TIMELINE
“History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes”
1916
Jamaican born leader of UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) Marcus Garvey arrives in NY.
1917
Garvey founded the New York branch of UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association), located at 235 West 131st Street.
1919
October 11th - Letter from J. Edgar Hoover to the Attorney General, proposing to frame Marcus Garvey as a means of "neutralizing" the black nationalist leader's political effectiveness despite the fact “He has not yet violated any federal law”.
1920
In August of 1920, 25,000 African Americans attended the first UNIA convention at Madison Square Garden. Garvey was elected president general of the UNIA, and issued a Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World. As a Black Nationalist organization, the goals of the UNIA were focused on social, economic and political self-determination.
1922
Marcus Garvey arrested on mail fraud charges.
1927
Marcus Garvey was deported back to Jamaica after serving a 5 year sentence. By the time of Garvey’s release the UNIA was neutralised as an effective organisation.
1965
On Sunday February 21st 1965 Malik El-Shabazz formerly known as Malcolm X was revealing his newly formed Organization for Afro-American Unity or OAAU at the Audubon Ballroom on 165th street in Manhattan New York. After the events at the Audubon, Eugene Roberts returned home and called his supervising officer at the NYPD’s Bureau of Special Services and Investigations. Eugene was promoted to detective where he went back undercover.
August 6th - US Voting Rights act passed
1966
October 1966, in Oakland, California, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and a handful of youths founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense on principles that Malcolm had preached.
1967
April 27th - First issue of The Black Panther Community News Service is released. The first issue focuses on police brutality.
August 25th - Initiating document for COINTELPRO or counter intelligence programme “The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavour is to expose, disrupt, discredit, or otherwise neutralise the activities of black nationalist, hate type organisations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership and supporters“
Of all the counterintelligence directed at the black liberation movement 90% were directed at the Black Panther Party.
October 28th - Police shootout with Huey P Newton. Huey is injured and arrested, officer John Frey is shot and killed . No gun was found on Newton.
1968
April 6th - 17 year old lil Bobby Hutton killed by Oakland Police. Hutton was the first person recruited to the black Panther Party and also the first to be killed by police. He would not be the last.
April - New York BPP formed. Lumumba Shakur headed the Harlem chapter, and Sekou Odinga headed the Bronx Chapter.
September - Eldridge Cleaver granted political asylum in Cuba
November - Oakland BPP begins a “Free Breakfast Programme”
December 21 - NY chapter of BPP Participates in mass student demonstration for community control of schools.
1969
January 25th - BPP central HQ enacts membership purge in order to “eliminate provocateurs and members whose conduct is detrimental to the welfare of the community and the part”
March - Connie Matthews Organises Bobby Seale’s tour through Scandinavia
April 2nd - 21 leading Cadre members of the New York City Chapter of the Black Panther Party were indicted and arrested on conspiracy charges. The so-called “Panther 21” case was based solely on the allegations of three undercover NYPD officers who posed as Panther members. One of which Detective Eugene Roberts, who years earlier infiltrated Malcolm X’s organization the OAAU and was on Malcolm’s security detail at the Audubon Ballroom when Malcolm was gunned downed and killed.
April 25th - Connie Matthews writes open letter to Danish Foreign Ministry calling for them to give support and solidarity to the Panthers in general but Bobby Seale and the Panther 21.
December 4th - Chicago police, aided by information provided by an FBI informant, fired hundreds of rounds into the BPP office killing Chairman Fred Hampton and BPP member Mark Clark. Fred Hampton was killed as he lay in his bed, drugged from the secretly given to him by informant Bill O’Neal.
Frank B. Wilderson III would visit the apartment a few days later.
Hampton’s lawyers Jeffery Haas and Flint Taylor would later sue the government and win a settlement in 1983.
1970
March, 1970, the FBI begins to sow seeds of factionalism in the Black Panthers, in part by forging letters to members. Eldridge Cleaver is one of their main targets — living in exile in Algiers — they gradually convince him with a steady stream of misinformation that the BPP leadership is trying to remove him from power.
April 12th - office of NY21 lawyers set ablaze
August 8th - Michael Cetawayo Tabor of NY21 released on bail after 16 months.
Huey calls for BPP to support women’s liberation and gay rights.
July 7th - Joan Bird & Afeni Shakur released on bail.
September 4-6 - Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention (1970) + Assata joins BPP. Once Assata became a full fledged member of the New York Black Panther party. She was assigned to the Medical cadre under the direct supervision of Joan Bird.
1971
March 8th 1971 - a group of activists that called themselves the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI break-in to the FBI offices in Media, Pennsylvania. They discover COINTELPRO
April 6th 1971 - Assata Shakur was shot in the stomach during an attempted “expropriation’ on an alleged drug dealer at Statler Hilton Hotel. She was arrested booked on charges of attempted robbery, felonious assault, reckless endangerment, and possession of a deadly weapon, then released on bail
May 13th - Panther 21 acquitted of all charges
May 19th - Patrolman Piagentini and Waverly Jones are shot and killed. BLA claim responsibility in communique .
June 16th - Tupac Shakur is born
August 23rd - On August 23, 1971, a Queens, New York, bank was robbed. While the names of none of the others were given, a woman in the picture was identified in large print as JoAnne Chesimard. The same poster was used in full-page ads, prominently inserted between important newspaper stories and paid for by the New York Clearing house association, a bank conglomerate. Following this Assata goes underground with the BLA.
1973
May 2nd 1973 - New Jersey Turnpike incident. One state trooper, Werner Forester, and Zayd Shakur were killed in the incident; Shakur herself was seriously wounded. Assata and Sundiata apprehended
July 20th, 1973, Assata Shakur was arraigned on the Queens bank robbery charges. (The actual trial would not begin until January 5th, 1976, and would last a mere 11 days, ending in acquittal on January 16th, 1976.)
August 1st, 1973, she was arraigned on the Bronx bank robbery charges. This trial would again be a relatively brief one, dating from December 3rd to 14th, 1973, resulting in a hung jury; the prosecution insisted on an immediate retrial, which was held from December 19th to the 28th, 1973, and this trial resulted in an acquittal
The original trial for the New Jersey Turnpike incident began on October 9th, 1973. Due to the fact that the jury was overwhelmingly sympathetic to the prosecution, it quickly came to a close when a defense request for a change of venue was granted on October 23rd, 1973.
1974
The trial for the New Jersey Turnpike incident resumed again on January 1st, 1974, and would continue for one month, until February 1st, 1974, when a mistrial was called in light of Assata’s pregnancy.
Assata was arraigned on the charges of attempted murder of the policemen on May 11th, 1974, and the murder of the drug dealer on May 29th, 1974, these cases would be dismissed before they got to trial.
May 30th, 1974, Assata Shakur was arraigned on the charges of kidnapping a drug dealer.
