that end.
They were articulating
that goal and they were
taking steps in furtherance
of that, trying to
cause that exact same thing
to happen which happened.
So, we can step back
from it and say,
"Regardless of their
success, whether they were
the ones who pulled the
trigger, this gives us
an idea of what they...
What their intent was.
What they were willing to do.
What their political
viewpoint was
and what ends and what
unconstitutionally
violent ends they
were willing to
adopt and use in order
to reach their goal,
which was to destroy
progressive movements.
- Today I want to say
to the people of America
and the nations of the
world that we are not
about to turn around.
- [Voiceover] Yes, sir.
- We are on the move now.
- [Voiceover] Yes, sir.
- Yes, we are on the move
and no wave of racism
can stop us.
- [Voiceover] Yes, sir.
- The burning of our
churches will not deter us.
The bombing of our homes
will not dissuade us.
- [Voiceover] Yes, sir.
- The beating and
killing of our clergymen
and young people
will not divert us.
- [Voiceover] Yes, sir.
- The wanton release of
their known murderers
will not discourage us.
We are on the move now.
- [Voiceover] Yes, sir.
- So, again, we cannot
say for sure that
James Earl Ray was
working for the FBI.
What we can say for
sure is that the FBI
had an intent shown
by their programs
against Dr. King,
shown by the document
I talked about about
preventing the rise
of messiahs like Dr. King
that they wanted that to happen,
and that they had,
again, taken very
active steps to do that.
So, then, when Dr.
King is killed a month
after this document
comes out and after all
of the attempts to get
him to, ah, to discredit
him and to disrupt his
organization and in fact
to have him do visible
violence to himself and have
others do physical
violence to him.
I mean, it becomes
almost irrelevant whether
they pulled the trigger or not.
Because we know that
they did pull the trigger
on Fred Hampton.
- We have to defend ourselves.
We intend to defend ourselves.
We did so in the past
and we gonna do it today
and the day after that
and the day after that.
Because only through
the proper example
of the self-defense
and the proper example
of retaliation and by
letting these people
know that we move
for some basic laws
that anything that goes
down on the oppressed
people on the part
of the oppressor,
it should be reciprocal.
And in plain proletarian
workers' language,
it takes two to tango.
As soon as these mother
fuckers go, we go.
- Fred Hampton was only
20 years old, but he had
the ability to really move
people, to speak in a way
that got people going,
that effectively
seemed to energize them.
- He was beginning to
develop a following
throughout the, uh,
throughout the country.
And he was a direct threat
to the power structure
that oppressed people.
- People learn by example.
I don't think anybody has
an argument with that.
I think that when Huey P.
Newton said that people
learn basically by
observation and participation,
I think that everybody
caught on to that.
So, what we're saying very
simply is that if they
learn by observation and
participation, then we
need to do more acting
than we need do to writing.
And I think the Black
Panther Party's doing that.
That we didn't talk about
a breakfast for children
program, we've got one.
We're not going to tell
you how many kids we
intend to feed in Chicago.
We're feeding 3,000 to
4,000 every week already
and I don't know how many
all around the country.
We're not talking about
beginning to think about
treating people free when
they need medical services,
we're opening a free health
clinic in the city of
Chicago in less
than three weeks.
These are the type of examples
that people can relate to.
- The immediate, violent,
criminal reaction of
the occupants in shooting
at announced police
officers emphasizes
the extreme viciousness
of the Black Panther Party.
So does their refusal
to cease firing at the
police officers when urged
to do so several times.
- Ed Hanrahan, who was the
political heir apparent
of Mayor Daley wanted to
take credit for having
killed this Black
Panther leader.
So, he went on television
and he went and,
went on television explaining
how Fred Hampton had
come out of his bedroom
firing a pistol.
Now, all the Panthers
inside have repeatedly
broken cease fires and
repeatedly fired at the police.
Problem is, when you fire a
bullet, two things happen.
You have a shell that
comes from your gun
and you have a bullet that
comes out the other end.
When the evidence
was all gathered,
it turned out that
all the shells
that were found in the apartment
came from police weapons,
with the possible
exception of one.
All the bullet holes,
the directions of those
bullet holes, were all
coming inside from outside.
That evidence will show
that they were fired
by the police, so that
all the evidence that
Hanrahan said, all the
evidence that was gathered
proved that it was
the police who fired,
not the Panthers.
Hanrahan went even further
and actually pointed
to places on the back
door which he said were
evidence in pictures
that the Panthers fired.
The press themselves,
when they looked closely
at these pictures and
returned to the scene,
discovered that these
were, in fact, nailheads
and weren't bullet holes at all.
The federal government
at first, appeared to be
coming in and do a
neutral investigation.
And what the federal
government did find,
of course, was that is
was the police and not the
Panthers who had fired.
Under their cover, though,
the federal government,
under the cover of appearing
neutral, the federal
government hid their own
role, which was that it was
their informant who had
gotten a floor plan of the
apartment and their informant
had given the floor plan
to Edward Hanrahan's raiders.
- I was supposed to have
been one of the murdered
Panthers, okay?
However, my plans
changed that evening
and the informant, William
O'Neal was unaware of the change
in plans that I had made,
so my plans had changed
and I was not in the apartment.
Well, I was in the
apartment earlier,
but I left the apartment
and so I wasn't there.
So, they went to plan two
in order to get rid of me.
They raided my apartment
the next morning on
December 5th, shot my door down
and they thought that
I was in the apartment.
- There had been a
systematic effort by the FBI
and Chicago and nationally
to destroy the Panthers.
Previously, the FBI and
Chicago had sent a letter
the head of the El Rukns,
Jeff Fort, telling him
the Panthers were trying
to assassinate him.
Didn't he want to take some
action to prevent that?
They had deliberately
attempted to provoke
things between the
Panthers and other groups
and attempted to discredit
the Panthers publicly.
- They didn't have
to kill every leader.
All they had to do was
kill one of the most
important and up-and-coming
and messianic leaders,
who was doing what
Fred Hampton was doing
to send a message to
all those young folks
whether they be black
or white or latin
or whatever who wanted to
get involved in the struggle
that these,
this is the game that
you're getting involved in.
We'll kill you when you're abed.
- I think during different
periods, the government
uses different tactics,
you know, and sometimes
their methods will be
to publicly discredit
groups, to jail people.
We saw that sometimes
with regard to the Wobblies.
They actually did kill people.
We saw with regard to
the Communist party,
they frequently would
jail people or attempt
to ruin their reputations.
I think with regard
to the black movement,
in particular, the escalation
of the government's
attacks was very clear.
And I think assassination,
setting people up for
internecine rivalries,
which could lead to deaths.
I think the government
has shown a willingness
to use any form of violence
that they felt was necessary.
♪ what are we fighting for
♪ the love of freedom calls
♪ and we've got to win
♪ depression
repression in the air
♪ depression
repression everywhere
♪ depression
repression in the air ♪
- The FBI itself, it's
structure was one which was
never, of course, happy
with the struggle.
The fact that Martin Luther
King was, uh, his phones
were tapped and the problems
that J. Edgar Hoover
gave him was clear.
We only put King out.
We expected it
from us (mumbles).
But, certainly, King
was not a flaming
revolutionary going for
the destruction of America.
He was a reformist, trying
to, in fact, improve
America and was good for
the image of America.
- Within the FBI, who viewed
itself as the vanguard
of fighting communism and
so forth, they were always
afraid that civil rights
and the thrust for voting
rights and so forth was
quote, "a communist plot".
- You take Martin Luther
King, that is being led by
communists all over this
great country, feels that
he has the keys to
the White House.
He has the telephone
call to the White House
so that he can get
anything he wanted.
- I spoke to the white people.
The white people rallied
behind it and we kicked
the living hell
out of the niggers.
Sent the out-of-town
niggers to the hospital
and the out-of-the-state
put back to their own
hometowns where
they oughta been,
and the niggers in St.
Augustine got quiet
and went back over to
niggertown where they belong.
- My feeling was that, the
FBI agent from the south
was indistinguishable
from his community.
- The FBI had to work with
the local law enforcements.
That were their task.
So, it was clear here,
first of all, they have
a comradeship from being
in the same type of job,
law enforcement agencies.
And they were comrades
from being in the south
there together, not
having too much work,
joking together and probably
had social life together.
And since the local
police were the enemies,
were our enemies and the FBI
was supposed to be our allies,
it meant a automatic
split between them which
never occurred.
- Well, I've just gotten
through, couple a weeks ago,
with a 45 or 46 day battle
of Ingram Park, I call it.
That's the park
there in Birmingham
where we stopped
Martin Luther King.
And I mean, ladies
and gentlemen,
we had that nigger whipped.
- FBI in the south, rather
than stopping Klan violence,
would, in fact,
allow it to happen.
- [Voiceover] Mr. Schwartz:
But that was the problem
with the Birmingham
police department.
What about the FBI?
Did you ever discuss with them
why they didn't do anything?
Mr. Rowe: Yes, sir.
I was told by the
FBI, they said,
"Well, who the hell are
we going to report it to?
"The police department
was involved in it.
"The police department
helped set it up.
"We are an investigating agency,
not an enforcement agency.
"All we do is
gather information."
This was my answer.
Mr. Schwartz: Mr. Rowe, were
you an informant in the Klan?
Mr. Rowe: Yes, I was.
Schwartz: From when to when?
Rowe: From approximately
1959 to 1965.
Schwartz: In 1965, did
you surface in connection
with a murder case?
Rowe: Yes, I did.
Schwartz: Whose
murder and what role
did you play in that case?
Rowe: I was in the
automobile the evening
that Mrs. Viola Liuzzo
was killed by a Klansman.
- At the high point of FBI
involvement with the Klan,
one out of four Klansmen
was an FBI agent.
So, a lot, if not all,
of Ku Klux Klan policy
and actions were
being directed by or
acquiesced in by the FBI.
And this led to the FBI
and this COINTELPRO program
and it's other racially
oriented programs actually
being implicated in
and instigating crimes.
Civil rights crimes,
murders and such things.
The Birmingham church bombing.
The assassination of
civil rights workers.
The Freedom Riders.
Viola Liuzzo, for one.
The people in
Philadelphia, Mississippi.
That Rowe was involved
in all of this
and he was an FBI informant.
He's the one who pulled
the trigger, or at least
fired a shot in one
of the incidences.
He was involved in the bombing.
And again, connected to the FBI.
- Hoover always felt that
civil rights was a threat
to the country.
Not threat to the country,
I don't believe (mumbles).
Threat to the social order,
to the order of things.
And therefore, as the
protector of not only quote,
"the country', which
he didn't believe that
we were a part of, but
the order of things
which he knew we
weren't a part of.
Anything that threatened
the order of things,
he had a right to use
tactics to destroy it.
- It was a explanation for
why our housing was bad.
Our education was poor.
Our political power was limited.
And that explanation
was that we were
held as colonial subjects
within the United States.
It's not a perfect explanation.
It's an analogy to situations
in Africa and in Asia
that we could see that fit
us, therefore, colonialism
had been denounced by the
United Nations and people
were entitled to their
independence and they were
justified in breaking out
of that type of control.
That was the basic
American history.
- Police in our community
couldn't possibly
be there to protect
our property because
we own no property.
They couldn't possibly
be there to see that we
receive the due process
of law for the simple
reason that the police
themselves deny us the
due process of law.
And so, it's very apparent
that the police only
in our community not
for our security but the
security of the business
owners in the community,
and also to see that the
status quo was kept intact.
(crowd shouting)
- [Voiceover] No, hey!
See that?
That's our cause, you see that?
Nothing but a 13 year
old kid, you see that?
- [Voiceover] What are you
guys standing here for?
(crowd shouting)
- Police brutality
remains as a major issue
in the black community
and I'm sure in cities
across the country.
And probably will remain
'cause if you just
examine what the
police department is,
it is the military arm
of the establishment.
So what do you expect of it?
You expect it to protect the
interest of the establishment.
- When you talk about
law and order, the very
law and order that you
talk about oppresses us.
So therefore, we offer
the extermination of that
law and order, and you
have shown us clearly that
we can only do it
by being armed.
- The existentialist
philosophers talk about the
execution of victim
relationship that is always
prevalent in most
of the world today,
especially the non-white
world where they're
fighting for their liberation.
He says there are executioners
and there are victims.
And executioners
are self-imposed.
The victims begin to
fight and agitate for
their liberation.
They use all type of means
to get their liberation.
The revolutionary
philosopher Frantz Fanon says
that what happens is that
the victim begins to agitate.
He uses all types of means
against his executioner
in fighting for a
position of equality.
After he tries a number of
means and they do not work,
he then begins to imitate
the means by which his
executioner kept him down,
that is usually through
force and violence.
He says and then they begin
to use it against them,
breaking the one taboo that
they've never been able
to break, hittin' back
against their executioners,
so that you ought not to
be upset if we are violent,
the United States taught us
very well how to be violent.
(crowd cheers)
- [Voiceover] Four days of
rioting, looting and arson
rocked the city of Detroit
in the worst outbreak of
urban racial violence this year.
Entire blocks of
homes become infernos.
At least 36 are killed,
more than 2,000 injured
and damaged topped
the half billion mark.
Governor Romney declares
a state of emergency,
requests federal troops and
5,000 paratroopers reinforced
the National Guard,
state and city police.
The city's industry and
business are severely
affected and a tight curfew is
ordered in the motor center.
A besieged city of
guerrilla warfare,
sniper groups used day
and night hit-and-run
tactics before tanks
move in to curb
their window and
rooftop barrage.
Wreckage is everywhere.
Civil rights leaders
make a joint condemnation
of the violence and call
for an end to the rioting.
President Johnson using
firm words urges the
nation's citizens to
support the maintenance
of law and order.
- [Johnson] I know that the
vast majority of negroes
and whites are shocked
and are outraged by them.
Pillage, looting,
murder and arson have
nothing to do with civil rights.
They are criminal conduct.
Your President calls
upon all of our people
in all of our cities
to join in a determined program
to maintain law and order,
to condemn and to combat
lawlessness in all of its forms
and firmly to show,
by word and by deed,
that riot,
looting
and public disorder
will just not be tolerated.
- When they take
care of the reasons,
not only will they
eliminate this one,
but all others that
will come about.
- I don't think it's over.
I think it'll last 'til people
understand what's going on.
I know a lot of people, see,
I know a lot of friends.
But I know it going be tonight,
gonna be tomorrow night.
It gonna be until people
straighten this up.
(sirens blaring)
- When black people
begin to rebel,
and you'd call it riots,
we understand that
those are not riots.
Those are rebellions.
People are rebelling
because of conditions,
and not because of individuals.
No individual
creates a rebellion.
It's created out
of the conditions,
and those rebellions
will continue
and it's not a long, hot summer.
That's white journalistic
sensationalism.
There's no such thing
as a long, hot summer.
I know some places
around that you know,
snow won't even
touch the ground.
- Black power is a consequence
of the white backlash.
Riots are consequences
of the white backlash
rather than a cause from it.
- If they're trying to present
themselves as a democratic
nation, as a free nation,
trying to get Africans
under their wing and
Africans in America are under
revolt and they're
crushing them,
it will cause too many problems.
But J. Edgar Hoover
was not a fool.
He understood his job.
He had to crush this movement.
That's why COINTELPRO
was not only
instituted, it was also quiet.
Because this one could
not get out because
it was aimed,
really, just at us.
- He was prepared to try
to destroy anything he
saw as disruptive to the
social order of things.
That he saw, you know,
in the early days in
the mob,
the image of the G-men
against the mob and so forth,
and then later in terms
of counter intelligence
against foreign agents.
And now, in the 60's,
something that he didn't
understand that,
the civil rights movement
disrupted the social
order of things.
You use the same kind
of tactics that you use
against the mob
and the people foreign agents
as to citizens of the
United States that,
who were trying to get, you
know, their civil rights
and their civil liberties,
because they were all
threats to the social order.
And therefore,
COINTELPRO came in to be
and he thought he had
basically God on his side.
- Black power means dignity.
Means we gotta walk side by
side with you or through you,
let it be with
dignity and integrity.
We don't want any
more than you have
and we're not gonna accept
any less than you have.
- We will define black power.
He will listen and
recognize it, that's all.
That's all.
- We were now moving from
the mere civil rights
movement into a movement
to gain political power,
to help deliver on the
promises of civil rights.
And the combination
of the two words,
black
and power
was a little bit too much for
white America to handle.
What you had with the
black power movement is
an avowed,
consciously
perpetrated statement that is
political that says we
want something more than
simply the civil rights
kinds of articulated demands.
We wanna talk about real power.
We want to talk about
international issues.
We're gonna link all
this up, talking about
political power, economic
power, the internationalization
of the movement.
- [Voiceover] It is time
for an honest look at the
problem of order in
the United States.
Dissent is a necessary
ingredient of change.
But in a system of
government that provides for
peaceful change, there is
no cause that justifies
resort to violence.
Let us recognize that
the first civil right
of every American is to be
free from domestic violence.
So, I pledge to you,
we shall have order
in the United States.
- We were engaged in
clearly a war.
War of survival.
War of
for self-determination.
A war for economic freedom.
A war for cultural
freedom to be able to
learn things of our culture,
to regain our
historical identity.
- [Voiceover] We have
seen the terrible results
of violence in this country.
It would be intolerable
if a handful of violent
people, and that is
what it is, just a
handful, could harden us
against needed change.
We must give notice
to this violent few.
There are millions
of decent Americans
who are willing to
sacrifice for change,
but they want to do it
without being threatened.
And they want to
do it peacefully.
They are the
non-violent majority.
Black and white, who are
for change without violence.
These are the people
whose voice I want to be.
("Repression" by Willie
James Abner plays)
- [Voiceover] The question
of whether or not violence
is gonna be used is
not a question for
the black community.
It's a question
for white America.
'Cause white America's the
one who's used violence.
For 400 years, we have been
the recipients of violence.
(applause)
- We have never lynched.
We have never shot.
We've never burned a church.
We've never beaten people.
We've never taken them to jail.
That is the question
for white America.
The real question is
can she civilize herself
before we get ready
to civilize her?
- So, at this particular
time in Chicago,
I'm going down 55th
on Prairie, and uh,
I see the helicopter.
I get out the car and I'm
lookin' and some other
people were lookin', too and I
look down and I see the cops.
All burly, white cops, this
is like in the ghetto area,
and they on this young
brother who's on the ground
and I notice some
other people around.
But it's hard even to recall
all that because my mind
began to really, it's like
the whole thing changed.
I saw Vietnam.
I saw Bong Son, Pleiku,
Kon Tum, all of these
places I had been at, you
know, Lanh Binh Thai, Chu Lai,
Cu Chi, whatever and they
all began to like, uh,
metamorphosize almost in my mind
and I heard the cop talk
in terms of detainee.
And then later in Los
Angeles and New York
I heard that again.
They had begin to
even use the language
and so that brought home
a lot of reality to me
and identifying the
brother on the ground
with the Vietnamese
or the Viet Cong
and which we had just
got through doin' it
and the helicopters
almost the identical thing
but now we really VC.
- In America, black people
are treated very much
as the Vietnamese people
or any other colonized
people because we're
used, we're brutalized.
The police in our
community occupy our area,
our community as a foreign
troop occupies territory.
- And we're just not concerned
about the Vietnam War
per se, we are concerned
about the survival of black
people in this country
and that we cannot survive
if we go fight some yellow
man in Vietnam who ain't
never called us nigger.
("Repression" by Willie
James Abner plays)
- No man can speak for
negroes who tells negroes
who tells negroes
love their enemy.
No man can speak for
negroes who tells negroes
turn the other cheek.
No man can speak for
negroes who tells negroes
to suffer peacefully.
There is no negro in his
right mind today who is going
to turn the other cheek.
- Now, they felt that by
murdering Malcolm X that
they would also kill his ideas.
But I'm here to tell you
that Malcolm X's ideas
will be stronger now than
they were when he was alive.
- We want freedom.
We want the power to
determine the destiny
of our black communities.
We want full employment
for our people.
We want an end to the robbery
by the capitalists of
our black community.
We want decent housing, fit
for shelter for human beings.
We want education for our
people that exposes the true
nature of this decadent
American society.
We want education that
teaches us our true history,
and our role in the
present based society.
We want all black men exempt
from military service,
and we want immediate
end to police brutality
and murder of black people.
We want freedom for all
black men held in federal,
state, county and city
prisons and jails.
We want all black people,
when brought to trial,
to be tried by a jury
of their peer group.
Our people, from their
black communities
as defined by the Constitution
of the United States.
We want land, bread,
housing, education, clothing,
justice and peace.
(drumbeat music)
- I think because the Panthers
captured the imagination
and the energy of young
black people in the cities,
I think that they represented
a real possibility
or potential for
community control.
I think that the government
had, you know, we saw the
riots that occurred after
Martin Luther King was
assassinated in 1968 and
I think this government
saw that within its own
population there was a
potential for real rebellion.
And I think the fact that
the Panthers, the idea that
the Panthers might lead
such a rebellion and, uh,
was a real threat, particularly
when the United States
was trying to wage a war in
Vietnam and trying to use
black soldiers, by and
large, to wage the war.
- They wanted to dismiss
us as being a street gang.
Well, we certainly
were not a street gang.
The threat was that we
were equipped with young
people who were committed
to organizing to a
political power base the
poor and oppressed people
throughout this country.
- When you live in a class
society, the upper class
they're always, they're
in constant fear of
what they call
the lower classes.
- The Panthers wanted to
explode the myth of the docile,
black who would turn
the other cheek.
And say no, we won't
turn the other cheek,
as a matter of fact,
if you try to shoot me,
I'm gonna shoot back
and you got your gun
and I got mine and, um,
so, therefore if you want
to aggres upon me then,
whereas I'm not a natural
aggressor that I will
defend myself to the hilt.
And that's what we
were attempting to do.
- Well, actually the Black
Panther party in total,
was a very American phenomenon.
It was very similar
analytically to the
Minute Men, historically.
A group of local citizens
who grows up to defend
their community
against aggression,
which is what the
Black Panther party
conceived itself as,
defending the community
that blacks lived in from
aggression from police
forces who are hostile.
- We said move to
a higher level.
We're moving to a level
whereby the people are going
to take over control
of their destiny,
they're gonna take
over control of their
community and the first way
of doing this is dealing
with them most
integral part of the fascist
three way oppression.
We see demagogic lyin'
politician and avaricious greedy
businessmen and we see
fascist pig cops but the
one that's most evident,
the one that's closest,
the one that's more
clear, the one that's more
defined in the black
community is those fascist
pig cops, so what we are
saying is, if the people
can deal with these
fools, we will have taken
a revolutionary step,
a revolutionary leap,
I should say, so that's
the program that we think
is going to move things
to a higher level.
It is going to raise
some contradictions,
gonna cause some
antagonistic contradictions.
We prepared to deal
with 'em and we think
the people are prepared
to deal with 'em.
- We constantly and at
all times criticised
and condemned racism.
We always worked with other
organizations, we never used
color as the basis
of our criticism.
We talked about
power to the people.
And that was very fundamental.
That is what, essentially,
democracy is supposed
to be about.
But the media wanted to
portray the Black Panther
party as something that
white people would be
afraid of, therefore,
it portrayed it as a
all black organization
that hated white people
and wanted to use violence
against white people.
Once you have that idea
of an organization then
anything they say is bad
and anything that can
be done to them is okay.
- Well, you see, the media has
played its traditional role.
The white-owned white-controlled
media has played its
traditional role,
back then and today.
Their traditional role is
to maintain the status quo.
Status quo meaning,
white folks on top,
black people on the bottom.
So, the media
did the interpreting
of what was going on.
And they interpreted
everything in the light of how
it would impact upon the
maintenance of the status quo.
Still doin' it.
- So you can see that
there's a correlation between
the type of illegal and
subversive COINTELPRO actions
that the FBI wanted to
mount against the party
and the image that was created
in the media of the party.
It's okay to do these things
to a group of bad guys.
- Slave master never like
the slave to get in a
defensive position.
He's called an uppity nigger
and he's lynched.
But you when begin to study
ways in which to thwart
this genocide, these
genocidal wars and come up
with ideas, logical ideas,
ideas that will work,
then you become the
greatest threat to the
internal security of
the United States.
And if that organization
is the greatest threat
then it's militant,
or military apparatus,
it's up for grabs.
It's fair game.
All is fair in love and war.
So you get a COINTELPRO, a
completely illegitimate thing
and it's thrown at
you and just say well,
you can't cry.
This is a war.
- That program was intended
to be run secretly.
It was intended to be run
as a counter-intelligence
program would be run
against say, Soviet spies
that you spread false
information about
and among the black
groups so that
they would shoot each other.
- Well, in California
there was a rivalry between
the Black Panthers and a group
called U.S., United Slaves.
And documents now show
that materials were sent
and information given to the
United Slaves in an effort
to get them to make an
attack on the Panthers,
and in fact, there was
an attack made and two
Panthers were killed.
- The FBI would get hotel
stationary, type a letter
saying that Connie had
met with Hughie and David
and they were really hostile
toward Eldrige and he
should be very careful about
how he deals with them.
And it would be, the
signature would be 'C'.
And Connie would get back
to Algiers and tell us
about her meeting when we
already had this letter
and then she'd say, "But I
didn't send you that letter."
so then we'd say,
"Oh, she's lying."
- In one situation, the
FBI used a fugitive named
George Sams and they chased
him across the country
and the were to raid each
Panther office just as he
left, but they would use
his supposed presence there
as an excuse.
- So the government made
it very crucial to their
success that it look as if
these things just happened
by accident.
There was no connection
between the plan of the FBI
and the fact that so many
Panthers were arrested.
So many of them went to trial.
So many of them,
marriages broke up.
So many terrible
things happened.
However, when these things
are happening to you,
you know it's not an accident.
You know it's not random.
We knew at the time
there was a conspiracy.
We knew it was planned.
We knew it was coordinated.
We just had no idea how
sophisticated the plan
or how sophisticated
the coordination was
and or the collaboration
between the various agencies.
We didn't know it
was called COINTELPRO
that involved the
Department of Defense.
It involved the White House.
It involved the CIA and
the FBI in coordination.
We didn't know all
that but we knew they
were doing these things
against us, they were doing
them deliberately and we
knew that they were wrong.
- We were able to put
a cover on the movement
as best as they saw
fit through COINTELPRO
the best way was
to keep it quiet.
Even today, don't talk about
it, 'cause it still exists.
- [Pratt] What happened,
it just look like this.
No political, no politics.
Next thing I know I'm
convicted of murder.
- [Kathleen Cleaver] They knew
that they had this
unsolved murder.
And what we were told was that
if, in fact,
Pratt was not convicted
in the shootout trial,
which in fact, he wasn't,
then, they had to come
up with something else.
They weren't gonna
let him out of jail.
- Like I said, I hadn't
thought much of it
because I was charged
with the Tate-La Bianca
murders before Charles
Manson was charged with them.
Because they had "off the
pig" on the wall in blood.
They picked me up for
that before they even
suspected Charles Manson.
That'll give you an idea
of how often I would
be picked up and detained.
- At the time the tennis
court murder occurred,
I remember that Pratt
came into the Bay area,
that he and Bobby Seale,
David Hilliard came
over to the place I was
staying in San Francisco.
We met one evening, the
next day, the next two days
there were meetings at
David Hilliard's house
in Oakland and he was
there all the time.
- No matter what he did in
1968 or '69 as a Black Panther,
he was arrested and
charged with a murder.
He went to trial and he didn't
know the following things:
Neither he nor the defense
attorney knew that the FBI
was communicating daily with
the L.A. police department
to try to get him arrested
and convicted of some
kind of an offense.
- The fact that the
government was spying on us
meant that they would
watch all of us.
It's not a matter of only Pratt.
They were watching Bobby Seale.
They were watching
David Hilliard.
They were watching me.
They would follow us.
They knew where we went.
They would tap our phone,
so that, all of us come
to one house and had
meetings for two days,
they're going to know this.
- Nobody knew that the
chief witness against
him was also an FBI informant,
threatened by the FBI
with a
machine gun charge.
Butler was out on parole at
that time, or on probation.
He was alleged to have
had a machine gun.
The FBI could have locked
him up for five years
if they'd wanted to, so
all of the circumstances
were sent to create a
witness against Pratt
who would cooperate rather
than go to jail himself.
- By the time his case
came to trial, the party
had been divided, so
you could say that as a
consequence of
COINTELPRO insinuations,
COINTELPRO actions,
COINTELPRO desires,
COINTELPRO goals had
been accomplished
in the sense that
the party was split.
And Geronimo's trial,
Geronimo's destruction,
you might say, was a
consequence of that kind
of activity because he
could not, other than me,
get anyone to
testify where he was.
- I was telling them
all along, the lawyers
and speaking in open
court, trying to make
these assertions and
they were looking at me
like I was ego-trippin'.
That would be the thing I
would get (mumbles) a lots.
Nigger's ego-tripping.
The FBI didn't
have nothing there.
(mumbles)
And so I would cry.
I'm in Folsom
Prison in the hole.
I'm in the hole here.
The communication
wasn't that good
so I tried the best I could.
I wrote different people
to try to expose what I knew.
And I knew of the
FBI involvement.
- Pratt didn't know that
one of the witnesses
had identified somebody
else as the murderer
a year earlier against him.
That didn't come out.
He didn't know that the
FBI had put informants
in his defense camp
that were reporting back
to the FBI what Pratt
and his attorneys were
planning and talking about.
Certainly, that's a
constitutional breach.
The FBI, of course,
says, well, none of these
things really affected
his trial, that was just
the evidence against him.
But the FBI wouldn't
release these documents.
It took Pratt's
attorneys volunteer,
acting pro bono without a
fee, from '76 until 1979
to drag out of the FBI
grudgingly documents
that still were
heavily censored.
You couldn't get certain
information because
they blacked it out.
Finally, when all of the
information that could
be obtained from
the FBI under the
Freedom of Information
Act was obtained,
Pratt goes to the
California court
and then up to the court
of appeal and finally
to the Supreme Court
and during that process,
in '79 and 1980, the
FBI said to the state
authorities, "Well,
we're telling ya'll about
"COINTELPRO and
everything we can find."
but deliberately kept from the
California Attorney General
and the court the information
that one of their own
agents thought Pratt had been
framed by the FBI in 1972.
- So, it's a very
political situation.
Very political and it
should have never been
really, handled, the courts
are not equipped to handle
a case of this magnitude.
It should have been handled
on an international level.
And this is where
we've been petitioning
more and more and more.
In fact, I was invited
to speak in Geneva
representing political
prisoners in this country
just last month.
But there are difficulties
with that, you know,
that is should be handled
on an international
broader level where
people can understand
because you're like,
asking Jesse James to
adjudicate what his
brother, Frank James, did.
It's not easy.
- In spite of the fact that
J. Edgar Hoover is no longer
with us, we have some
J. Edgar Hoover types
and they do what they can
to make sure that the
opportunity for
self-expression is denied.
- And the fact of the
matter is that in America,
like in every other
society, that it's prepared
to tolerate
injustice in order to
maintain the social order.
- This is American justice.
- [Voiceover] That's
right, that's right.
- This is American democracy.
And those of you who
are familiar with it
know that in America,
democracy is hypocrisy.
Now, if I'm wrong,
put me in jail,
but if you can't prove
that a democracy is not
hypocrisy, then don't
put your hands on me.
Democracy is hypocrisy.
If democracy means freedom,
why aren't our people free?
If democracy means justice,
why don't we have justice?
If democracy means equality,
why don't we have equality?
♪ depression repression
♪ in the air
♪ they all hung in poverty
♪ strickened everywhere
♪ so much killin'
screamin' and dyin'
♪ going on
♪ the man started sayin'
♪ but I ain't did no wrong
♪ takin' out the leaders
♪ takin' out the leaders
♪ one by one
♪ take away the livelihood
♪ takin' the livelihood
♪ makin' me run
♪ all this killin' and misgivin'
♪ ooh ooh ooh
♪ when is it going to end
♪ what are we fighting for
♪ the love of freedom calls
♪ and we've got to win
♪ depression repression
♪ in the air
♪ they all hung in poverty
♪ strickened everywhere
♪ so much killin'
screamin' and dyin'
♪ going on
♪ the man started sayin'
♪ I ain't did no wrong
♪ depression repression ♪
