COINTELPRO was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political organizations that the FBI perceived as subversive. Groups and individuals targeted by the FBI included feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti-Vietnam War organizers, activists in the civil rights and Black power movements, environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), Chicano and Mexican-American groups like the Brown Berets and the United Farm Workers, and independence movements. Although the program primarily focused on organizations that were part of the broader New Left, they also targeted white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National States' Rights Party.
The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is the name of an American white supremacist, far-right terrorist organization and hate group. Various historians, including Fergus Bordewich, have characterized the Klan as America's first terrorist group. There have been three distinct iterations with various targets relative to time and place, including African Americans, Jews, and Catholics.
The Weather Underground was a far-left Marxist militant organization first active in 1969, founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. Originally known as the Weathermen, the group was organized as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) national leadership. Officially known as the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) beginning in 1970, the group's express political goal was to create a revolutionary party to overthrow the United States government, which WUO believed to be imperialist.
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the civil rights movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission is "to bring about equality for all people regardless of race, creed, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion or ethnic background." To combat discriminatory policies regarding interstate travel, CORE participated in Freedom Rides as college students boarded Greyhound Buses headed for the Deep South. As the influence of the organization grew, so did the number of chapters, eventually expanding all over the country. Despite CORE remaining an active part of the fight for change, some people have noted the lack of organization and functional leadership has led to a decline of participation in social justice.
The Deacons for Defense and Justice was an armed African-American self-defense group founded in November 1964, during the civil rights era in the United States, in the mill town of Jonesboro, Louisiana. On February 21, 1965—the day of Malcolm X's assassination—the first affiliated chapter was founded in Bogalusa, Louisiana, followed by a total of 20 other chapters in this state, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama. It was intended to protect civil rights activists and their families, threatened both by white vigilantes and discriminatory treatment by police under Jim Crow laws. The Bogalusa chapter gained national attention during the summer of 1965 in its violent struggles with the Ku Klux Klan.
Orval Eugene Faubus was an American politician who served as the 36th Governor of Arkansas from 1955 to 1967, as a member of the Democratic Party. In 1957, he refused to comply with a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, and ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent black students from attending Little Rock Central High School. This event became known as the Little Rock Crisis. He was elected to six two-year terms as governor.
Fredrick Allen Hampton Sr. was an American Marxist-Leninist revolutionary. He came to prominence in his late teens and early 20s in Chicago as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter. As a progressive African American, he founded the anti-racist, anti-classist Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots, and the Young Lords, and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. Hampton considered fascism the greatest threat, saying "nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all."
James Douglas Johnson, known as "Justice Jim" Johnson, was an Arkansas legislator and jurist known for outspoken support of racial segregation during the mid-20th century. He served as an associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court from 1959 to 1966, and in the Arkansas Senate from 1951 to 1957. Johnson unsuccessfully sought several elected positions, including Governor of Arkansas in 1956 and 1966, the United States Senate in 1968, and Chief Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1976, 1980, and 1984. A segregationist, Johnson was frequently compared to George Wallace of Alabama. He joined the Republican Party in 1983.
Jesse Benjamin Stoner Jr. was an American lawyer, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, segregationist politician, and domestic terrorist who perpetrated the 1958 bombing of the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. He was not convicted for the bombing of the church until 1980.
The Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple bombing occurred on October 12, 1958, in Atlanta, Georgia. The Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple, on Peachtree Street, housed a Reform Jewish congregation. The building was damaged extensively by the dynamite-fueled explosion, although no one was injured. Five suspects were arrested almost immediately after the bombing. One of them, George Bright, was tried twice. His first trial ended with a hung jury and his second with an acquittal. As a result of Bright's acquittal, the other suspects were not tried, and no one was ever convicted of the bombing.
The Chamber is a 1996 American legal thriller film directed by James Foley. It is based on John Grisham's 1994 novel of the same name. The film stars Chris O'Donnell, Gene Hackman, Faye Dunaway, Lela Rochon, Robert Prosky, Raymond J. Barry, and David Marshall Grant.
The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee (JBAKC) was an anti-racist organization based in the United States. The group protested against the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other white supremacist organizations and published anti-racist literature. Members of the JBAKC were involved in a string of bombings of military, government, and corporate targets in the 1980s. The JBAKC viewed themselves as anti-imperialists and considered African Americans, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans to be oppressed colonial peoples.
John Kasper was an American politician, Ku Klux Klan member, and a segregationist who took a militant stand against racial integration during the civil rights movement.
The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Roy Everett Frankhouser, Jr. was a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, a member of the American Nazi Party, a government informant, and a security consultant to Lyndon LaRouche. Frankhouser was reported by federal officials to have been arrested at least 142 times. In 2003 he told a reporter, "I'm accused of everything from the sinking of the Titanic to landing on the moon." He was convicted of federal crimes in at least three cases, including dealing in stolen explosives and obstruction of justice. Irwin Suall, of the Anti-Defamation League, called Frankhouser "a thread that runs through the history of American hate groups."
The 1986 Arkansas gubernatorial election was conducted on November 4, 1986, to elect the Governor of Arkansas.
Edward Reed Fields is an American white supremacist and anti-Semite.
The 1960 Arkansas gubernatorial election was held on November 8, 1960.
African Americans have played an essential role in the history of Arkansas, but their role has often been marginalized as they confronted a society and polity controlled by white supremacists. As slaves in the United States, they were considered property and were subjected to the harsh conditions of forced labor. After the Civil War and the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, African Americans gained their freedom and the right to vote. However, the rise of Jim Crow laws in the 1890s and early 1900s led to a period of segregation and discrimination that lasted into the 1960s. Most were farmers, working their own property or poor sharecroppers on white-owned land, or very poor day laborers. By World War I, there was steady emigration from farms to nearby cities such as Little Rock and Memphis, as well as to St. Louis and Chicago.
