Don’t have time at the moment for a more detailed post, but I hope to get back to things tomorrow. I have a lot of different things on tap, but here’s something to think over for the time being. This is from an interview with Eldridge Cleaver who was one of the prominent leaders of the Black Panther Party back in the day. He’s talking about the Kennedy’s working behind the scenes with the Civil Rights movement to create a “dynasty”:

Their plan was for Martin Luther King and Malcolm X to work together because together they could turn out the total black vote and then with the votes that the Kennedys could deliver they would have been able to establish a dynasty that would have ruled this country into the next century. That was their plan and that is why they were liquidated. The two Kennedy brothers killed, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X killed so that plan could not come into fruition. That was the scenario, that is why they were killed we do not understand that.

[…] if you look at all four of those assassinations they were textbook. They were murdered and the finger was pointed at some obvious enemy in all four cases. In all four cases, baloney. They were killed by the powers that rule this country who did not want to see the political dynasty of the Kennedys take control and last into the next century. They were still paranoid from how long Roosevelt was in power. Remember they changed the laws so that he couldn’t run again and he obliged them by dying and so they were very fearful that this could be repeated, and it was on the way to being repeated but they knocked them out because by now Martin Luther King would have been president. That was their scenario.

I got interested in Eldridge Cleaver courtesy of this Jerry Rubin book which I’ve almost finished, and have a few different posts planned around. If anybody can track down a good source online for either audio or preferably original video source material from the late 1960’s featuring Black Panthers speaking, I’d really appreciate it.