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                <text>COINTELPRO document with Herman Fergsuon and Charles 37X Kenyatta</text>
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                <text>This is a document from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's COINTELPRO program that discusses plans to attempt to convince Herman Ferguson, former education chairman of South Jamaica CORE, that Charles 37X Kenyatta, leader of the Harlem Mau Mau, was going to try and kill him. Both men were former associates of Malcolm X. &#13;
&#13;
  The document is significant for several reasons. It was a common tactic of the COINTELPRO program to turn one activist against another with the aim of getting one to kill the other. &#13;
&#13;
  However, in Prof. Manning Marable's autobiography on Malcolm X,  Charles 37X Kenyatta was a named by as an informant for the Bureau of Special Services, a special department within the New York City Police tasked with monitoring and keeping political activists under surveillance. His group, the Harlem Mau Mau, were also targeted by COINTELPRO as threats to national security.&#13;
&#13;
  This document obviously complicates the story of Charles 37X Kenyatta and was not discussed in the biographies of Malcolm X and Herman Ferguson.</text>
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                <text>&lt;span style="text-decoration:underline;"&gt;An Unlikely Warrior, Herman Ferguson: Evolution of a Black Nationalist Revolutionary&lt;/span&gt; by Iyaluua Ferguson and Herman Ferguson</text>
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                <text>Ferguson-Swan Publications</text>
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                <text>photo of Mandola McPherson, Queens CORE</text>
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                <text>This is a photo of Queens CORE member Mandola McPherson. In 1967, she was one of the members of the Jamaica Rifle and Pistol Club, Inc.  â€˜charged with conspiracy to commit arson and anarchy as part of an alleged â€œblack revolutionaryâ€ plotâ€™. The charges were eventually dropped, but the case became one of the most well known examples of COINTELPRO outside of the Black Panthers.&#13;
At the time, she was 38 years old and working as a clerk for the Welfare Department. She later went on to work for the Health &amp; Hospital Corporation.</text>
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                <text>Jet. Jul 6, 1967</text>
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                <text> Jul 6, 1967</text>
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                <text>  This is a photo of South Jamaica CORE member Arthur Harris. He was one of the original group of Queens CORE members to secede and form South Jamaica CORE.&#13;
 &#13;
   Harris was also one of the six CORE members arrested at the start of the Harlem riots in 1964&#13;
&#13;
   In June of 1967, he was part of a group from the the Jamaica Rifle and Pistol Club, Inc. â€˜charged with conspiracy to commit arson and anarchy as part of an alleged â€œblack revolutionaryâ€ plotâ€™.  Along with SJ CORE member Herman Ferguson, he was also charged with plotting to assassinate Roy Wilkins, head of the NAACP and Whitney Young, head of the Urban League. Both were also members of the Revolutionary Action Movement and became leaders in the Republic of New Africa during their cases. &#13;
&#13;
 Both were convicted and sentenced to 3/1/2 â€“ 7 years. At the time, Harris was 22 and a student at Queens College. Out on bail, both escaped to Guyana after their appeal was denied in December 1969. Harris left Guyana at some point, believed to be living in Europe.&#13;
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                <text>This is a 1968 photo of Herman Ferguson. He was the education chairman of South Jamaica CORE (SJ CORE) but was not a member of CORE. His career as an activist, however, began with other members of CORE in Queens. &#13;
&#13;
An assistant principal at PS 40 (one of the very few in the city who were Black) and involved in the I.S. 201 protests over community control, he was the education chairman under Stanley Hamilton. He was first arrested as an activist  for climbing construction cranes with SJ CORE members Franklin Anderson and Andy Young at the 1963 Rochdale Village demonstrations. CORE members were at the beginning of his Rochdale Movement that followed.&#13;
&#13;
He was also a member of the  Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), the secular group founded by Malcolm X after he left the Nation of Islam.&#13;
&#13;
  In June of 1967, as head of the the Jamaica Rifle and Pistol Club, Inc. he was part of a group charged with conspiracy to commit arson and anarchy as part of an alleged black revolutionary plot and with plotting to assassinate Roy Wilkins, head of the NAACP and Whitney Young, head of the Urban League. Both he and his co-defendant Arthur Harris of SJ CORE were also members of The Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM)  and became leaders in the Republic of New Africa during their cases. &#13;
&#13;
 Both were convicted and sentenced to 3/1/2 - 7 years. At the time Ferguson was 46 years old. Out on bail (which had been posted by Hamilton Banks of Queens CORE and the Fredricks of Brooklyn CORE) , both escaped to Guyana after their appeal was denied. &#13;
&#13;
 Ferguson continued as an educator in Guyana and also became a lieutenant colonel in the Guyana Defense Force. Harris left Guyana at some point, believed to be living in Europe. &#13;
&#13;
  Ferguson returned to the United States in 1989 to answer the charges, a move that was instigated by long time supporter Sonny Carson of Brooklyn CORE. The resulting trial uncovered documents from the FBI proving that he had been a victim of COINTELPRO in regards to his conviction. He still wound up serving time was not released until 1996 when Judge Bruce Wright intervened. &#13;
&#13;
  According to his FBI documents, his case file was opened because he was a member of the OAAU. However, his court papers reveal that the FBI's investigation may have begun as early as the summer of 1963*. This would have been when he joined the demonstrations at Rochdale Village and a few weeks before his crane climbing action. It implies  that the FBI's investigation of him may have started just as he became involved with Queens CORE.&#13;
&#13;
 One of the most telling statements about Ferguson came from an interview  with a former Queens CORE member who stated they were shocked when he was arrested. "We all thought he was a nerd."&#13;
&#13;
- note: Max Stanford, the field chairman of RAM, was also arrested as part of the conspiracy to kill Wilkins and Young. Stanford had been a member of CORE while a student at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio.&#13;
&#13;
*Ferguson v. FBI F. Supp. 1082 (S.D.N.Y. 1991)</text>
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                <text>New York Magazine Aug 7, 1989</text>
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