Fact vs Fiction: Godfather of Harlem season 4 episode 5 — did the Black Panthers plot to bomb a police station?

In Godfather of Harlem season 4 episode 5, “Concrete Jungle,” Bumpy Johnson (Forest Whitaker), Joe Colombo (Michael Raymond-James) and Stella Gigante (Lucy Fry) find themselves in a tinderbox thanks to Frank Lucas (Rome Flynn).

Not wanting to use Joe’s concrete workers for the new construction, Bumpy tried to slyly use Stella’s people instead, using Frank as a go-between. However, Frank backstabbed Bumpy and Stella and spilled the beans to Joe, resulting in Bumpy’s lieutenant Del (Erik LaRay Harvey) being kidnapped.

Perhaps preoccupied with all that, Bumpy didn’t realize just how deep Elise (Antoinette Crowe-Legacy) was getting with the Harlem chapter of the Black Panthers. He knew she was a member, but with Afeni Shakur (Devin Kessler) now out of prison, the organization wanted to do something big to make their presence known in New York City. After someone suggests bombing a police station as a symbolic gesture, Elise surprisingly helps put the plan into motion.

However, did the real Afeni and the real Black Panthers ever carry out such a mission? Here’s what we found out as we looked into what was fact and fiction from Godfather of Harlem season 4 episode 5.

Did Afeni Shakur and the Black Panthers conspire to bomb a police station?

The fiction
Following her visit with Omar (Maurice Jones) in prison, in which he demanded she not return to visit him, Elise meets with Bumpy. Their conversation quickly turns to her involvement with the Black Panther Party. While he agrees with the organization's mission, he doesn’t want her a part of it. He wants her safe, bringing up that he already almost lost her once to the needle. She hugs him, but replies that this fight is bigger than them. Clearly unwilling to quit the Black Panthers right now, Bumpy tells her if she’s content with being a member of the group, she can’t come to his home out of concern for Margaret.

Elise then heads to the Harlem headquarters for the Black Panther Party, where she asks Sadiq (Kyle Vincent Terry) if she could crash there for a while. After he says it’s no problem, they join the other Black Panthers as they discuss what to do next. One member raises the point that while the school programs they do are good, they should do something big to get noticed. Afeni Shakur doesn’t want to do too much to go on the offensive, nervous they’ll draw more of a crackdown presence from police and alienate allies. However, the other member in question is determined to do something symbolic.

Sadiq chimes in that he knows a guy with some explosives, enough to turn the local police precinct into a symbolic parking lot. Afeni is staunchly against the idea, but Elise is shockingly on board with it, believing it will show white oppressive forces they are serious. Afeni suggests putting this plan to a vote, and it’s implied that the majority of the group votes to take an extremely radical and explosive approach.

Later, Sadiq is with a few fellow members discussing more of their plot. When they question the logistics of getting explosives, Elise suggests going to her dad’s chemical plant instead, where she knows there’s dynamite. By the end of the episode, that’s exactly where she and Sadiq go to get the explosives.

The fact
According to Time, on April 2, 1969, 19 men and two women belonging to the Black Panther Party in New York were arrested after New York City law enforcement conducted a series of raids. Known as the “New York 21” or the “21 Panthers,” these Panthers were charged with “conspiracy to shoot police officers and bomb police stations, railroad tracks, Manhattan department stores and the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx.” Among the defendants was Afeni Shakur.

As reported by Blavity, the arrests occurred after the FBI Director at the time, J. Edgar Hoover, labeled the Black Panther Party a grave threat to national security and wanted to dismantle it. To do that, law enforcement agencies ran a series of counterintelligence missions to undermine and discredit the organization, and the arrests of the 21 Panthers were part of this overarching goal.

When it came to the trial of 13 of the 21 defendants, it was revealed in court that the prosecution’s case was largely built on the testimony of three undercover agents, whom law enforcement had planted in the civil rights group. These agents testified, “that they had witnessed members of the Panthers train and plot based on an extensive plan to bomb targets in New York City, including police stations and even the Bronx Botanical Gardens.”

However, given that the prosecution presented little evidence other than the agents’ testimony, after an eight-month-long trial, the defendants were found not guilty on all charges. On an interesting note, Afeni was one of those found not guilty, and at the time of the verdict, she was eight months pregnant with rapper Tupac Shakur.

Godfather of Harlem season 4 continues to air on Sundays on MGM Plus.