Roslyn Payne Collection of Black Panther Party FBI Files

The documents in the Roslyn Payne Collection of Black Panther Party FBI Files (dated 1968-2010, bulk dates 1968-1971) were produced by the FBI's counterintelligence program COINTELPRO. The FBI officially implemented COINTELPRO in 1956 as a consolidated effort to disrupt subversive activities in the United States, focusing originally on the Communist Party of the United States. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover turned the program's attention to black nationalist and civil rights organizations in the summer of 1967, in what he described as an attempt to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist hate-type organizations." At that time, the Black Panthers had not gained national prominence, and the FBI instead directed its counterintelligence activities toward groups like the Southern Christian Leadership Congress (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), and the Nation of Islam (NOI).

The Black Panther Party (BPP) was formed in Oakland, CA in 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton. The Black Panthers grew out of the emerging Black Power movement of the mid-1960s, which contrasted the non-violent civil disobedience of earlier civil rights groups with a more confrontational approach to black activism. Following an ideology of militant self-defense, the BPP sought to promote revolutionary socialism through community-based initiatives. The Black Panthers gained attention for conducting patrols of Oakland neighborhoods, in which party members monitored police activity while openly carrying firearms. They also provided other community services like their Free Breakfast for School Children, which garnered support for the Panthers within urban black communities. The BPP remained a locally-based organization between 1966 and 1968, but began to expand nationally after a series of incidents, including the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968 and the shooting of BPP member Bobby Hutton on April 6, heightened racial tensions in the United States and attracted more black youth to revolutionary politics. By the fall of 1968 the BPP had grown nationally, with offices in twenty cities from New York to Los Angeles. By 1970 the Black Panthers had offices in sixty-eight cities. By the spring of 1969, the BPP had become the primary concern of the FBI and the target of COINTELPRO activities. In an attempt to foster divisions within the party, the FBI sent forged letters, created incendiary propaganda, impersonated and surveilled party members, and wire tapped phones. These efforts resulted in numerous arrests and criminal cases against members of the BPP, some of which were based on dubious evidence. The FBI ceased COINTELPRO activities in 1971, and many of the tactics it employed were later declared unconstitutional.

The COINTELPRO files on the BPP were released to New York Black Panther Party leader Dhoruba Bin Wahad (formerly Richard Moore) and his attorneys Liz Fink and Bob Boyle over the course of several years between the late 1970s and the 1980s. Bin Wahad and his attorneys won the release of these documents following a civil suit they filed against the FBI in the US District Court Southern District of New York for withholding evidence in a criminal trial. Bin Wahad spent 19 years in prison for attempted murder of two New York City police officers, but was exonerated after evidence showed that the FBI withheld crucial information for his defense. Bin Wahad and his attorneys fought for many years to win the release of these documents and eventually used them as evidence to overturn his conviction.

The COINTELPRO files were later indexed by Roslyn Payne, who created a documentary film on the Black Panthers and included a set of these documents in her personal collection on the BPP.