Along with predictions of winters staying ability and an
onslaught of Hallmark cards February brings Black History month to 2012. This
is the month when children in schools are bringing home Martin Luther King Jr
worksheets, universities are assigning essay topics about Civil Rights, and
television stations everywhere dust off their films with Black leads. While all
of these reformist approaches to Black History month are happening, I like to
continue my research of the Black Liberation Army. The BLA was a radical spawn
of the Black Panther Party. I became aware of the group a few years ago and
have continued to try and soak up all of the knowledge I can find. Which,
unsurprisingly, is not that much.
The BLA came about on the tail-end of the Panther Party,
when the FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Program) was planting agents in
radical groups to cause infighting and eventual collapse of organizations they
viewed as a threat to the government. You can try to look up the Black
Liberation Army, you can try to ask people if they remember it’s existence, and
you can try to get the facts from the limited muddled information provided. But
the information that is out there is few and far between. Most members are
presumed dead or in prison for multiple life sentences. Assata Shakur escaped
prison and is exiled in Cuba, but she remains the only free and living member,
to my knowledge.
When this small radical faction formed, the USA was in
turmoil. Worse than anyone not alive during that time can even imagine. The BLA
was made up of revolutionaries who believed the only way to seize power from white
America was through an armed militant force. They were an underground group,
they were armed, and they knew the kind of revolution they wanted. They saw the
Panthers ripped apart by the government and felt they would not see revolution
for Black people unless violence was used.
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