There is an article where more-&-more information is coming out that the Chicago PD is, OH-MY-GOD-I'M-SHOCKED! Shocked Face SIX! O_O!!!! THE CHICAGO PD MAY ACTUALLY BE A MAJOR SOURCE OF CAUSING THE GUN-VIOLENCE!?!?!?! OH MY GOD NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH! NOT THESE STALWARTS OF JUSTICE!!!!?! IT CAN'T BE! IT CAN'T BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEthatstupid.
-_-
I can't be that stupid. Because the Chicago PD when the Black Panther Party was in Chicago, they SHUT DOWN THE GANG VIOLENCE WITHOUT THEM! Negotiated TRUES BETWEEN ALL OF THE GANGS! You know, ALLLLLLLLLLLL THE BULLSHIT WHITES TALK HERE ABOUT;
1) Pull yourself up by the bootstraps
2) Stop waiting for the Government to save you
3) Black-on-Black Crime
4) Brush Your Teeth before Bed
5) The Prayers, the Vitamins and the Steroids
6) 50 Acres and a Mule
7) All Men are created Equal as long as You're White
THAT SORTA THING!
So now when Fred Hampton Sr. was leading the Chicago Black Panther Party, under HIS STEWARDSHIP, His Branch of the BPP BROUGHT AN END TO GANG-VIOLENCE IN CHICAGO! Now?! That is NOT an exaggeration ON MY PART, THAT IS A FACT! Yet this man IS NOT A NATIONAL HERO, nor are the Whites WHO KILLED HIM VILLIFIED. Fred Hampton, who was KILLED at only TWENTY-ONE YEARS YOUNG, the fact that he IS NOT NATIONALLY HONORED FOR ACCOMPLISHING WHAT CLEARLY WHITES THROUGHOUT THE CHICAGO POWER STRUCTURE, MYSTERIOUSLY, STILL CANNOT DO. And I put that in ALL CAPS, so that YOU THE READER, understand THE LIES THAT ARE;
Integration.
Multiculturalism.
White American Ideals of Hard-work, Justice, Freedom and the Pursuit of Property.
The White Chicago Power Structure and ITS WHITE POPULATION, were MORE THAN HAPPY to INTENTIONALLY set this man and His Branch of the Black Panther Party up, and then slaughter ALL OF THEM. Because they EXPOSED THE FACT THAT WHITES WERE INTENTIONALLY ALLOWING AND CAUSING, I'm gonna type it AGAIN for all You Swirlers, Nigger-Traitors, White-Treehuggers, Integrationists, and DeMarco Murry/Taye Diggs-types! Oh and JAMES HARDEN, great job Blackman, even in your fuckin sleep you're still fuckin turning it over against Our Black Team. Great job. ALL OF THAT MADNESS that was going on in the Black Community and the neighboring Non-White Communities BACK THEN!? The Whites in Chicago were CAUSING AND ALLOWING ALL OF THAT ON PURPOSE!
And when Fred Hampton and HIS BROTHERS-N-SISTERS GOT OUT THERE AND DID WORK!? Not as POLITICIANS. Not as PROFITEERS trying to GIVE THEMSELVES POWER. But they went out there and HONESTLY DID WORK FOR THE BETTERMENT OF THIS SHITTY-ASS COUNTRY AND THAT CITY! By DOING WHAT HE NEEDED TO DO FOR OUR PEOPLE. If there was ANY TRUTH, whatsoever, THAT WE'RE ALL AMERICANS? Then Him and His Followers would not have been SLAUGHTERED. IN THEIR SLEEP. Where THE WHITES, LIKE A BUNCH OF FUCKIN COWARDS, THEN LIED AFTERWARDS. So IT WASN'T ENOUGH THAT THEY KILLED HIM AND THE MEMBERS OF HIS BRANCH, but then they had to fuckin SMEAR HIS NAME ON TOP OF THAT!
The EXACT SAME PATTERN that Whites used against Native American Indians WHO WERE DUMB ENOUGH TO BELIEVE;
1) If you ACT a certain way, we won't steal your land
2) If you AGREE TO CHASE BLACK-SLAVES & KILL THEM FOR US, then we'll leave you alone
3) IF YOU FIGHT IN OUR WARS ALONGSIDE US, then you'll be treated with Respect, Dignity, and Fairness UNDER OUR LAWS
The WORDS OF WHITE FOLK MEAN NOTHING. Because they truly do live by the motto of;
-The Ends, ALWAYS JUSTIFY THE MEANS-
And it is not that way because, I SAY IT'S SO.
No.
It is that way because, THEY SHOW THAT IT IS SO.
When MASTER Fred Hampton Sr. and I give HIM THE TITLE OF MASTER, because HE DESERVES IT AND EARNED IT. He came in and in LITTLE TIME he settled disputes and made it so that PEOPLE COULD WALK THE STREETS OF CHICAGO. But the Whites hated the fact that it was BLACK PEOPLE who could now walk the streets at night. Whites KNEW that ONCE STABILITY IS ESTABLISHED? Now you can begin to build. Once you begin to build? Then you can begin to PROSPER. Black Prosperity HONESTLY DOES FRIGHTEN WHITE PEOPLE. Much of it has to do WITH THE NATURE OF OUR RELATIONSHIP where Whites HAVE CONDITIONED THEMSELVES TO BELIEVE THEY ARE ALWAYS SUPPOSED TO BE DOING BETTER THAN US. This is THEIR OWN FAULT. But it is past due time that we invert the situation and honestly look at the fact that IF WE AS BLACK PEOPLE CAN BE PSYCHOLOGICALLY BRAINWASHED TO THINK WE ARE INFERIOR....
THEN WHITES CAN PSYCHOLOGICALLY BRAINWASH THEMSELVES TO BELIEVE THEY ARE SUPERIOR!
-_-
I've seen this dynamic SINCE HIGH SCHOOL.
And on the SURFACE, it APPEARS TO BE HARMLESS.
But a fool who has been CONDITIONED TO BELIEVE that he or THEY are better than someone else always has MAJOR PROBLEMS PSYCHOLOGICALLY, when those they've been CONDITIONED to believe they are superior to and are inferior to them, DESTROY THAT PROGRAMMING.
 |
| This GREAT PHOTO is courtesy of Queen Ankh's page! |
1) We are SUPERIOR to Blacks
2) Blacks are INFERIOR to Us
When someone DOES THAT?
What happens when the PROGRAMMED PEOPLE STARE BACK AT IRREFUTABLE PROOF THAT THEIR PROGRAMMING IS NOT ONLY FAULTY-N-FLAWED!?
But it's a lie.
What does that mean FOR THE PROGRAMMED PEOPLE?
And I think this is ANOTHER THING we have to look at AS BLACK PEOPLE.
We all know that when a COMPUTER runs into ERRORS LIKE THIS, YOU GET A BLUE SCREEN AND THAT SHIT MALFUNCTIONS AND POTENTIALLY CAN SUFFER A CATASTROPHIC FAILURE! Where it crashes AND SHUTS DOWN PERMANENTLY!
Well?
What happens WHEN A HUMAN BEING ENCOUNTERS THIS SYSTEM-ERROR?
From Napoleon having the Black nose of the Sphinx of Egypt DESTROYED! To the way that the Nazi-American Cops of Chicago SLAUGHTERED Master Fred Hampton Sr. in HIS SLEEP. And keep that in mind, they had to MAKE SURE. HE AND HIS WERE ASLEEP. Where it tells you not only about THEIR COWARDICE. But the fact that THEY KNEW...
We can't risk any of them GETTING AWAY and telling the truth of how we came at them and attacked them LIKE THIEVES IN THE NIGHT. And shot up their headquarters AND FOR WHAT!?
Because they exposed the fact that WE CONDONE AND ARE COMMITTED TO CRIME AND INSTABILITY AND DEATH IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY. And that these fuckin NIGGERS, came in and RESTORED ORDER AND PEACE IN A MATTER OF YEARS! Not DECADES!? YEARRRRRRRRRRRRRSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!! Not with BILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF BLOOD-MONEY OR TAX-PAYER DOLLARS, but by HONESTLY getting out into the HOTSPOTS AND ACTUALLY WORKING AND LEADING ON THE FRONTLINES, putting "boots on the ground', HIS OWN. Unlike the TYPICAL White Cultural-Custom of the Leadership DELEGATING THE SHIT OUT OF EVERYTHING and staying as clean-of-hands as possible. Then thinking that they DESERVE TO RULE-&-LEAD, while they never fuckin got THEIR HANDS DIRTY.
Much of the THEORETICAL things that Whites talk about when it comes to the Ruler and the People are the actual APPLIED PRINCIPLES OF OUR PEOPLE. Our Civilizations TRULY WERE ABOUT WE THE PEOPLE. And they were A SYMBIOSIS. Not PARASITIC. Our People ruled IN A CIRCULAR-FASHION, which meant that the Rulers and the People TRULY ARE ONE. Whites rule in A TOP-DOWN FASHION, which means the People and the Rulers ARE NEVER ONE. You must work through the mediums and intermediaries placed ABOVE YOU when you are in a White System of Governance and Leadership. YOU NEVER HAVE DIRECT ACCESS TO THE LEADER OR LEADERSHIP, unless it is through bootlicking, backdoor deals, or because of emergency-necessities.
To LEAD A PEOPLE, means that YOU HAVE TO BE OUT AMONG THE PEOPLE AT SOME POINT AND TIME. You cannot LEAD PEOPLE where you have NO CONNECTION TO THEM. Do not LIVE WITH THEM. Do not walk AMONG THEM. And do not ENGAGE THEM, except for WHEN YOU NEED SOMETHING FROM THEM. That is a USER, that is PARASITIC, and THAT IS WHITE RULERSHIP AND GOVERNANCE.
When Master Fred Hampton Sr. and His Followers got out there and HONESTLY MADE A DIFFERENCE, his reward was to be vilified and KILLED by Whites. WHERE TO THIS DAY the Chicago Nazi-Cops STILL TRY TO VILIFY HIM AND HIS, EVEN IN DEATH! So I ask YOU, as a Black Person, what kind of PEOPLE would tolerate continuing to try to PUSH A LIE when they know EVERYONE KNOWS THEY ARE LYING.
People who know that they are poorly PROGRAMMED and have NO ABILITY to override it. That's who. Stop wasting Your Time talking to White People. Go on ahead and REINVEST THAT TIME in talking TO OUR PEOPLE. THAT!? Is what they fear. Because they know that a redirection of Our Energies back towards Ourselves, will allow us TO DUPLICATE Master Hampton Sr.'s successful results. No one can DISPUTE, tangible results, and Master Hampton Sr. was able to accomplish what he accomplished WITH LESS RESOURCES THAN WE HAVE NOW. But he was able to ACCOMPLISH THAT BECAUSE HE UNDERSTANDS THAT REAL POWER IS WITHIN PEOPLE.
Not within Your Economy.
Not within How Much Money you have.
Because none of these things matter if you don't have the cooperation OF PEOPLE to play into the constructs you've created.
It is PEOPLE, that are most important.
It is why Whites constantly throw divisive-tactics in Our Faces to keep us from COOPERATING WITH ONE ANOTHER. They constantly talk about how vast and varied and different we all are, and they have no choice but to do this, because they have to. They don't mind telling us how there are a billion Chinese.
But they never let you know that if you add up the global SUM-TOTAL of Black People you will get THE SAME NUMBER IF NOT MORE.
Keeping a Billion-Black People divided and depressed and dreaming about a day when Whites will be fair and just is the same nightmare that the Praying Towns and Praying Indians of America sold out for and name me right now where ANY of those Praying Towns and Praying Indians are today?
And ONCE AGAIN the Whites convince a People or a Person that YOUR DAY will come in the afterlife. YOU should look to the Heavens and look to Gods and Goddesses and religion and spirituality, while I will live in the real world and dictate and control what you can and cannot do. Can and cannot say. I will create inventions while wondrous, they are DISASTROUS all in the same breath, all at the same time.
The ONLY WAY to offset this kind of tidal wave of Programmed Insanity is for those under assault to realize that it is THE BLACK PERSON STANDING NEXT TO YOU THAT IS YOUR SALVATION. Not whether or not you can JUMP HIGHER. OR RUN FASTER! If HE DIES?
You die.
IF SHE DIES!?
You die.
IF YOU DIE?
I die.
And if I die?
Then you die.
But in working together!? We not only can LIVE!?
But we can create something beautiful and wonderful and that is what Our Ancestors have always dreamed for us. THIS IS WHAT MASTER FRED HAMPTON SR. AND COUNTLESS OTHER BLACK PEOPLE WHO HAVE COME AND GONE, this is what THEY NEED US TO DO! To create something wonderful and beautiful so that THEIR SACRIFICES were not in vain. And all of us can do that? Simply by saying hi to other Black People on Our Streets. Simply by talking to one another. Being honest and sincere with one another. These are simple, basic, COMMON BUILDING BLOCKS, that ALL OF US CAN ACCOMPLISH WITH NOT NARY AN EFFORT ON OUR PART. Master Fred Hampton Sr. and countless other Black People have shown us that the FOUNDATION OF ANYTHING IS WITHIN OUR PEOPLE.
Period.
NOW LET'S MAKE IT HAPPEN!
Fred Hampton (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was an African-American revolutionary,[1] chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and deputy chairman of the national BPP. He was murdered while sleeping at his apartment during a raid by a tactical unit of the Cook County, Illinois State's Attorney's Office (SAO), in conjunction with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Hampton's murder was chronicled in the documentary film The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971) as well as an episode of the critically acclaimed documentary series Eyes on the Prize.[2]
Hampton was born on August 30, 1948, in present day Summit, Illinois, and grew up in Maywood, a suburb west of the city. His parents had moved north from Louisiana, and both worked at the Argo Starch Company. As a youth, Hampton was gifted both in the classroom and on the athletic field, and strongly desired to play center field for the New York Yankees. He graduated from Proviso East High School with honors in 1966.
Following his graduation, Hampton enrolled at Triton Junior College in nearby River Grove, Illinois, where he majored in pre-law. He planned to become more familiar with the legal system, to use it as a defense against police. He and fellow Black Panthers would follow police, watching out for police brutality, and used this knowledge of law as a defense. He also became active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and assumed leadership of the Youth Council of the organization's West Suburban Branch. In his capacity as an NAACP youth organizer, Hampton began to demonstrate his natural leadership abilities; from a community of 27,000, he was able to muster a youth group 500-members strong. He worked to get more and better recreational facilities established in the neighborhoods, and to improve educational resources for Maywood's impoverished black community. Through his involvement with the NAACP, Hampton hoped to achieve social change through nonviolent activism and community organizing.[3]
About the same time that Hampton was successfully organizing young African-Americans for the NAACP, the Black Panther Party (BPP) started rising to national prominence. Hampton was quickly attracted to the Black Panthers' approach, which was based on a ten-point program that integrated black self-determination and certain elements of Maoism. Hampton joined the Party and relocated to downtown Chicago, and in November 1968 he joined the Party's nascent Illinois chapter — founded by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizer Bob Brown in late 1967.
Over the next year, Hampton and his associates made a number of significant achievements in Chicago. Perhaps his most important accomplishment was his brokering of a nonaggression pact between Chicago's most powerful street gangs. Emphasizing that racial and ethnic conflict between gangs would only keep its members entrenched in poverty, Hampton strove to forge a class-conscious, multi-racial alliance between the BPP, the Young Patriots Organization, and the Young Lords under the leadership of Jose Cha Cha Jimenez. They met in Lincoln Park the day after the Young Lords had occupied a police community workshop meeting inside the Chicago Avenue 18th District Police Station. Later, the coalition was joined by the Students for a Democratic Society ("SDS"), the Blackstone Rangers, the Brown Berets, and the Red Guard Party.[4][5] In May 1969, Hampton called a press conference to announce that a truce had been declared among this "rainbow coalition", a phrase coined by Hampton and made popular over the years by Rev. Jesse Jackson, who eventually appropriated the name in forming his own, unrelated, coalition, Rainbow/PUSH.[6]
Hampton's organizing skills, substantial oratorical gifts, and personal charisma allowed him to rise quickly in the Black Panthers. Once he became leader of the Chicago chapter, he organized weekly rallies, worked closely with the BPP's local People's Clinic, taught political education classes every morning at 6am, and launched a project for community supervision of the police. Hampton was also instrumental in the BPP's Free Breakfast Program. When Brown left the Party with Stokely Carmichael in the FBI-fomentedSNCC/Panther split, Hampton assumed chairmanship of the Illinois state BPP, automatically making him a national BPP deputy chairman. As the Panther leadership across the country began to be decimated by the impact of the FBI's COINTELPRO, Hampton's prominence in the national hierarchy increased rapidly and dramatically. Eventually, Hampton was in line to be appointed to the Party's Central Committee's Chief of Staff. He would have achieved this position had it not been for his assassination on the morning of December 4, 1969.[4][5]
While Hampton impressed many of the people with whom he came into contact as an effective leader and talented communicator, those very qualities marked him as a major threat in the eyes of the FBI. It began keeping close tabs on his activities. Subsequent investigations have shown that FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover was determined to prevent the formation of a cohesive Black movement in the United States. Hoover saw the Panthers, and similar radical coalitions forged by Hampton in Chicago, as a frightening steppingstone toward the creation of just such a revolutionary body that could, in its strength, cause a radical change in the U.S. government.[]
The FBI opened a file on Hampton in 1967 that over the next two years expanded to twelve volumes and over 4000 pages. A wire tap was placed on Hampton's mother's phone in February 1968. By May of that year, Hampton's name was placed on the "Agitator Index", and he would be designated a "key militant leader for Bureau reporting purposes."[]
In late 1968, the Racial Matters squad of the FBI's Chicago field office brought in an individual named William O'Neal, who had recently been arrested twice, for interstate car theft and impersonating a federal officer. In exchange for having his felony charges dropped and a monthly stipend, O'Neal apparently agreed to infiltrate the BPP as a counterintelligence operative.[7] He joined the Party and quickly rose in the organization, becoming Director of Chapter security and Hampton's bodyguard.[]
In 1969, the FBI special agent in San Francisco wrote Hoover that the agent's investigation of the BPP revealed that in his city, at least, the Panthers were primarily feeding breakfast to children. Hoover fired back a memo implying the career ambitions of the agent were directly related to his supplying evidence to support Hoover's view that the BPP was "a violence-prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means".[8]
By means of anonymous letters, the FBI sowed distrust and eventually instigated a split between the Panthers and the Rangers, with O'Neal himself instigating an armed clash between the two on April 2, 1969. The Panthers became effectively isolated from their powerbase in the ghetto, so the FBI went to work to undermine its ties with other radical organizations. O'Neal was instructed to "create a rift" between the Party and SDS, whose Chicago headquarters was only blocks from that of the Panthers. The Bureau released a batch of racist cartoons in the Panthers' name,[] aimed at alienating white activists, and launched a disinformation program to forestall the realization of the "Rainbow Coalition". In repeated directives, Hoover demanded that the COINTELPRO personnel "destroy what the [BPP] stands for" and "eradicate its 'serve the people' programs".[9]
On July 16, there was an armed confrontation between party members and the Chicago Police Department, which left one BPP member mortally wounded and six others arrested on serious charges.
On May 26, 1969, Hampton was successfully prosecuted in a case related to a theft in 1967 of $71 worth of Good Humor Bars in Maywood. He was sentenced to two to five years but managed to obtain an appeal bond, and was released in August.[]
In early October, Hampton and his girlfriend, Deborah Johnson (now known as Akua Njeri), pregnant with their first child (Fred Hampton, Jr.), rented a four-and-a-half room apartment on 2337 West Monroe Street to be closer to BPP headquarters. O'Neal reported to his superiors that much of the Panthers' "provocative" stockpile of arms was being stored there. In early November, Hampton traveled to California on a speaking engagement to the UCLA Law Students Association. While there, he met with the remaining BPP national hierarchy, who appointed him to the Party's Central Committee. Shortly thereafter, he was to assume the position of Chief of Staff and major spokesman.[]
Fred Hampton was quickly moving up the ranks in the Black Panther Party, and his talent as a political organizer was described as remarkable.[4][5]
In 1968, he was on the verge of creating a merger between the BPP and a southside street gang with thousands of members, which would have doubled the size of the national BPP.[4][5]
In November 1969, Hampton traveled to California and met with the National BPP leadership at UCLA. It was there that they offered him a position on the Central Committee as the chief of staff and asked him to serve as the national spokesman for the BPP. While Hampton was out of town, two Chicago police officers, John J. Gilhooly and Frank G. Rappaport, were killed in a gun battle with Panthers on the night of November 13. A total of nine police officers were shot; a 19-year-old Panther named Spurgeon Winter, Jr. was killed by police and another Panther, Lawrence S. Bell, was charged with murder. In an editorial headlined "No Quarter for Wild Beasts", the Chicago Tribune urged that Chicago police be given the order to approach all Panther suspects prepared to shoot.[11][12]
The FBI, determined to prevent any enhancement of the BPP leadership's effectiveness, decided to set up an arms raid on Hampton's Chicago apartment. FBI informant William O'Neal provided them with detailed information about Hampton's apartment, including the layout of furniture and the bed in which Hampton and his girlfriend slept. An augmented, 14-man team of the SAO — Special Prosecutions Unit — was organized for a pre-dawn raid armed with a warrant for illegal weapons.[4][5]
On the evening of December 3, Hampton taught a political education course at a local church, which was attended by most members. Afterwards, as was typical, several Panthers retired to the Monroe Street apartment to spend the night, including Hampton and Deborah Johnson (also known as Akua Njeri), Blair Anderson, Ronald "Doc" Satchell, Harold Bell, Verlina Brewer, Louis Truelock, Brenda Harris, and Mark Clark.
Upon arrival, they were met by O'Neal, who had prepared a late dinner, which the group ate around midnight. O'Neal had slipped the powerful barbiturate sleep agent, secobarbitol, into a drink that Hampton consumed during the dinner, in order to sedate Hampton so he would not awaken during the subsequent raid. O'Neal left at this point, and, at about 1:30 a.m., Hampton fell asleep in mid-sentence talking to his mother on the telephone.[13][14][15][16] Although Hampton was not known to take drugs, Cook County chemist Eleanor Berman would report that she ran two separate tests which each showed a powerful barbiturate had been introduced into Hampton's blood. An FBI chemist would later fail to find similar traces, but Berman stood by her findings.[17]
The raid was organized by the office of Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan, using officers attached to his office.[18] Hanrahan had recently been the subject of a large amount of public criticism by Hampton, who had made speeches about how Hanrahan's talk about a "war on gangs" was really rhetoric used to enable him to carry out a "war on black youth".[19]
At 4:00 a.m., the heavily armed police team arrived at the site, divided into two teams, eight for the front of the building and six for the rear. At 4:45 a.m., they stormed into the apartment.
Mark Clark, sitting in the front room of the apartment with a shotgun in his lap, was on security duty. He was shot in the heart and died instantly.[20] His gun fired a single round which was later determined to be caused by a reflexive death convulsion after the raiding team shot him; this was the only shot the Panthers fired.[5][21][22]
Automatic gunfire then converged at the head of the south bedroom where Hampton slept, unable to awaken as a result of the barbiturates the FBI infiltrator had slipped into his drink. He was lying on a mattress in the bedroom with his pregnant fiancée, who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with their child.[20] Two officers found him wounded in the shoulder, and fellow Black Panther Harold Bell reported that he heard the following exchange:
- "That's Fred Hampton."
- "Is he dead?... Bring him out."
- "He's barely alive.
- "He'll make it."
Two shots were heard, which were later discovered were fired point blank in Hampton's head. According to Johnson, one officer then said:
- "He's good and dead now."[23]
Hampton's body was dragged into the doorway of the bedroom and left in a pool of blood. The officers then directed their gunfire towards the remaining Panthers, who had been sleeping in the north bedroom (Satchel, Anderson, and Brewer).[20] Verlina Brewer, Ronald "Doc" Satchel, Blair Anderson, and Brenda Harris were seriously wounded,[20] then beaten and dragged into the street, where they were arrested on charges of aggravated assault and the attempted murder of the officers. They were each held on US$100,000 bail.[citation needed]
Hampton's fiancée, Deborah Johnson, was sleeping next to him when the police raid began. She was forcibly removed from the room by the police officers while Hampton lay unconscious in bed. The seven Panthers who survived the raid were indicted by a grand jury on charges of attempted murder, armed violence, and various other weapons charges. These charges were subsequently dropped. During the trial, the Chicago police department claimed that the Panthers were the first to fire shots; however, a later investigation found that the Chicago police fired between ninety and ninety-nine shots while the Panthers had only shot twice. After the raid, the apartment was left unguarded, which allowed the Panthers to send some members to investigate. They were accompanied by a videographer and the footage was later released in the 1971 documentary The Murder of Fred Hampton.
Despite evidence to the contrary, Hampton's death was ruled as a justifiable homicide. Because of public pressure in favor of the Black Panthers, the county re-opened and re-examined the case. The county held a trial in July 1972 to determine whether or not law officials participated in a conspiracy to obstruct justice. Four months later, the defendants were found not guilty of all charges.
After a break-in at an FBI office in Pennsylvania, the existence of COINTELPRO, an illegal counter-intelligence program, was brought to light. The purpose of this program was to target and neutralize "Black Nationalist-Hate Groups". The awareness of this program caused many to suspect that the police raid and the shooting of Fred Hampton were parts of the program's initiative. One of the documents that were released after the break-in was a floor plan of Hampton's apartment. Another document outlined a deal the FBI brokered with the deputy attorney general to conceal the FBI's role in the assassination of Hampton and the existence of COINTELPRO.[24]
At a press conference the next day, the police announced the arrest team had been attacked by the "violent" and "extremely vicious" Panthers and had defended themselves accordingly. In a second press conference on December 8, the assault team was praised for their "remarkable restraint", "bravery", and "professional discipline" for not killing all the Panthers present. Photographic evidence was presented of "bullet holes" allegedly made by shots fired by the Panthers, but this was soon challenged by reporters (although the Chicago Tribune initially published these photos in support of the police action). An internal investigation was undertaken, and the assault team was exonerated of any wrongdoing.[citation needed]
Hampton's funeral was attended by 5,000 people, and he was eulogized by such black leaders as Jesse Jackson and Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King's successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In his eulogy, Jackson noted that "when Fred was shot in Chicago, black people in particular, and decent people in general, bled everywhere."[citation needed]
On December 6, members of the Weather Underground destroyed numerous police vehicles in a retaliatory bombing spree at 3600 N. Halsted Street, Chicago.[25]
Four weeks after witnessing Hampton's death at the hands of the police, Deborah Johnson gave birth to Fred Hampton, Jr..[26]
Civil rights activists Roy Wilkins and Ramsey Clark (styled as "The Commission of Inquiry into the Black Panthers and the Police") subsequently alleged that the Chicago police had killed Fred Hampton without justification or provocation and had violated the Panthers' constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure.[3] "The Commission" further alleged that the Chicago Police Department had imposed a summary punishment on the Panthers.[27]
The federal grand jury did not return any indictment against anyone involved with the planning or execution of the raid. The officers involved in the raid were cleared by a grand jury of any crimes.[28]
The FBI informant, William O'Neal, committed suicide in 1990 after admitting his involvement in setting up the raid.[17][29]
According to a 1969 Chicago Tribune report, "The raid ended the promising political career of Cook County State's Atty. Edward V. Hanrahan, who was indicted but cleared with 13 other law-enforcement agents on charges of obstructing justice. Bernard Carey, a Republican, defeated him in the next election, in part because of the support of outraged black voters."[30]
The families of Hampton and Clark filed a US$47.7 million civil suit against the city, state, and federal governments. The case went to trial before Federal Judge J. Sam Perry. After more than 18 months of testimony and at the close of the Plaintiff's case, Judge Perry dismissed the case. The Plaintiffs appealed and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed, ordering the case to be retried. More than a decade after the case had been filed, the suit was finally settled for $1.85 Million.[28] The two families each shared in the settlement.[]
Jeffrey Haas, who, together with his law partners G. Flint Taylor and Dennis Cunningham and attorney James D. Montgomery, were the attorneys for the plaintiffs in the federal suit Hampton v. Hanrahan, wrote in his book about the Hampton assassination that Chicago was worse off without Hampton:
| “ | Of course, there's also the legacy that, without a young leader, I think the West Side of Chicago degenerated a lot into drugs. And without leaders like Fred Hampton, I think the gangs and the drugs became much more prevalent on the West Side. He was an alternative to that. He talked about serving the community, talked about breakfast programs, educating the people, community control of police. So I think that that's unfortunately another legacy of Fred's murder.[31] | ” |
In 1990, the Chicago City Council unanimously passed a resolution, introduced by then-Alderman Madeline Haithcock, commemorating Dec. 4, 2004, as "Fred Hampton Day in Chicago". The resolution read in part: "Fred Hampton, who was only 21 years old, made his mark in Chicago history not so much by his death as by the heroic efforts of his life and by his goals of empowering the most oppressed sector of Chicago's Black community, bringing people into political life through participation in their own freedom fighting organization."[32]
A public pool was named in his honor in his home town of Maywood, Illinois.[33]
In March 2006, supporters of Hampton's charity work proposed the naming of a Chicago street in honor of the former Black Panther leader. Chicago's chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police opposed this effort.[34]
On Saturday September 7, 2007, a bust of Hampton was erected outside the Fred Hampton Family Aquatic Center.[35]
In response to the killings of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in December 1969, on May 21, 1970, the Weather Underground issued a "Declaration of War" against the United States government, using for the first time its new name, the "Weather Underground Organization" (WUO); they also adopted fake identities, and decided to pursue covert activities only. These initially included preparations for a bombing of a U.S. military non-commissioned officers' dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey in what Brian Flanagan said had been intended to be "the most horrific hit the United States government had ever suffered on its territory".[36]
A 27-minute documentary entitled Death of a Black Panther: The Fred Hampton Story[38] was used as evidence in the civil suit.[citation needed]
Although Hampton had criticized the predominately white Weather Underground (also known as the Weathermen) two months earlier for being "adventuristic, masochistic and Custeristic",[39] Bernardine Dohrn of the Weathermen, which had a close relationship with the Black Panthers in Chicago at the time of Hampton's assassination, said in the documentary The Weather Underground (2002) that the killing of Fred Hampton caused them to "be more grave, more serious, more determined to raise the stakes, and not just be the white people who wrung their hands when black people were being murdered."[40]
No comments:
Post a Comment