Have you heard of Richard Aoki? He was best known as an early member of the Black Panther Party. He was close to Huey P Newton and Bobby Seale and was eventually promoted to the position of Field Marshal. A Japanese man, Aoki was one of several Asian Americans in the Black Panther Party, but the only one to have a formal leadership position. Following Aoki’s death, the FBI’s records on him were obtained showing that over a period of 15 years, he had been an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The records show “that at various points, he provided information that was ‘unique’ and of ‘extreme value.’ He also supplied the Black Panther their first guns. Woy 🤦🏾♂️. In August 1967 the FBI instructed its program “COINTELPRO” to neutralize what they had identified as black nationalist hate groups. And in September 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the Black Panthers as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” The FBI’s escalating campaign against the Black Panthers culminated in December 1969. That month a police raid in Chicago resulted in the brutal murder of local Black Panther Chairman Fred Hampton and a fellow Panther, Mark Clark. They were met with ninety bullets in his apartment while he laid asleep next to his nine-month pregnant wife. Several days later there was a five-hour police shoot-out at the party’s Southern California headquarters. The measures employed by the FBI were so extreme that the director of the agency later apologized for “wrongful uses of power.” No sh*t. It was originally reported that Aoki died at his home in Berkeley from dialysis complications. Nearly a year later, it was revealed that he had died of suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.