Black Panthers

At the end of the 1970's, the Black Panthers of California were disbanded after many arrests and murders, and it seems rather coincidental that L.A. gangs the Bloods and the Crips started at around the same time, in California. Given that the Black Panthers members were of African descent, as were those in the Bloods and Crips, is it true that the government and the CIA helped to turn the African-Americans in California against each other?

Anyone know anything about this? I cannot really find much on the internet.

By the way, new to the forum. So sorry for any stupid mistakes.

Thanks.

The Crips formed when the FBI dismantled the Black Panther party. The Bloods formed to protect themselves from the Crips.

It is what always happens, whenever you take away the power of an organization 3 or 4 always pop up in its place. I don't know if it was intentional, but I do know trying the same thing over and over again expecting different results is insane.

I don't think the CIA specifically founded those gangs. However, I think theres a fair chance they "helped" keep things ugly in the 80s, after there was a movement towards unification among the original sets.

The notion of turning Blacks against each other goes back to the early slave-trading days, as pioneered by slave-owner Willie Lynch:

HOW TO KEEP A BLACK MAN DOWN - Willie Lynch, 1712

A good history of gangs can be found here: Black Street Gangs in Los Angeles: A History

By 1967, the Panthers were one of the strongest black political groups in the nation, and by November 1968, J. Edgar Hoover dispatched a memorandum calling his field agents to “exploit all avenues of creating ...dissension within the ranks of the BPP” (Churchill and Wall 1990:63).

The Crips did not originate from the Black Panthers themselves, but from their demise.

The attack on black political leadership in Los Angeles, and the power vacuum that remained, created a large void for young black youths in the late 1960s that coincided with the resurgence of black gangs. A generation of black teens in Los Angeles saw their role models and leadership decimated in the late 1960s. Raymond Washington, a 15-year-old student at Fremont High School, started the first new street gang in 1969, shortly after much of the Panther power base was eliminated and as other social and political groups became ineffective in Los Angeles.

So would we today be facing such rampant gang violence in LA if only the FBI and LA police simply treated black citizens as human beings? The Black Panthers were created to deal with police brutality aimed at black citizens, but once the Black Panthers were themselves destroyed through counterintelligence operations, it only left a criminal element to deal with the rage young blacks felt towards authority.

[edit on 28-3-2009 by Blackmarketeer]