In August of 1970 an Omaha police officer Larry Minard died in a house bombing. The two men charged with the crime, David Rice and Ed Poindexter were leaders of the Black Panthers in Omaha, they were well known community activists. They were charged and convicted of a crime they had nothing to do with, they remain in prison today, political prisoners, victims of the last vestiges of acceptable overt racial animus.
This is a complicated case of how two innocent young Black men were sentenced to life without parole for a crime they knew nothing about. Ed Poindexter and Mondo We Langa (David Rice) are known as the Omaha Two, who 45 years later are still living in the maximum security Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln, Nebraska. This is their story in a film by Greg Tunink.
WARNING** Some graphic images in first couple of minutes. (1:43 - 1:58)
Permission by Creative Commons.
You might ask how could this happen, how could they still be serving life, it is a question we never stop asking. Ed Poindexter and David Rice were very unlikely candidates to commit a crime let alone such a violent horrific crime.
A Vietnam vet, community activist and delegate to the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Ed Poindexter was born in North Omaha in 1944. He is a published author writing on topics of self esteem and motivation. He holds a Master's Degree earned in prison from Vermont’s Goddard Graduate Program. He has spent his time helping inmates getting ready for release. Poindexter is an artist, writer and teacher, he has written two books for troubled youth in addition to designing a program for men who batter women.
Three years younger than Poindexter, David Rice was born in 1947 in North Omaha. He attended Creighton Prep and was active in his church working towards social justice. After graduation he attended Creighton University, ran a free breakfast program for the children in North Omaha and was a well know fixture in the Civil Rights movement in Omaha. In 1969 he joined the Black Panthers. He is also a musician and poet and playwright, becoming a forceful voice for social justice in the arts.
The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub.L. 88–352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964) is a landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public (known as "public accommodations").
With the riots and racial unrest that followed in the years immediately after it's passage the rights memo didn't make it to Omaha. It was a good law with very weak enforcement in the beginning and in Omaha as in many places in this country the oppression continued unabated.
The Black Panthers formed in 1966 they started by arming citizens to patrol and monitor police activity and brutality in Oakland, California. By 1969 their focus changed to a variety of community projects most notably their free breakfast program for children and health clinics.
Rice had long been involved in his parish Holy Family Catholic Church. Holy Family was the oldest Catholic Church in Omaha, located in the heart of North Omaha it had been instrumental in the founding of the Jesuit Creighton University. In the 60s and into the 70s it was the driving force of progressive thought and civil rights. It was there David Rice met Father John McCaslin a former Freedom Rider and tireless fighter for social justice. It is not surprising Rice joined the Black Panthers who's goals were so similar, equality and service to the poor.
Cointelpro was a covert organization within the FBI for tracking and disrupting domestic political organizations. the Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the FBI was working against the essence of the law ever being realized.
The FBI ran Cointelpro until 1971 and while monitoring hate groups makes sense, they spent most of their efforts infiltrating, subverting and publicly undermining organizations like AIM, any organization associated with civil rights inclusion the NAACP and of course the Black Panthers. Cointelpro didn't stop there, they investigated individuals like Martin Luther King and any organization working for women's rights. It was stop by any means necessary, legally or illegally. What is equally disturbing is AG Robert F Kennedy approved some of these operations and ironically was also one of their targets. The general public knew nothing about the government working to take away rights which in some cases they had just gotten. Eventually there was a full investigation, the Church Committee started hearings in 1976. By the time they finished with the FBI and the FBI covert activities their findings were horrifying to average Americans.
The Committee finds that the domestic activities of the intelligence community at times violated specific statutory prohibitions and infringed the constitutional rights of American citizens. The legal questions involved in intelligence programs were often not considered. On other occasions, they were intentionally disregarded in the belief that because the programs served the "national security" the law did not apply. While intelligence officers on occasion failed to disclose to their superiors programs which were illegal or of questionable legality, the Committee finds that the most serious breaches of duty were those of senior officials, who were responsible for controlling intelligence activities and generally failed to assure compliance with the law. Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that ... the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.
This link to the
Church Committee Reports while long is so informative and relevant today unfortunately.
It was in this world of rights given and then thwarted, civil disorder, riots, government dirty dealings and a racist police force; Rice and Poindexter found themselves.