Introduction Movements Eras Organizations Index Contributions
About Organizations
Black Panther Party Black Liberation Army American Indian Movement FALN Weather Underground Earth Liberation Front Animal Liberation Front MOVE Republic of New Afrika Symbionese Liberation Army Los Macheteros United Freedom Front May 19th Communist Organization Young Lords George Jackson Brigade Students for a Democratic Society Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Industrial Workers of the World Communist Party USA Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Brown Berets Socialist Workers Party African People's Socialist Party Nation of Islam
About American Indian Movement
Founding in Minneapolis & the AIM Patrol (1968) Trail of Broken Treaties & the BIA Occupation (1972) The Custer Courthouse Confrontation (1973) The Occupation of Wounded Knee (1973) The Wounded Knee Leadership Trials (1974) The "Reign of Terror" on Pine Ridge (1973–1976) The Oglala Firefight & the RESMURS Prosecutions (1975) The Cedar Rapids Acquittal of Butler & Robideau (1976) The Leonard Peltier Case (1977– ) Later Prosecutions & AIM's Prisoner Legacy
THE CUSTER COURTHOUSE CONFRONTATION (1973)

On February 6, 1973, AIM members confronted authorities at the Custer County Courthouse in South Dakota after prosecutors charged the white killer of Wesley Bad Heart Bull, a young Lakota man stabbed to death outside a bar, with only second-degree manslaughter. When officials refused to meet the family, fighting broke out with riot police and the courthouse annex burned. Dozens were arrested — among them Wesley's grieving mother, Sarah Bad Heart Bull.

The prosecutions that followed became a movement scandal: Sarah Bad Heart Bull was sentenced to one to five years for "riot" and served months in prison, while her son's killer never served a day for the killing. Custer radicalized the region's Lakota communities three weeks before Wounded Knee, and its defendants were among the first of the era's AIM political prisoners.