FBI counteraction to African nationalist groups

This article provides a historical overview of the FBI’s political persecution of the Black Panther Party, including the modus operandi and reasons behind the agency’s actions. The authors analyze the forms of persecution of the Party Bureau using illegal actions (telephone tapping, surveillance and infiltration), as well as the ideology behind these actions. The study found that the FBI’s actions were not only a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, which guarantees the rights of free speech and assembly, but were also part of a larger pattern of federal government interference with left-wing and anti-war movements in the 1960s and 1970sThe authors consider the FBI’s actions in the context of broader cultural and ideological reasons, noting the government’s fear of the pro-communist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist views of the party, which also used armed self-defense. The study is based on materials from the 1960s and 1970s.