Poisoned Food: FBI and the Hartford Black Panther Party - CANCELLED

• In Event: Institutional Failures

Abstract

This project tells the story as a case study in othering. The files of the FBI’s investigation of the Hartford Black Panthers illustrate its efforts in watching, infiltrating, intimidating, and neutralizing the Hartford Black Panthers.

During its operational time, the Connecticut Panthers became an important organization in the national BPP movement, and the Hartford chapter stood out. Because the Hartford Panthers were the most well-organized state chapter, they were assigned as security for Seale for his infamous Yale University speech in 1969. These events and the subsequent trial of the New Haven Nine precipitated the demise of the Hartford Panthers in CT.

Political and cultural repression uses processes of othering and the creation of moral panics. Hartford’s 1960s and 1970s race riots contextualize the FBI investigation of the Panthers. In the context of this panic the FBI legitimated old fears and created new narratives of the Panthers’ threat that linked them, and their predecessor youth groups to the riots. Over time the othering shifted from viewing the Panthers as a political threat to a gang threat. Within two years of formation, the members of the Hartford Panthers were either inactive or underground.

Author

• Albert DiChiara, University of Hartford