The father of a Georgia district attorney who claims Donald Trump is a famous Black Panther called police the “enemy,” new footage has revealed.
John C. Floyd III, whose daughter Fani Willis is the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., told academic researchers that he considered the police in his native Los Angeles in the 1960s to be an “occupation army” that was “nothing but trouble.”
Floyd, now 80, also called leading white politicians of the era “Texas crackers.” And he suggests that he believes the conspiracy theory that Malcolm X was killed by the CIA.
Floyd is very close to his daughter Willis, who has brought a wide-ranging anti-blackmail case against the former president and 18 others – including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows – alleging that they planned to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia .
Trump on Thursday formally entered a not guilty plea a week after he was booked and booked into the county jail.
John C. Floyd III, the father of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, has told how he became a leading member of the Black Panther movement in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. Courtesy of Fani Willis
Willis’ father, John C. Floyd III, spoke to the Black Power Archives history project about his involvement in the Black Panthers and the civil rights movement. He was born and raised in Inglewood, Los Angeles.YouTube
Willis credits his father for his values and his career as a lawyer and told The Post that he was a “great guy,” who he talks to as often as 10 times a day. Floyd said he raised Willis as a single father, moving from Los Angeles to Washington, DC, when he was in first grade.
Willis told The Post he talks to his father 10 times a day, and his values continue to guide him. He doesn’t directly mention his past as Black Panther.
“I had an amazing father and I was very lucky to be raised by such an amazing man,” Willis told The Post. “My father taught me that everyone deserves dignity and respect no matter who they are — no matter their race, religion or socio-economic status.
“And those things run through my veins,” he said. “This is how I try to treat people every day: They deserve dignity and respect no matter who they are.”
Until now, little was known about Floyd beyond brief details, but it can now be revealed that he is a high-ranking member of the Black Panthers in Los Angeles.
Willis’ prosecution of Trump and 18 others made him the first former president to be impeached. FULTON COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE/AFP via Getty Images
Willis is suing former President Donald Trump, accusing him of rigging and attempting to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. He has pleaded not guilty.REUTERS
Floyd was a founding member in 1967, and at one time chairman, of the Black Panther Political Party, a more moderate faction of the Black Panthers than the others. Floyd became a defense attorney after breaking away from the Panthers in the early 1970s.
But before that, he told an interview for California State University’s Tom & Ethel Bradley Center, he was so high on the Black Panthers that he befriended Martin Luther King.
Speaking to the Bradley Center for the “Black Panther Archives” series, Floyd said that growing up in Inglewood, Los Angeles, he and other African Americans never went to the police even though the area was full of crime.
He said: “I grew up here and I’ve said to myself: Like so many car break-ins, break-ins, assaults, I never in all my time growing up in Los Angeles ever remember anyone calling the police department, because we think of the LAPD as enemy
Floyd’s Black Panther Political Party is separate from but allied with Bobby Seale (left) and Huey Newton’s (right) Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. AP
Floyd said he and the African Americans in the section of Inglewood where he grew up never called the LAPD because they saw it as an occupying force. In 1965, six nights of rioting in the Watts section followed an attempted arrest of an alleged 21-year-old drunk driver. Bettmann Archives
“We thought they were just a problem, they weren’t there to help us. I must have been 20 years old before I saw ‘to protect and serve’ (LAPD motto) and wondered to myself, ‘Is that what police are supposed to do?’ because we see them as colonial troops.”
Floyd helped establish the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Los Angeles, as it sat against segregated lunch counters in the prevalent Jim Crow South.
But by the mid-1960s, there were tensions between black groups in Los Angeles, and prominent California Democratic politician Jesse M. Unruh, at the time speaker of the state assembly, stepped in to mediate. Floyd said Unruh, nicknamed “Big Daddy,” was a “fat Texas cracker.”
He said: “I’m so upset, how can these Texas crackers come here and run the black community. I’m just angry.”
California Assembly Speaker Jesse M. Unruh was called a “cracker” by Floyd. Unruh was nicknamed “Big Daddy,” and was born in Kansas and raised in poverty in West Texas before becoming a Democratic power broker. Bettmann Archives
In 1967, the Los Angeles Times reported that Floyd, then a 24-year-old teacher, helped found the Black Panther Political Party (BPPP) at a meeting, saying: “Malcolm X will be our patron saint. Our political philosophy is black nationalism.”
He told the Sacramento Bee that he was “fed up with the Democratic Party,” and listed BPPP’s goals as including “political power for the black community.”
In 1973, when he became a campaign aide to Sam Bradley to become the first black mayor of Los Angeles, he was accused of being part of the violence and denied it, saying he was “on the right side” of most of the black power movement. .
In the interview, Floyd said he had met “two prophets” in his life: Malcolm X, assassinated in 1965, and King, assassinated in 1968.
How the Los Angeles Times reported Floyd founded the Black Panther Political Party. It listed its goals as getting African Americans to vote; Floyd also told the Sacramento Bee that he is fed up with the Democratic Party. Los Angeles Times/Newspapers.com
Floyd was also a close associate of Huey P. Newton, leader of the Black Panther Party, which was more militant than, but affiliated with, Floyd’s Black Panther Political Party.
Floyd met Malcolm X for the first time when he was just 15 years old and was in awe while watching him on TV interviews, he said.
Floyd said: “I don’t want anyone to think I’m a kook or anything like that, but I wonder about all these conspiracy theories.
“If you know anything about [longtime FBI Director] J. Edgar Hoover, he talked about how he didn’t want a Black Messiah revival.
Floyd described Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (left) and Malcolm X (right) as the only “prophets” he met. He spent time with King shortly before his assassination in 1968. King and Malcolm X were photographed together in 1964. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/AFP via
“I know that the CIA is very concerned about Malcolm being in Africa and having performed the Hajj [Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca]. I wonder about Malcolm’s murder — how someone could kill Malcolm and it looks like it was a set-up, and the getaway car was the same car that Malcolm drove to the Audubon Ballroom.”
Adding fuel to Floyd’s suspicions was that several black groups were set to rally behind Malcolm X, including Newton’s party, shortly before he was assassinated.
Describing the last time he saw King, Floyd said the civil rights icon told him: “A life without commitment is not worth living.”
Willis was born in 1971 in Inglewood and, when he was in the first grade, moved to Washington with his father, who was a criminal defense attorney and was said to have become disillusioned with the Black Panther movement.
The assassination of Malcolm X at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem was a shocking moment but has been surrounded by conspiracy theories including the involvement of the FBI. Floyd suggested he supported the allegations. Bettmann Archives
Willis has claimed he was raised by a “single father” and it is unclear what happened to his mother. Floyd remarried in 1989 but his second wife died in 2012 of complications from a brain tumour.
In an interview with South Atlanta magazine, Willis described how when he was 9 years old, his father would take him to court with him on Saturdays while he was at work.
He wrote that after that, his “destiny was set” and he wanted to follow in his footsteps.
Floyd told a Bradley Center interviewer that he dated civil rights activist Angela Davis in the late 1960s.
Floyd described in his interview how King, shortly before his assassination on this motel balcony in April 1968, told him that “a life without commitment is not worth living.”
She was a member of the Communist Party of the United States and in 1970 became the third woman ever to be placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.
Davis is accused of involvement in a kidnapping and murder related to the armed robbery of a courthouse in Marin County, California.
He was jailed for 16 months amid a massive campaign to free him supported by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who wrote the song “Angela,” and by The Rolling Stones, who wrote “Sweet Black Angel.”
Davis was released in 1972 and became a high-profile advocate for prison reform. In his 1974 memoir, “Free,” he mentioned Floyd twice, as chairman of the Black Panther Political Party in 1968, but did not say if they dated.
Activist Angela Davis, whom Floyd dated in the late 1960s, became one of the most wanted by the FBI, before finally being released. Willis told The Post that it’s “not the first time” she’s heard about her father dating Davis.Corbis via Getty Images
Willis told The Post: “You’re not the first time I’ve heard that, put that.”
Attempts to reach Davis were unsuccessful.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
