The Panther 21 is a group of twenty-one

Black Panther A black panther is the melanistic colour variant of the leopard (''Panthera pardus'') and the jaguar (''Panthera onca''). Black panthers of both species have excess black pigments, but their typical rosettes are also present. They have been ...

members who were arrested and accused of planned coordinated bombing and long-range rifle attacks on two police stations and an education office in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 1969, who were all acquitted by a jury in May 1971, after revelations during the trial that police infiltrators played key organising roles.Political Trials in History: From Antiquity to the Present
Ron Christenson. Among the defendants were Afeni Shakur, Lumumba Shakur, Ali Bey Hassan, Michael Tabor, Dhoruba al-Mujahid bin Wahad,

Jamal Joseph Jamal Joseph (formerly Eddie Joseph; ...

, Abayama Katara, Baba Odinga, Joan Bird, Robert Collier, Sundiata Acoli, Lonnie Epps, Curtis Powell, Kuwasi Balagoon, Richard Harris, Lee Berry, Lee Roper, and Kwando Kinshasa (William King), and Thomas Berry. The trial eventually collapsed and the twenty-one members were acquitted of all charges.The Black Panther Party (reconsidered)
Charles Earl Jones.

Accusations

Prosecutors alleged that the Panthers had planned three attacks for Friday, January 17, 1969 at 9 a.m. Police claimed that dynamite had been placed in the three locations: At the Queens school near the forty-fourth precinct station, one Panther, nineteen-year-old Joan Bird, was arrested, while two men escaped. The men left behind a long-range rifle. Police claimed that the Panthers planned to use it to shoot at the police as they rushed out of the burning building after the explosion.

Indictments and incarceration

On April 2, 1969 twenty-one Black Panther members were indicted. The number dropped from twenty-one to thirteen, who were arraigned before Judge Charles Marks with bail set at $100,000. The defendants could not make bail immediately and so many spent the months detained on

Rikers Island Rikers Island is a island in the East River between Queens and the Bronx that contains New York City's main jail complex. Named after Abraham Rycken, who took possession of the island in 1664, the island was originally under in size, but has ...

. Joseph A. Phillips from the District Attorney's Office led the prosecution, with Jeffrey Weinsten as his assistant. The Panthers were charged with conspiracy to kill several police officers and to destroy a number of buildings, including four police stations, five department stores, and the Bronx Botanical Gardens. During their incarceration, many people and organizations publicly supported the Panther 21 and raised money for their bail and legal expenses.

Abbie Hoffman Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman (November 30, 1936 – April 12, 1989) was an American political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies") and was a member of the Chicago Seven. He was also a leading proponen ...

helped put up money to bail out one of the defendants. Various churches around New York City also helped raise money for the defendants. The composer

Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein ( ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first America ...

hosted parties raising money for the Panthers. It was one of these parties in support of the Panther 21 that

Tom Wolfe Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. (March 2, 1930 – May 14, 2018)Some sources say 1931; ''The New York Times'' and Reuters both initially reported 1931 in their obituaries before changing to 1930. See and was an American author and journalist widely ...

wrote about in his essay "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's," in which he coined the term

radical chic Radical chic is the fashionable practice of upper-class people associating with politically radical people and causes. Coined in the 1970 article "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's" by journalist Tom Wolfe, the term has become widely used in l ...

. Two of the defendants

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during the trial.

Trial

The District Attorney read Chairman

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also Romanization of Chinese, romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the List of national founde ...

's ''

Little Red Book ''Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung'' () is a book of statements from speeches and writings by Mao Zedong (formerly romanized as Mao Tse-tung), the former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, published from 1964 to about 1976 and widel ...

'' and showed the court the movie ''

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''. At the time, the eight-month trial was the longest and most expensive in

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history. Shakur chose to represent herself in court, pregnant while on trial and facing a 300-year prison sentence and had not attended law school. Shakur interviewed witnesses and argued in court. One of the people Shakur cross-examined was Ralph White, one of the three suspects that actually was an

undercover To go "undercover" (that is, to go on an undercover operation) is to avoid detection by the object of one's observation, and especially to disguise one's own identity (or use an assumed identity) for the purposes of gaining the trust of an ind ...

agent. White was someone whom she had suspected all along of being a cop, since he had been inciting others to violence. She got White to admit under oath that he and the other two agents had organized most of the unlawful activities. She also got White to admit to the court that the activism that they had done together was "powerful, inspiring, and ... beautiful". Shakur asked Mr. White if he had misrepresented the Panthers to his police bosses. He said "Yes". She asked if he had betrayed the community. He said "Yes." She and the others in the "Panther 21" were acquitted in May 1971 after an eight-month trial. Altogether, Afeni Shakur spent two years in jail before being acquitted.Cribb, Arielle G. Stories Of Gender And Injustices In The Cases Of Afeni Shakur, Angela Davis And Assata Shakur. ''Arielle Garden Cribb.'' Aug. 2009. https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/13786/Cribb%2c%20Arielle.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y At the age of 24, her son, Lesane Parish Crooks, was born on June 16, 1971. The following year, in 1972, Lesane Parish was renamed Tupac Amaru Shakur, which means "shining serpent" in

Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, a Native South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language **So ...

.Afeni Shakur, mother of rapper Tupac, dies at 69
RichmondFreePress.com; accessed May 15, 2016. Tupac was named after

Túpac Amaru II José Gabriel Condorcanqui ( – May 18, 1781)known as Túpac Amaru II was an indigenous Cacique who led a large Andean rebellion against the Spanish in Peru. He later became a mythical figure in the Peruvian struggle for independence and ...

, indigenous insurgent leader of the

Rebellion of Túpac Amaru II The Rebellion of Túpac Amaru II (4 November 1780 – 15 March 1783) was an uprising by ''cacique''-led Aymara, Quechua and ''mestizo'' rebels aimed at overthrowing Spanish colonial rule in Peru. The causes of the rebellion included oppositi ...

, a rebellion of the

Inca The Inca Empire (also known as the Incan Empire and the Inka Empire), called ''Tawantinsuyu'' by its subjects, ( Quechua for the "Realm of the Four Parts", "four parts together" ) was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The adm ...

against the

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which lasted from 1780 to 1783.

Acquittal

The Black Panther members were acquitted on May 12, 1971 of all 156 charges.One Year Later: The Radicalization of the Panther 13 Jury
New York Magazine May 29, 1972, Catherine Breslin

References

{{Black Panther Party Black Panther Party Black Power Politics and race in the United States Quantified groups of defendants