Outing Hollywood Celebs Like Jane Fonda
Famous entertainment personalities who spoke in favor of Panther goals or associated with BPP members became the targets of FBI programs. When the FBI learned that one well-known Hollywood actress had become pregnant during an affair with a BPP member, it reported this information to a famous Hollywood gossip columnist in the form of an anonymous letter. In June 1970, FBI headquarters approved another anonymous letter informing Hollywood gossip columnist Army Archerd that actress Jane Fonda had appeared at a BPP fund-raising function, noting that “It can be expected that Fonda’s involvement with the BPP cause could detract from her status with the general public if reported in a Hollywood ‘gossip column.'” The wife of a famous Hollywood actor was targeted by the FBI when it discovered that she was a financial contributor and supporter of the BPP in Los Angeles. A caricature attacking her was prepared by the San Diego FBI office. A famous entertainer was also targeted after the Bureau concluded that he supported the Panthers. The Bureau also contacted the employers of BPP contributors. It sent a letter to the president and a vice-president of Union Carbide in January 1970 after learning that a production manager in its San Diego division contributed to the BPP.
Shutting Down Free Breakfast Program
One of the Bureau’s prime targets was the BPP’s free “Breakfast for Children” program, which FBI headquarters feared might be a potentially successful effort by the BPP to teach children to hate police and to spread “anti-white propaganda.” In an admitted attempt “to impede their contributions to the BPP Breakfast Program,” the FBI sent anonymous letters and copies of an inflammatory Black Panther Coloring Book for children to contributors, including Safeway Stores, Inc., Mayfair Markets, and the Jack-In-The-Box Corporation. When the coloring book came to the attention of the Panthers’ national leadership, Bobby Seale ordered it destroyed because the book “did not correctly reflect the ideology of the Black Panther Party…” Churches that permitted the Panthers to use their facilities in the free breakfast program were also targeted. When the FBI’s San Diego office discovered that a Catholic priest, Father Frank Curran, was permitting his church in San Diego to be used as a serving place for the BPP Breakfast Program, it sent an anonymous letter to the bishop of the San Diego Diocese informing him of the priest’s activities. It also placed three telephone calls from “parishioners” protesting Curran’s support of the BPP program to the auxiliary bishop of the San Diego Diocese. A month later, the San Diego office reported that Father Curran had been transferred from the San Diego Diocese to “somewhere in the State of New Mexico for permanent assignment.”
