page_title: Eric Holder
section_title: New Black Panther Party voter intimidation incident
hierarchical_section_title: Eric Holder / Tenure as Attorney General of the United States / Racism / New Black Panther Party voter intimidation incident
caption_attribution_description: English: Alleged instance of voter intimidation in Philadelphia during the 2008 US presidential election.
context_page_description: Eric Himpton Holder Jr. is an American lawyer who served as the 82nd Attorney General of the United States from 2009 to 2015. Holder, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama, was the first African American to hold the position of U.S. Attorney General.
  Born in New York City to a middle class family of Barbadian origin, he graduated from Stuyvesant High School, Columbia College, and Columbia Law School. Following law school, he left New York to work for the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice for 12 years. He next served as a judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia before being appointed by President Bill Clinton as United States Attorney for the District of Columbia and subsequently Deputy Attorney General. While U.S. Attorney, he prosecuted Congressman Dan Rostenkowski for corruption charges related to his role in the Congressional Post Office scandal.
  Following the Clinton administration, he worked at the law firm of Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., representing the firm's multinational corporate clients in litigation.
context_section_description: In May 2009, Holder's Department of Justice completed a civil suit originally brought by J. Christian Adams of the Bush Justice Department against the New Black Panther Party, its chairman, and two of its members for voter intimidation due to their conduct during the 2008 election. Two members of the Party had stood outside a polling station during the election in paramilitary uniforms, one carrying a nightstick. Claiming a lack of evidence, the Department of Justice dropped charges against the party, its chairman, and one of the two members who had stood outside the polling station. With the evidence presented, the Department of Justice successfully obtained a narrow injunction against the other. Former lawyers who had served under the Bush Administration have stated that the current DOJ under Holder is unwilling to prosecute minorities for civil rights violations. Three other Justice Department lawyers, in recent interviews, gave the same description of the department's culture, which department officials strongly deny. In the months after the case ended, tensions persisted. Eventually, Christopher Coates (of the Justice's Civil Rights Division) acknowledged telling attorneys at a September 2009 lunch that the Obama administration was interested in filing cases – under a key voting rights section – only on behalf of minorities.
  During a meeting with a House subcommittee, Holder argued that the behavior of the New Black Panther Party was not comparable to historical voter intimidation against minorities, which often involved acts of violence and murder. Holder said, "When you compare what people endured in the South in the '60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, to compare what people subjected to that with what happened in Philadelphia… I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line for my people."
  Critics have interpreted this comment as evidence of racial bias on Holder's part, with conservative James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal arguing that "If he [Holder] approaches the job with the attitude that any group smaller than all Americans is 'my people', he is the wrong man for the position." Claiming the issue was politicized from the start, Democrats have argued that those on the political right, particularly Adams, used this incident for purely political gain.
caption: Alleged instance of voter intimidation in Philadelphia during the 2008 US presidential election.
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