This is a proposal to include three New Haven stops to the Freedom Trail, to mark two locations central to a crucial event in the state’s civil rights history.

The event concerned the 1969 murder and the murder trial of Alex Rackley and associated protests. 

Rackley was a member of the Black Panther Party at a time when the government filled chapters with informers and agents provocateur under the FBI’s COINTELPRO program.

Rackley was falsely accused of being one of the informers. A rogue party member brought Rackley to New Haven, where he was interrogated while tied up and tortured, then taken to a field and murdered.

The police arrested not just Rackley’s murderers  —  two of whom confessed, the other of whom was found guilty  —  but party leaders, including Ericka Huggins and Bobby Seale, for whom there was no evidence of involvement. Huggins and seale were put on trial. The government sought the death penalty. The trial sparked nationwide protest, as well as debate over whether a Black revolutionary could receive a fair trial in America. (Yale’s president at the time expressed his doubts on that subject.) The case ended with a deadlocked jury. A judge who expressed opposition to civil rights figures ended up siding with the Panthers and declaring a mistrial.

The first stop on the trail would be Ethan Gardens, an apartment complex that at the time served as a tenant cooperative formed as part of the idealistic goals of the Great Society, goals that proved difficult to reach and lead to reexamination by the civil rights movement of whether deeper societal changes needed to occur. An apartment at the complex served as the local Panthers headquarters. The trial and torture of Rackley occurred in the basement.

The second stop would be New Haven’s state courthouse at Elm and Church streets. That’s where the trial of Huggins and Seale occurred. It included the longest ever jury selection process at the time. Across the street, on the New Haven Green, a mass protest took place over the trial on MayDay 1970. It drew radical protesters from across the country. The city shut down for fears of violence; the National Guard was called in, with directions that included that members would not be disciplined if they shot anyone. The Nixon administration sent observers to the scene. Because of coordinated behind-the-scenes efforts by groups that normally did not work together  —  Black Panthers, Yale officials, student activists  —  expected violence and injuries did not occur that day. (Just one day later the Guard killed two protesters at Jackson State, and then four protesters at Kent State on May 4.)

The third stop would be PROJECT MORE on Grand Avenue. One of Rackley’s confessed killers, Black Panther Warren Kimbro, ran the organization after he completed his prison term. He turned it into a national model for prison reentry, offering ex-offenders helping in rebuilding their lives and becoming productive members of society  —  fulfilling one of the goals that Panthers marched for decades earlier.

Here are some links to background articles, some of which may be worth linking to on any electronic content associated with Freedom Trail stops:

https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/50_years_after_murder_panther_/
https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/mayday50/
https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/rackley_trial_tape_surfaces/
https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/seale_huggins_trial_transcript_returns_to_public_realm/
https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/panthers_mercy/