WI: The Black Panthers get blamed for assassinating Nixon?

Genghis Kawaii

Gone Fishin'
It's the Summer of 1970, the height of the Black Panthers' popularity, and Richard Nixon has just been assassinated. The Black Panthers didn't do it, because they aren't that level of fucking insane, but whoever did it set up a pretty good frame job, and several Panthers have been identified as the killers and are looking at almost certain conviction. The FBI is gearing up to pin charges for this all the way up the leadership chain. Most of the nation thinks they did it, and that isn't going to change. What does this likely mean for American race relations? How does Agnew react? How does this effect the Klan? How much leeway did Hoover just get? What's likely going to happen now that I'm not even thinking of?
 
Last edited:

Insider

Banned
I am no expert in USA inner politics, but if that is after Watergate Affair, they should be seen somewhat more as fighting against corruption, than just running around insane. Perhaps judge would give convicts the smallest possible punishment. Perhaps not, but the next president would make them part of amnesty...
 
It isn't; two years out. Watergate is summer 72. The Watts race riots, on the other hand, and the assassination of RFK and Martin Luther King, are summer of 68, and connected.

Black militants shooting an incumbent President is going to look like part of that; it's credible...And it is going to make it appear that the civil rights movement was a mistake; that Black and White in America simply cannot live comfortably together, and...depending on how the fallout falls out, you could be not far off open race war.

In Lubiyanka Square, the comrades will be laughing.
 
Samuel Byck had some casual association with the Panthers, so if you move the timeline ahead by a few years, AND have Byck succeed, that would add some credibility to any Panthers frame-up.
 
Top