{"id":13695,"date":"2021-04-09T05:12:51","date_gmt":"2021-04-09T10:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jazairhope.org\/?p=13695"},"modified":"2021-04-09T05:12:51","modified_gmt":"2021-04-09T10:12:51","slug":"the-black-panther-who-hijacked-a-jet-to-algeria-and-started-again-in-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jazairhope.org\/en\/the-black-panther-who-hijacked-a-jet-to-algeria-and-started-again-in-france\/","title":{"rendered":"The Black Panther who hijacked a jet to Algeria and started again in France"},"content":{"rendered":"
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https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/<\/p>\n

It was an unusual hijacking by a group of three men, two women and three young children. They commandeered a Delta airliner, flew across the Atlantic and the adults never set foot in the US again, four of them making France their permanent home.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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An airport vehicle driven by a man in swimming trunks approached the Delta Airlines DC-8 standing on the tarmac of Miami airport in the summer heat. The vehicle’s passenger – also wearing swimming trunks – stepped out, carrying a heavy blue suitcase under his arm, and walked until he was under the open door of the airliner’s fuselage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A rope dropped down, and the suitcase was hauled up. Inside was $1m.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The men in trunks were FBI officers, whom the hijackers had insisted wear no clothes to ensure that they weren’t armed – though one later claimed to be carrying a gun in his trunks anyway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"FBI<\/span>IMAGE COPYRIGHT<\/span>AP<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Once the money had been checked, the 86 passengers on the flight from Detroit were released and the empty plane took off again, heading for North Africa via Boston.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It was 31 July 1972, and this was the second time in little over a month that hijackers were trying to reach the Algerian headquarters of the Black Panther Party – at that point the most powerful black power movement in the US.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Short<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Two of the hijackers were Melvin McNair, 24, and his 26-year-old wife Jean. When they had met at university in North Carolina seven years earlier, no-one could have predicted they would end up being charged with air piracy – an offence carrying a 20-year minimum sentence, and a maximum of death.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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McNair had grown up in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he excelled in baseball – his team became the state champions in the black league. White teams wouldn’t play black ones, that was just the way it was, he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Jean<\/span>IMAGE COPYRIGHT<\/span>MELVIN MCNAIR<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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He also played American football and his studies at North Carolina State College were supported by a sports scholarship – until he took part in riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. McNair was instantly dropped from the football team, lost his scholarship, and his studies came to an end.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But it was when he was drafted into the US Army the following year that he really discovered institutional racism, he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Stationed in Berlin, he witnessed Ku Klux Klan-style cross burnings on US military compounds, and some of his fellow black soldiers got beaten up by white supremacists in the barracks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Melvin<\/span>IMAGE COPYRIGHT<\/span>MELVIN MCNAIR<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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“Racism was not hidden, so we started discussing militant action. We started to resist passively by refusing to salute officers, we wore black armbands, grew our hair long and didn’t stand up for the national anthem,” he says. “At the same time the Black Panthers movement back in the US was looking to extend its reach internationally and came to Berlin to talk to us and recruit us – and that’s when I joined the Panthers.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Jean had joined McNair in Berlin and when, in 1970, he was told he would soon be sent to fight in Vietnam, she was just about to give birth to their first child. Later that year they flew back to the US, supposedly to find somewhere for Jean and their son to live while Melvin was away. Instead McNair deserted, and the couple went underground in Detroit, which was at that time a hive of black militancy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In Detroit they ended up sharing a house with two other men on the run from the law. One, George Wright, had been convicted of murder after a botched robbery that left a petrol station owner dead, but McNair and Jean were unaware of this – it wasn’t considered appropriate to ask questions about each other’s past. When the other man, George Brown, was shot by Detroit police, fortunately sustaining only minor injuries, this intensified their determination to leave the US.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The group’s sights turned to Algeria, where the charismatic Black Panther leader, Eldridge Cleaver, had been welcomed after getting into trouble with the law in the US, and opened a branch of the party. But how were they to get there? The men came up with a plan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"The<\/span>IMAGE COPYRIGHT<\/span>GETTY IMAGES<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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In the early 1970s hijackings were far more common than now. McNair says they did their research by spending time at Detroit airport and asking lots of questions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“That period of time was crazy, everything was crazy, everything was full of madness but we studied hijacking and we looked at the weaknesses and the strengths of that kind of operation,” McNair says. “We had to pick a plane that could do the whole route and cross the Atlantic. That’s why we chose the plane we did.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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They adopted disguises. George Wright dressed as a priest, George Brown as a student, and McNair as a businessman. Travelling with them were Jean and George Brown’s girlfriend, Joyce Tillerson. By this stage Jean and McNair had two children, while Brown and Tillerson had one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Jean<\/span>IMAGE COPYRIGHT<\/span>MELVIN MCNAIR<\/span><\/div>
image caption<\/span>Jean McNair, with one of the couple’s children<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Somehow they smuggled three small handguns on board. One story goes that they were hidden inside hollowed-out Bibles, and that when the metal detectors went off, security guards assumed it was because the women were wearing jewellery. McNair’s caginess about the details, even now, suggests that there was more to it and that maybe they had help from an airport employee.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Once Delta Air Lines flight 841 from Detroit to Miami was airborne the hijackers let the passengers eat their meal before springing into action.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But even after making their demand for $1m and a flight to Algiers they tried not to frighten anyone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“We didn’t want to create a sense of panic, remember we had three children travelling with us too,” McNair says. “We even tried to make the mood lighter by playing a cassette of soul music including Stevie Wonder, The Temptations and the Four Tops.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Once they landed in Miami negotiations with the FBI began. At first the police said they could only come up with half a million dollars, so the hijackers said they would keep half of their hostages and take off. George Wright, the hijacker dressed as a priest, also told the negotiator he was ready to shoot a hostage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When the FBI backed down and agreed to provide the full sum, McNair says he was the one who took the risk of appearing at the door and tugging the ransom up to the plane.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Melvin<\/span>IMAGE COPYRIGHT<\/span>AP<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Some passengers were disappointed they wouldn’t be able to collect their luggage until the plane came back from Algiers, but no shots were fired during and no-one was physically injured.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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If everything seemed to be going to plan there was one important detail they hadn’t factored in. The pilot, Capt William May, had never flown across the Atlantic before, so they had to fly first to Boston, where an experienced navigator climbed aboard – also in swimming trunks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The rest of the trip passed peacefully. While the male hijackers went to sleep, the two women watched over the crew and four stewardesses on the overnight flight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When they arrived in Algiers, the plane was ringed by soldiers and an official walked up the steps to the plane. His first words were, “Bienvenue chez vous!” (Welcome to your home.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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