COINTELPRO and its Historical Legacy Educational Call

US Human Rights Network Training Call

Thursday, October 28, 2010 2 pm EST

“COINTELPRO” was the FBI's secret and illegal program to undermine and destroy the
popular upsurge and mass movements for social justice that swept the US, beginning
with the early civil rights movement and Puerto Rican independence movement in the
1950s, and continuing through the 1960s and 1970s. The name comes from
"COunterINtelligence PROgram, and it was ordered by the infamous FBI Director, J.
Edgar Hoover, to “misdirect, discredit, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize”
progressive and radical organizations and leaders, up to and including outright
assassination of leaders. Illegal FBI operations also included infiltration,
wiretapping of phones, opening mail, break-ins, psychological warfare, grand juries,
frame-ups, imprisonment, and a wide range of other surveillance, harassment, and
intimidation. Illegal activities were directed at a wide range of groups and
individuals, from Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King to more militant groups, such
as the Black Panther Party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the
Revolutionary Action Movement. The most intense operations were directed against
movements by peoples of color, particularly the Black liberation movement, and
Native American, Puerto Rican, and Chicano/Mexicano movements, but also included the
entire antiwar, student, women’s movements, and leftwing organizations. While
COINTELPRO was an FBI operation, it now is seen to include many other government and
military agencies, local police, and right wing organizations. COINTELPRO was
discovered in March, 1971, when still anonymous antiwar activists found secret files
when they raided a draft board that shared offices with the FBI in Media,
Pennsylvania. They removed the files and released them to the news media. While
there were Congressional investigations and some of these illegal activities were
exposed, many of the crimes of COINTELPRO remain unknown. In addition to the highly
destructive impact of COINTELPRO during those times, many political prisoners,
convicted in the 1960s and 1970s, remain in prison to this day.


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Presenters Include:

Ward Churchill

A prolific American Indian scholar/activist, Ward Churchill is a founding member of
the Rainbow Council of Elders, and longtime member of the leadership council of the
American Indian Movement of Colorado. In addition to his numerous works on
Indigenous history, he has written extensively on U.S. foreign policy and the
repression of political dissent, including the FBI’s COINTELPRO operations against
the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. Churchill has written over
20 books, including Fantasies of the Master Race, Struggle for the Land, On the
Justice of Roosting Chickens, From A Native Son, Critical Issues in Native North
America, The COINTELPRO Papers, Indians R Us?, Agents of Repression, Since Predator
Came, and A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas. Five of
his books have received human rights awards.

Akinyele Umoja

Akinyele Umoja is an activist, scholar and educator. He is been active over thirty
years in the liberation struggle of Afrikan people, particularly working with the
New Afrikan Independence Movement. He is a founding member of the New Afrikan
Peoples Organization (NAPO) and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM). Akinyele
is particularly committed to work to gain Amnesty for political prisoners and
prisoners of war and to win reparations for Afrikan people. Akinyele is an Associate
Professor of African-American Studies at Georgia State University (GSU). Akinyele
has contributed articles in several publications including Soulbook, Nommo, By Any
Mean Any Necessary, Black Agenda Report, Breakthrough, BLU, Black Star, Journal of
Black Studies, The Black Scholar, New Political Science, and Socialism and
Democracy.. He is currently writing a book based titled, “Eye for an Eye: The Role
of Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. He also contributed
articles to The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, edited by Charles E. Jones;
Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party, edited by Kathleen Cleaver and
George Katisaficus; The Malcolm X Reader edited by James Conyers and Andrew
Smallwood; and the Companion on African-American History edited by Alton Hornsby.

Join Us

To join the Political Prisoner and State Repression Working Group email Efia Wangaza
at enjericho@aol.com.