Black Panther Party Research Paper

The Black Panther Party were also a big concern for the government and targets in COINTELPRO due to the massive support they gained in their communities as they felt like they were being oppressed by the government and provided many activities for the neighborhood youth including free food and saturday morning class to teach Black History since at the time, no public school would want to teach it. The Black Panther Party had then director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover infamously called the group, “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and was one of the main supervisors involved with COINTELPRO which some members of the Black Panther Party became political prisoners, getting some type of blackmail to resist and suppress

Austin is an associate professor of history and co-director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage at the University of Southern Mississippi, he made a book titled Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party which chronicles the fight law enforcement had against the Black Panther Party and wouldn’t give up for their cause, had an excerpt used in Journal of African American Studies where the excerpt is titled, An Interview with Harold Taylor where Austin interviews a then-member of the Black Panther Party who joined the organization in Los Angeles where police brutalities were still rampant. Harold Taylor talks about being in the Black Panther Party as a teenager, being part of a group that he hoped would stop police officers from killing innocent African Americans, and discusses how a majority of the members had suspicions that the police or the FBI had made threats over the phone, would shoot their headquarters with sniper fire, and attempt to kidnap members of the organization for more information. Taylor talks to Austin about a time where FBI agents tried to kidnap him near the Black Panther’s Los Angeles headquarters as he states, “Yeah, I was walking down the street from my

Esquire Men’s Magazine, known for their fashion trends but more importantly, their political views, wrote an article on June 4th, 2013 titled, Hip-Hop and the FBI: A Little-Known History which shows the parallels hip hop music has had with the FBI and their unjust acts under COINTELPRO and how modern day hip hop artists and rapper reflect on the horrors done under COINTELPRO. In the 2013 rap album titled Acid Rap, Chancelor Jonathan Bennett better known as hip hop artist Chance the Rapper has a song titled Cocoa Butter Kisses in which he reflects on his childhood and realizes that he missed his mother’s nurturing when he was young because of the conflicts in his life like drug use as he got older, a featured rapper by the name of Victor Kwesi Mensah known as his rapper name Vic Mensa where he has a verse in the song where he says, “Everywhere that I go, everywhere they be asking how's it