Black Liberation Army Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Black Liberation Army - Term Paper Example The history of the Black Liberation Army dates back to the 1960s, when the Black Panthers Party (BPP), which was another wing of the African American elites, especially from high-class colleges, had proven to be too soft in advocating for the liberation of the blacks (Klehr, 1991). Thus, after the BPP was infiltrated by the FBI and the police, so much so that it was being divided and weakened, the radical members of the BPP then established the BLA as an underground arm of the BPP. The brutality of the police in handling the members of the BPP when they were arrested, which included beating them senselessly and even killing them, motivated the other members of the BPP to move their liberation a notch higher and invoke violence as a means of achieving their objective (Lazerow, 2006). In addition, the justice system especially in the New York State where the militant group was more active adapted the culture of harsh penalties for the arrested and charged members of the BPP. It is thes e harsh justice penalties that were handed to the members of the party in courts such as long-term prison sentences that gave the remaining members of the BPP a reason to establish an underground armed struggle. Thus, the underground arm of the BPP, which was established in the late 1960s and then consolidated into an attacking group in 1970, now became known as the Black Liberation Army (Macdonald, 1980). The actual formation process of the Black Liberation Army is not entirely known, considering the fact that it followed a series of underground events, only to come to the public limelight after it had perpetrated a series of crimes, which included murders, bombings, robberies and kidnappings (Umoja, 1999). Nevertheless, the fallout between the leadership of the BPP was the major motivation for the establishment of this underground, volatile but acutely