Abstract

Conclusion. It is the conclusion of this dissertation that the federal government was forced to temporarily suspend the most egregious actions directed at destroying the BPP, but that these measures pose an ever-present danger of recurrence to minority political organizations representing a significant segment of the population who seek to seriously achieve full participation in the socio-economic life of this country. ;Results. The result of this study is an illustrative history of what happens to a minority political organization that explicitly challenges the policies and practices of a government intent on controlling the pace and degree of integration for a sizeable group of persons seeking full socio-economic participation. Moreover, this study shows the limits to which, so far at least, a government can go in a constitutional democracy before it must choose between destroying the minority political organization or the constitutional democracy. ;Method. The method employed to substantiate this theory is an examination of numerous measures undertaken by the government to, in the words of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize" the BPP. For the most part, records and documents of relevant government agencies initiating and participating in this campaign of destruction against the BPP provide the evidentiary basis for the dissertation. These records and documents, many revealed herein publicly for the first time, have been discovered in litigation involving the BPP and government agencies, Congressional investigations and media exposes. In addition, first hand knowledge of the author as a witness or participant to certain events, interviews with persons knowledgeable about relevant matters and secondary sources of information are used and identified. ;Statement of the Problem. The Black Panther Party was formed in this country in 1966 as an organization comprised of Black and poor persons embracing a common ideology identified by its proponents as "revolutionary intercommunalism." Since its inception, the Party has been subject to a variety of actions by agencies and officers of the federal government intended to destroy it politically and financially. It is the major contention of this dissertation that these officials' efforts to destroy the Party were undertaken precisely because of the BPP's political ideology and potential for organizing a sizeable group of the country's population that has been historically denied equal opportunity in employment, education, housing and other recognized basic needs. A corollary to this theory is that governmental efforts at destruction of the Party, successful in various degrees, were only thwarted or held in abeyance when they reached their logical consequence: destruction of the right of dissent for all groups, which is indispensable to the functioning of a democratic society