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On October 15^th, 1966, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and others formed the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California in response to the scourge of police brutality.

Their armed protest at the California State House in April 1967, over the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, brought them into the national spotlight. The Party’s ranks grew exponentially with urban uprisings of 1967 and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

Dhoruba Bin Wahad became field secretary of the NY chapter of the Party in 1968. Their bold establishment of some of the Party’s legendary Community Survival Programs, their coalition building capabilities and their creative mass protests, captured the imagination of many young people around the country. Those bold organizing initiatives, including rent strikes, their incredible medical programs that brought national attention to sickle cell anemia and lead poisoning, their pioneering call for the decentralizing of the police, and more, also triggered an acceleration of hostile covert actions aimed at destroying the Party and, in particular, blocking its insurgent popularity in New York City.

It led to 21 Panther leaders being put on trial for their lives in what became known as the Panther 21 case. They were charged with conspiring to destroy popular venues in the city like Botanical Gardens.

They were all acquitted after one of the largest trials of its kind in New York City history. Their acquittals sparked an acceleration of covert actions against the Party. This, along with an acrimonious split within the Party, forced many leaders and members to go underground.

It is against this background that Bin Wahad and others would form the Black Liberation Army, that period’s answer to the legendary Underground Railroad. He would be captured and charged with an armed assault on a police officer in a COINTELPRO-orchestrated prosecution, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. 

Incredibly, on March 22, 1990, just weeks after the release of Nelson Mandela, the world’s most popular political prisoner at the time, and after securing evidence of the government’s role in illegally securing his conviction through Freedom of Information Act proceedings, Bin Wahad was one of the few Panther political prisoners to legally secure his release with the aid of the extraordinary commitment of people’s lawyers Bob Boyle and the late Liz Fink.

Upon his release, Bin Wahad formed the Campaign to Free Black and New Afrikan Political Prisoners, with his former wife, the irrepressible activist Tanaquil Jones, where he used his history and eloquence to expose the continued imprisonment of so many of his comrades who faced similar COINTELPRO orchestrated convictions. NY state alone has more Panther political prisoners than any other state in the country. He penned the insightful Still Black, Still Strong with writings contributed by exiled Panther Assata Shakur and the now very dangerously ill and imperiled Mumia Abu Jamal, who currently be considered the world’s most famous political prisoner. He was the focus of the moving documentary Passin It On, which also sheds light on other Panther political prisoners.

He is currently the cofounder of National Coalition Against Police Terrorism with former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.

Incredibly, Bin Wahad, now 71, endured a senseless attack from a Clayton County Georgia police officer in front of his own home last year. The incident, captured on videotape, is currently going through the court system. Just as incredible, and even more violently, he was senselessly attacked and beaten by members of the New Black Panther Party upon the orders of Malik Zulu Shabazz at one of their functions on August 8^th in Atlanta to keep Bin Wahad from criticizing Shabazz in public only days after addressing the first national conference of the Black Lives Matter Movement.

That attack forced him to undergo a six hour surgery for a jaw broken in three places.

The NJ Black Panther Party Commemoration Committee was formed in the aftermath of the August NBPP attack and in anticipation to the Party’s 50^th anniversary next year. It includes some of Bin Wahad’s cubs such as Baba Zayid Muhammad of the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee and TJ Whitaker of the NJ branch of the Jericho Movement, a national organization dedicated to America’s remaining political prisoners. Both were founding members of the Campaign To Free Black And New Afrikan Political Prisoners.

“Let us be clear, as we approach their 50^th anniversary of the Black Panther Party, there will be ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ attacks on that legacy in order to confuse and discourage young people interested in embracing this vibrant and courageous legacy,” explained Muhammad.

“Those attacks on Dhoruba may turn out to be ‘hard’ attacks on their legacy.

“The medical attacks on Mumia and Robert ‘Seth’ Hayes and Imam Jamil, the former H Rap Brown threatening their very lives may also be viewed as ‘hard’ attacks on their legacy.

“We must seize the time and do our part to set the record straight and carry on the legacy.
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