Dhoruba Bin Wahad & Robert Boyle Documents Related to the Black Panther Party, 1966-2004

Bin Wahad, Dhoruba

Dhoruba Bin Wahad, born Richard Moore, was born in the Bronx in 1944. As a youth he had several run-ins with the law and served time in prison. He began his political education in prison and when released in 1967 he became politically active on the street. Motivated in part by the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he joined the Harlem, New York chapter of the Black Panther Party in the summer of 1968. He quickly rose to the statewide position of Field Secretary and was responsible for organizing BPP chapters within New York State. On April 2, 1969 he was among 21 NY BPP members indicted and arrested on conspiracy charges (the "Panther 21" case). He was held in lieu of $100,000 bail. By March of 1970 the BPP had raised enough money to post bail for one of the Panther 21 defendants. National BPP leadership chose Bin Wahad for release due to his speaking ability. Thereafter, Bin Wahad traveled around the country speaking in support of his still-incarcerated co-defendants and the BPP's program. Because of that notoriety he became a target of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) counterintelligence program, known commonly as COINTELPRO. On May 13, 1971, the Panther 21, including Bin Wahad, were acquitted of all charges. Two weeks later Bin Wahad was arrested and charged with the May 19, 1971 attempted murder of two police officers. In 1973, after three trials and a case based entirely upon circumstantial evidence, he was convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years to life imprisonment. In 1974, while incarcerated in a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, Bin Wahad became aware of hearings conducted by Congress into FBI misconduct, including illegal and/or unconstitutional acts committed against the Black Panther Party. As a result, Bin Wahad sued the FBI and NYPD (Bin Wahad v. FBI, et al., 75 Civ. 6203 [USDC/SDNY]). After many years of litigation, the lawsuit was successful and Bin Wahad's conviction was ultimately reversed in 1990. After his release, Bin Wahad moved to Ghana, where he founded the Campaign to Free Black and New African Political Prisoners. Bin Wahad currently lives in Africa and remains politically active.

Boyle, Robert J.

Robert J. Boyle is a criminal defense attorney in New York City who has worked in appeals and post-conviction motions, and has also been involved in civil rights and police misconduct litigation. Boyle obtained the files in this collection pursuant to a court order in his legal case Bin Wahad v. FBI, et al. Dhoruba Bin Wahad, who had been convicted of the assault of two NYPD officers in 1973, was the first BPP member whose conviction was eventually overturned as the result of these FBI disclosures, particularly Cointelpro. Bin Wahad was released from prison in 1990 after 19 years. The case has been the subject of two documentaries, Framing The Panthers In Black And White and Passin' It On.

Fink, Elizabeth M. (1945-2015)

Elizabeth Marsha Fink was an American attorney specializing in civil rights and prisoner's rights cases. Fink graduated from Brooklyn Law School, and was best known for filing and ultimately settling a class action suit on behalf of incarcerated people killed and injured in the Attica Prison uprising of 1971. Fink, as co-counsel with attorney Robert Boyle, represented Dhoruba bin Wahad in Bin Wahad v. FBI, et al., winning his release from prison in 1990.