Bashir Hameed

Last updated
Bashir Hameed
Born
James Dixon York

(1940-12-01)December 1, 1940
DiedAugust 30, 2008(2008-08-30) (aged 67)
Other namesBashir Hameed
Known forMember of Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army
Criminal chargeMurder and Attempted Murder
Penalty33 years to Life

Bashir Hameed (born James Dixon York on December 1, 1940; died August 30, 2008 [1] ) was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army.

Contents

York was born December 1, 1940, in Elizabeth, New Jersey. It was in 1968 while living in Oakland, California that York joined the Black Panther Party. He returned to New Jersey in 1969 to reorganize the Jersey City Branch of the BPP as deputy chairman. [2]

In 1974 York was serving a two-to-three-year sentence at Trenton State Prison for assaulting a police officer when he escaped during a furlough to visit a sick relative. He was later recaptured and served out the remainder of that sentence. [3]

1981 Murder of John Scarangella

Police Officer Richard Rainey and his partner, Officer John Scarangella, were responding to a burglary in St. Albans, Queens, New York City on May 1, 1981, when they pulled over two men in a white van. The two men inside the van were York and a fellow Black Liberation Army member Anthony LaBorde (later known as Abdul Majid). Upon being stopped, York and LaBorder exited the van and opened fire on the officers with semi-automatic handguns. John Scarangella was shot thirteen times including twice in the head in the exchange, later dying of his injuries while Rainey was shot eight times in the leg and back and was later left on disability for the rest of his life. [4]

The case went before multiple trials. The first trial ended in a hung jury, who were divided along racial lines. [5] The second trial was declared a mistrial by the judge after the judge ordered the jury to reach a verdict by a deadline, but subsequently one of the jurors fell ill. [5] Both York and LaBorde were convicted of murder and sentenced to 33 years to life as a result of a third trial.

It was after their 1981 arrest that both York and LaBorde converted to Islam and assumed new Muslim names, LaBorde doing so in 1982. [5]

Hameed died while serving this sentence at the Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mumia Abu-Jamal</span> American political activist and journalist convicted of the murder of a police officer

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an American political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. While on death row, he has written and commented on the criminal justice system in the United States. After numerous appeals, his death penalty sentence was overturned by a federal court. In 2011, the prosecution agreed to a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. He entered the general prison population early the following year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Assata Shakur</span> American former member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Assata Olugbala Shakur is an American political activist who was a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). In 1977, she was convicted in the first-degree murder of State Trooper Werner Foerster during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. She escaped from prison in 1979 and is currently wanted by the FBI, with a $1 million reward for her apprehension.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bobby Seale</span> Co-founder of the Black Panther Party

Robert George Seale is an American engineer, political activist and author. Seale is widely known for co-founding the Black Panther Party with fellow activist Huey P. Newton. Founded as the "Black Panther Party for Self-Defense", the Party's main practice was monitoring police activities and challenging police brutality in Black communities, first in Oakland, California, and later in cities throughout the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Liberation Army</span> American underground, black nationalist militant organization

The Black Liberation Army (BLA) was an underground Marxist-Leninist, black-nationalist militant organization that operated in the United States from 1970 to 1981. Composed of former Black Panthers (BPP) and Republic of New Afrika (RNA) members who served above ground before going underground, the organization's program was one of war against the United States government, and its stated goal was to "take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States." The BLA carried out a series of bombings, killings of police officers and drug dealers, robberies, and prison breaks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black power movement</span> African-American social, political & cultural movement in the United States

The Black Power movement was a branch or counterculture within the civil rights movement of the United States, reacting against its more moderate, mainstream, or incremental tendencies and motivated by a desire for safety and self-sufficiency that was not available inside redlined African American neighborhoods. Black Power activists founded black-owned bookstores, food cooperatives, farms, media, printing presses, schools, clinics and ambulance services. The international impact of the movement includes the Black Power Revolution in Trinidad and Tobago.

Sundiata Acoli is an American political activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1974 for murdering a New Jersey state trooper. Acoli was granted parole in 2022 at the age of 85.

The May 19th Communist Organization was a US-based far-left armed terrorist group formed by members of the Weather Underground Organization. The group was originally known as the New York chapter of the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (PFOC), an organization devoted to promoting the causes of the Weather Underground legally, as part of the Prairie Fire Manifesto's change in Weather Underground Organization strategy, which demanded both aboveground mass movements and clandestine organizations. The role of the clandestine organization would be to build the "consciousness of action" and prepare the way for the development of a people's militia. Concurrently, the role of the mass movement, the above-ground Prairie Fire Collective, would include the support for and the encouragement of armed action. Such an alliance would, according to Weather, "help create the 'sea' for the guerrillas to swim in." The M19CO name was derived from the birthdays of Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X. The May 19 Communist Organization was active from 1978 to 1985. M19CO was a combination of the Black Liberation Army and the Weather Underground. It also included members of the Black Panthers, White Panthers, and the Republic of New Afrika (RNA).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Jersey State Prison</span> State Prison for men In Trenton, New Jersey US

The New Jersey State Prison (NJSP), formerly known as Trenton State Prison, is a state men's prison in Trenton, New Jersey operated by the New Jersey Department of Corrections. It is the oldest prison in New Jersey and one of the oldest correctional facilities in the United States. It is the state's only completely maximum security institution, housing the most difficult and/or dangerous male offenders in the inmate population. NJSP operates two security units and provides a high level of custodial supervision and control. Professional treatment services, such as education and social work, are a priority at the facility. The Bureau of State Use Industries operated the bedding and clothing shops that were once located in Shop Hall at the facility. These industries have been relocated to South Woods State Prison.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kuwasi Balagoon</span> American anarchist activist (1946–1986)

Kuwasi Balagoon, born Donald Weems, was an American political activist, anarchist and member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army. Radicalised by race riots in his home state of Maryland growing up, as well as by his experiences while serving in the US Army, Weems became the black nationalist known as Kuwasi Balagoon in New York City in the late 1960s. First becoming involved in local Afrocentric organisations in Harlem, Balagoon would move on to become involved in the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party, which quickly saw him charged and arrested for criminal behaviour. Balagoon was initially part of the Panther 21 case, in which 21 panthers were accused of planning to bomb several locations in New York City, but although the Panther 21 were later acquitted, Balagoon's case was separated off and he was convicted of a New Jersey bank robbery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United Freedom Front</span> American Marxist terrorist conspiracy (1975-1984)

The United Freedom Front (UFF) was a small American Marxist organization active in the 1970s and 1980s. It was originally called the Sam Melville/Jonathan Jackson Unit, and its members became known as the Ohio 7 when they were brought to trial. Between 1975 and 1984 the UFF carried out at least 20 bombings and nine bank robberies in the northeastern United States, targeting corporate buildings, courthouses, and military facilities. Brent L. Smith describes them as "undoubtedly the most successful of the leftist terrorists of the 1970s and 1980s." The group's members were eventually apprehended and convicted of conspiracy, murder, attempted murder, and other charges.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angola Three</span> American prison inmates in solitary for decades

The Angola Three are three African-American former prison inmates who were held for decades in solitary confinement while imprisoned at Louisiana State Penitentiary. The latter two were indicted in April 1972 for the killing of a prison corrections officer; they were convicted in January 1974. Wallace and Woodfox served more than 40 years each in solitary, the "longest period of solitary confinement in American prison history".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jamal Joseph</span> American film director

Jamal Joseph is an American writer, director, producer, poet, activist, and educator. Joseph was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. He was prosecuted as one of the Panther 21. He spent six years incarcerated at Leavenworth Penitentiary.

The 1981 Brink's robbery was an armed robbery and three related murders committed on October 20, 1981, by several Black Liberation Army members and four former members of the Weather Underground, now associated with the May 19th Communist Organization. The plan called for the BLA members – including Kuwasi Balagoon, Mtayari Sundiata, Samuel Brown and Mutulu Shakur – to carry out the robbery, with the M19CO members – David Gilbert, Judith Alice Clark, Kathy Boudin, and Marilyn Buck – to serve as getaway drivers in switchcars.

Dhoruba al-Mujahid bin Wahad is an American writer and activist, Black Panther Party leader and co-founder of the Black Liberation Army. Dhoruba, in Swahili, means "the storm".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jalil Muntaqim</span> American activist, convicted of murder, former political prisoner

Anthony Bottom aka Jalil Abdul Muntaqim political activist and former member of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the Black Liberation Army (BLA) who served 49 years in prison for two counts of first-degree murder. In August 1971, he was arrested in California along with Albert “Nuh” Washington and Herman Bell. He was charged with the killing of two NYPD police officers, Waverly Jones and Joseph A. Piagentini, in New York City on May 21. In 1974, he was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with possible parole after 22 years. Bottom had been the subject of attention for being repeatedly denied parole despite having been eligible since 1993. In June 2020, Bottom was reportedly sick with coronavirus disease. He was released from prison on October 7, 2020, after more than 49 years of incarceration and 11 parole denials.

Marshall "Eddie" Conway was an American black nationalist who was a leading member of the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party. He was convicted in 1971 for the murder of a police officer a year earlier in a trial with many irregularities. In 2014 he was released on parole after an appellate court ruled that his jury had been given improper instructions.

Joseph Michael Remiro is an American convicted murderer and one of the founding members of the Symbionese Liberation Army in the early fall of 1973. It was an American leftist terrorist group based in the Bay Area of California. He used the pseudonym or nom de guerre "Bo" while he was a member of the group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Safiya Bukhari</span>

Safiya Bukhari was an American member of the Black Panther Party. She was also the co-founder of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC), the Jericho Movement for U.S. Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War, and was the vice president of the Republic of New Afrika.

James Edward Daniels was an American serial killer. Originally sentenced to 50-years-to-life for a 1963 murder, he was paroled early and resumed committing crimes, including a double murder. In 1984, shortly after murdering a state trooper in New Jersey, Daniels and a friend were killed in a car crash.

References

  1. "In Memorium: Black Political Prisoner Bashir Hameed (1940 – 2008) | National Boricua Human Rights Network". Archived from the original on 2010-11-30. Retrieved 2010-07-26.
  2. "Community Celebration of Bashir Hameed's Life" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-01-25. Retrieved 18 March 2021.
  3. McFadden, Robert D. (21 April 1981). "2 BLACK LIBERATION ARMY MEMBERS IDENTIFIED IN SHOOTING OF 2 OFFICERS". New York Times . Retrieved 17 March 2021.
  4. Cornell Smith, Kati (5 August 2003). "NO NEW TRIAL FOR '81 KILLERS". New York Post . Retrieved 18 March 2021.
  5. 1 2 3 Gruson, Lindsey (7 October 1983). "2D MISTRIAL IN MURDER OF OFFICER". New York Times . Retrieved 18 March 2021.