Due to the recent news surrounding the debacle in Sanford, FL (which I have not written about it because, unlike the mainstream media, I don’t believe I’m qualified to because I haven’t been given all the facts), I am reposting this story from 2008 that I wrote after Bobby Rush was elected to Congress to represent Illinois. Please share this with everyone you know…how did a former Black Panther member ever get elected in the first place?

…Here is my original post:

I just watched a History Channel special this past weekend called “Gangland: Stone to the Bone” about the Blackstone Rangers. It’s all about how the gang life began in Chicago, and chronicles the life and history of the founding member, Jeff Fort.

And just today, Congressman Bobby Rush from Illinois came on TV and warned against the implications of NOT seating a black man in the Illinois Senate seat, which was vacated by Barack Obama. Shortly thereafter, the talk of Rush being a member of the Black Panther Party starting ringing some bells to me, and it drew me back to the History Channel special I had just watched. So, I decided to do a little research.

But what is the connection with the Black Panther Party, the Blackstone P Rangers (a.k.a. El Rukn), Jeff Foot and Bobby Rush? Let’s take a look at a few interesting documents, shall we?

Excerpts from Zoominfo on Jeff Fort:

On about December 18, 1968, Jeff Fort and other Blackstone Rangers were involved in a serious confrontation with members of the Black Panther Party.

During that day twelve members of the BPP and five known members of the Blackstone Rangers were arrested on Chicago’s South Side.49 A report indicates that the Panthers and Rangers were arrested following the shooting of one of the Panthers by a Ranger.49a

That evening, according to an FBI informant, around 10:30 p.m., approximately thirty Panthers went to the Blackstone Rangers’ headquarters at 6400 South Kimbark in Chicago. Upon their arrival Jeff Fort invited Fred Hampton, Bobby Rush and the other BPP members to come upstairs and meet with him and the Ranger leadership.
…
Source stated that Fort then gave orders, via walkie-talkie, whereupon two men marched through the door carrying pump shotguns.

…
Source related that Fort took off his jacket and was wearing a .45 caliber revolver shoulder holster with gun and had a small caliber weapon in his belt.

Source advised that nothing was decided at the meeting about the two groups actually joining forces, however, a decision was made to meet again on Christmas Day. Source stated Fort did relate that the Rangers were behind the Panthers but were not to be considered members. Fort wanted the Panthers to join the Rangers and Hampton wanted the opposite, stating that if the Rangers joined the Panthers, then together they would be able to absorb all the other Chicago gangs.
…
Source advised that Fort also gave Hampton and Rush one of the above .45 caliber machine guns to “try out.”

Later from the same site:

Jeff Fort snookered politicians, used $1 million in federal War on Poverty grants to buy drugs and weapons and ran one of Chicago’s biggest crime operations.

[...]

Jeff Fort was a founder of the Blackstone Rangers, which he renamed the Black P Stone Nation in the late ’60s.

In 1987, Fort, an illiterate migrant from Mississippi, was sent away for 80 years for plotting with Libyan officials to carry out terrorist bombings against the United States for $2.5 million.He did all this while in prison on a drug conviction.

The money was for the El Rukns street gang, which the charismatic leader founded and ran for years, both from prison and the South Side.In 1988, he was given an additional 75 years for ordering the “systematic liquidation” of passersby on 43rd Street.

Ironically, Jeff Fort was lifted up on the shoulders of a Hyde Park clergyman and other 1960s liberals.The Rev. John Fry, in the belief that Fort could be a force for good, gave him space in his First Presbyterian Church to operate and testified on his behalf before a Senate subcommittee in 1968.He also helped Fort obtain almost $1 million in federal War on Poverty grants.

Now from the FBI’s Covert Action Program to Destroy the Black Panther Party:

David Hilliard and Elbert “Big Man” Howard of National Headquarters and Bob Rush of Chicago BPP Chapter are likely future targets… .

Hilliard’s key position at National Headquarters makes him an outstanding target.

Howard and Rush are also key Panther functionaries; and since it was necessary for them to affirm their loyalty to Newton in “The Black Panther” newspaper of 3/20/71, they must be under a certain amount of suspicion already, making them prime targets.

San Francisco and Chicago furnish the Bureau their comments and recommendations concerning counterintelligence activity designed to cause Newton to expell Hilliard, Howard and Rush.99

[...]

On about December 18, 1968, around 10:30 p.m., approximately thirty Panthers went to the Blackstone Rangers’ head-quarters at 6400 South Kimbark in Chicago.

. . . everyone went upstairs into a room which appeared to be a gymnasium, where Fort told Hampton and Rush that he had heard about the Panthers being in Ranger territory during the day, attempting to show their “power” and he wanted the Panthers to recognize the Rangers “power.” Source stated that Fort then gave orders, via walkie-talkie, whereupon two men marched through the door carrying pump shotguns. Another order and two men appeared carrying sawed off carbines then eight more, each carrying a .45 caliber machine gun, clip type, operated from the shoulder or hip, then others came with over and under type weapons. Source stated that after this procession Fort had all Rangers present, approximately 100, display their side arms and about one half had .45 caliber revolvers. Source advised that all the above weapons appeared to be new.

Source advised they left the gym, went downstairs to an-other room where Rush and Hampton of the Panthers and Fort and two members of the Main 21 sat by a table and discussed the possibility of joining the two groups. Source related that Fort took off his jacket and was wearing a .45 caliber revolver shoulder holster with gun and had a small caliber weapon in his belt.

Source advised that nothing was decided at the meeting about the two groups actually joining forces, however, a decision was made to meet again on Christmas Day. Source stated Fort did relate that the Rangers were behind the Panthers but were not to be considered members. Fort wanted the Panthers to join the Rangers and Hampton wanted the opposite, stating that if the Rangers joined the Panthers, then together they would be able to absorb all the other Chicago gangs. Source advised Hampton did state that they couldn’t let the man keep the two groups apart

This image is a screenshot from an FBI affidavit.

Now, from a MySpace page of an obvious fan of the Blackstone Rangers (or El Rukn), and here he lists his influences: (this is only partial, because this list is loooooong – just go there and search for the term “Bobby Rush” and see how often he refers to him from the street level; not an investigative level)

GOD- ALLAH- JAHOVAH… THE ONE TRUE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS…. MY FAMILY..MY FRIENDS I MADE FAMILY.. MY LIFE EXPERIENCES… JEFF FORT(BIG CHIEF MALIK AL MIGHTY BLACK PEACE STONE NATION)… MALCOLM X… X-KLAN…MY BROTHER MAJAR.(R.I.P).. MY GRANDFATHER ABDULLAH ADUNNI(R.I.P)… SLAVERY … POLICE BRUTALITY…. BLOODS AND CRIPS.. PIMPS … HOES …..THEIVES…CON ARTIST…PREACHERS…TEACHERS…POLITICIANS…THE HUSTLE…THE DROUGHT…JUDGES…THE aMERIKKKAN DREAM…. DRUGS…. SEXXX…. POWER….HATE…. LOVE…THE AWAKENING .. JIMI HENDRIX… BOB MARLEY… PETER TOSH … THE BEATLES … BLACK SABBATH… MAC MUTHAFUCKIN DRE..THE FATHER ALLAH AND JUSTICE CLARENCE 13X SUPREME MATHMATICS….THE NATION OF GODS AND EARTHS… TUPAC … TEE ROGERS… NOBLE DREW ALI …. DR. MALACHI Z. YORK … CAPITOLISM… COMMUNISM… ISLAM … TRUTH … MONEY… JUSTICE Name: Jeff Fort Location: Chicago Affiliation: Blackstone Rangers, Black P. Stone Nation, El Rukn Profession: gang leader, terrorist Born: February 20, 1947, Aberdeen, Mississippi Died: -n/a- Claim to Fame: First American convicted of terrorism-for-hire, Friend of Richard Nixon Body Count: Unknown Other: aka Angel, Chief Malik, Imam Abdul Malik Ka’bah BY THE STANDARDS of the era – the 1980s, that doughy time when terrorist targets were limited to Marine barracks in unpronounceable countries – the story was sensational. A Chicago street gang was accused of planning to bomb police stations, government buildings – even down an airliner – on behalf of their “Muslim brother,” Libyan dictator Moammar Kaddafi. A little digging and the plot thickened. The gang – a would-be Islamic sect called the El Rukns – was led by none other than Jeff Fort, a legend on Chicago’s South Side, whose career as an urban warlord stretched back to the early 1960s. In the relatively brief period he spent out of jail in the ensuing decades, Fort had built the most powerful street gang in Chicago and possibly the entire United States. That wasn’t all. Fort had rubbed shoulders with notables ranging from Jesse Jackson to Sammy Davis, Jr. to jazz guru Oscar Brown, Jr. Before went to war against the United States for Kaddafi, Fort went to war for the Feds against the Black Panthers. His status in the community was such that he’d even been invited to Richard Nixon’s inauguration, though he graciously passed his comp tickets to two of his subordinates. But Jeff Fort’s most important legacy wasn’t his scrapbook but his style.

[...]

The Rangers’ greatest rivals were the Disciples, another amalgamation of a dozen smaller gangs pulled together by blood and money by “King” David Barksdale, a precocious warrior like Fort that was still in his late teens or early twenties. The Disciples and the Rangers spent most of the last half of the 1960s in protracted warfare for block-by-block control of the city’s South Side. To differentiate one another, they adopted a simple uniform: the Rangers wore red berets like Che Guevara; the Disciples black. “King” Barksdale would later die of wounds he received in a shooting during the war with the Rangers and is practically deified by two of the gangs that emerged from his army, the Gangster Disciples and the Black Disciples.

[...]

In December 1968, the tension between the two groups – one that preached Black Power and one that practiced it – came to a head. A Ranger had shot a member of the Panthers. Twelve Panthers and five Rangers were apprehended by police later that day in a fight. That night, Chicago Panther leader Fred Hampton, “information minister” Bobby Rush and other Panther leaders showed up at Fort’s headquarters. Fort brought the men inside and told them that if the Panthers wanted to demonstrate their “power,” he’d show them his. After a signal from Fort, some 100 Rangers filed into the room, two or three at a time, brandishing sawed-off shotguns, machine guns and a whole array of firearms. Fort then met privately with Hampton and Rush and a couple of members of the Main 21. After (unsuccessfully) trying to scare the crap out of the Panthers, Fort now talked earnestly about the two groups joining forces.

And, check out this forum thread. I won’t paste any of it here, but it’s worth the read to understand Chicago politics.

Lastly, there may be some repetition above of material, and for that I apologize. There is just so much information out there on this Bobby Rush guy it’s unbelievable. How in the hell did he ever get elected in the first place? Oh, yeah… it’s Chicago.