Biography
Dhoruba al-Mujahid bin Wahad, born Richard Moore in The Bronx in 1944, was a leader of the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party, one of the original Panther 21 defendants acquitted in May 1971, a co-founder of the Black Liberation Army after the 1971 BPP split, and one of the longest-litigated U.S. COINTELPRO cases.
In June 1971, while still a fugitive after the BPP-East/West split, he was arrested for the May 19, 1971 attempted murder of two NYPD officers in a Manhattan attack he and his defense have always argued he did not commit. He was convicted in March 1973 in New York State Supreme Court and sentenced to 25 years to life. He served 19 years in the Auburn, Attica, and other New York state prisons. In 1990 New York State Supreme Court Justice Peter J. McQuillan vacated his conviction after federal litigation forced disclosure of more than 300,000 pages of FBI COINTELPRO file material that had not been provided to the defense at trial — including evidence that the principal prosecution witness had been pressured by the FBI to identify him. He was released on March 22, 1990 after 19 years. He won monetary settlements from the FBI in 1995 and from the New York City Police Department in 2000. He has lived in Ghana for many years; he co-edited Look for Me in the Whirlwind (PM Press, 2017) about the Panther 21. Dhoruba bin Wahad became a prominent organizer in the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party, working in New York City at a time when Black liberation organizing was under intense pressure from local and federal authorities. His activism centered on Black self-determination and community defense, and he became a high-profile target of political policing by the New York City Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including the era’s counterintelligence efforts commonly associated with COINTELPRO.
He was arrested in 1969 in the “Panther 21” conspiracy case and held for an extended period before being acquitted in 1971. Weeks later, he was arrested again and ultimately convicted in 1973 for the attempted murder of two NYPD officers in a 1971 shooting in the Bronx, receiving a sentence of 25 years to life. In 1990, his conviction was overturned after courts found that prosecutors had withheld evidence, and he was released after roughly 19 years imprisoned. After release, he continued public advocacy and commentary on political repression and incarceration, including time living and organizing in Ghana.
