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
KILLING OF NYPD OFFICERS PIAGENTINI & JONES
On May 21, 1971, New York City police officers Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones were shot and killed in Harlem in an ambush attributed to the Black Liberation Army. Coming amid a wave of attacks on police, the killings drew intense law-enforcement attention to the emerging underground.
Years of investigation and prosecution followed. Herman Bell, Jalil Muntaqim (Anthony Bottom), and Albert "Nuh" Washington — the "New York Three" — were convicted in the case and became long-term political prisoners. Their decades-long imprisonment, and the campaigns for their release, made the case one of the most enduring in the history of BLA-related prosecutions; Bell and Muntaqim were finally paroled only in 2018.