A Black Panther accused of 156 counts of plotting to bomb New York public buildings and murder police officers has died. He and 12 other Black Panthers were later acquitted.
Michael Tabor and another defendant, Richard Moore, had fled to Algeria four months into the eight-month trial -- one of the longest in New York history.
Tabor, 63, who went by the name of the 19th century Zulu king Cetewayo, died from complications after several strokes on October 17. He had been living in Zambia.
As a captain in the New York City faction of the Black Panthers, he was accused of abandoning his brothers by the party's supreme commander Huey P. Newton. Despite being acquitted, he never returned to the United States.
| Unlike Mr. Moore, who quickly fled back to the familiarity of America, and was arrested in June, 1971 while holding up a club in the Bronx, and has spent a very long time in prison. |
For a time, he and Mr. Moore were guests of the Algerian government, Mr. McCray said, but they were eventually expelled. Mr. Tabor and his first wife, Connie Mathews, who had been the party's international coordinator, moved to Zambia in 1972.
Note: The original article incorrectly cited as the BPP supreme commander Mr. Huey P. Lewis. I guess it's hip to be square.
| A Nigerian blogger tells about Mr. Tabor's life in Zambia. Unlike Mr. Moore, who yields pages of Google hits between 1971 and now, Mr. Tabor was forgotten in the land of his youth, until he made the mildly interesting move of dying. |
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