The charges stemmed from an incident at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day when three members of the party were accused of trying to threaten voters and block poll and campaign workers by the threat of force - one even brandishing what prosecutors call a deadly weapon.
The three black panthers, Minister King Samir Shabazz, Malik Zulu Shabazz and Jerry Jackson were charged in a civil complaint in the last days of the Bush administration with violating the voter rights act by using coercion, threats and intimidation. Shabazz allegedly held a nightstick or baton that prosecutors said he pointed at people and menacingly taped it. Prosecutors also say he "supports racially motivated violence against non-blacks and Jews."
The complaint says they hurled racial slurs at both blacks and whites.
A poll watcher who provided an affidavit to prosecutors in the case noted Democrat Bartle Bull, who worked as a civil rights lawyer in the south in the 1960's and is a former campaign manager for Robert Kennedy, said it was the most blatant form of voter intimidation he had ever seen.
In his affidavit, obtained by FOX News, Bull wrote "I watched the two uniformed men confront voters and attempt to intimidate voters. They were positioned in a location that forced every voter to pass in close proximity to them. The weapon was openly displayed and brandished in plain sight of voters."
Just imagine how the press and the Obama adiministration would have reacted had these “uniformed” men been white...We’d have heard no end about the KKK and white oppression of black voters and the Bush campaigns effort to opress the minorities.
Maybe this is what Barack Obama was talking about when he proposed a Civilian Security Force."