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 Black Liberation Army
Emergence from the Panther Splits Killing of NYPD Officers Piagentini & Jones Killing of NYPD Officers Foster & Laurie Delta Flight 841 Hijacking New Jersey Turnpike Shootout & the Assata Shakur Case Assata Shakur’s Prison Escape The 1981 Brink’s Robbery Mutulu Shakur Prosecution Long-Term Political-Prisoner Campaigns
DELTA FLIGHT 841 HIJACKING
Delta Flight 841 Hijacking

On July 31, 1972, a group associated in many accounts with Black liberation militants hijacked Delta Air Lines Flight 841 and, after collecting a $1 million ransom, ordered it flown to Algiers — the largest ransom obtained in a U.S. hijacking to that point.

In Algeria the hijackers initially sought refuge with Eldridge Cleaver's Black Panther International Section, but the Algerian government seized the ransom and returned it to the United States. Several of those involved were later captured in France, tried, and imprisoned there rather than extradited — an episode that tied the American Black liberation underground to the wider currents of 1970s international exile and armed struggle.