workingclasshistory:

On this day, 30 August 1979, screen icon and Black Panther supporter Jean Seberg died by suicide following a campaign of harassment by the FBI, which had resulted in the death of her premature baby nine years prior.
She had provided significant financial support to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Native American education groups, and the Black Panthers, including to their free breakfast for school children program.
As part of the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation directed against radical movements, they were already tapping Seberg’s phone. Upon learning that Seberg was pregnant, under the supervision of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the agency concocted a false story that the father of her baby was a prominent Black Panther not her husband. The story was first reported by gossip columnist Joyce Haber in the Los Angeles Times and syndicated in some one hundred other newspapers, before spreading even more widely. A few weeks after the story was published, Seberg overdosed on sleeping pills and subsequently delivered a premature baby that died two days later. At her daughter’s funeral, Seberg opened the casket to prove that the story was a lie, and that the baby was her husband’s.
According to those who knew her, the story caused a downward spiral for Seberg, culminating in her suicide. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1796791427172666/?type=3