Challem's photographs did not show the bullet holes as reported by the Chicago Tribune. Then they started shooting. Then they opened fire on Hamptons bedroom where he laid unconscious from the drug. He was a provocateur. We’re going to have to struggle. He was an alternative to that. And I think that was the beginning of the end of Edward Hanrahan. Here’s this guy who was bigger than life, and all of a sudden he’s dead.”. Talk about what came of that, after this day, 40 years ago. This is some of Fred Hampton in his own words. [4] He came to prominence in Chicago as chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and deputy chairman of the national BPP. [80][81] The 2002 documentary The Weather Underground shows in detail the way that group was deeply influenced by Hampton and his death—as well as showing that Hampton had kept his distance from them for being what he called "adventuristic, masochistic and Custeristic".[82]. [63][64], In 1970, the survivors and relatives of Hampton and Clark filed a civil suit, stating that the civil rights of the Black Panther members were violated by the joint police/FBI raid and seeking $47.7 million in damages. [19], O'Neal joined the Party and quickly rose in the organization, becoming Director of Chapter security and Hampton's bodyguard. Fred Hampton Jr. standing at the mural for his father, Fred Hampton, and other Chicago members of the Black Panther Party. A 27-minute documentary entitled Death of a Black Panther: The Fred Hampton Story[79] was used as evidence in the civil suit. That was not William O’Neal. During the trial, the Chicago Police Department claimed that the Panthers were the first to fire shots. [67] As is typical in settlements, the three government defendants did not acknowledge claims of responsibility for plaintiffs' allegations. 50 Years Later, the Fight Against Police Brutality Continues", "Nothing but a Northern Lynching: The Death of Fred Hampton Revisited", "Murder or 'Justifiable Homicide'? So there was a tremendous reaction. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Today marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. [75], Two days after the killings of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, on December 6, 1969, members of the Weathermen destroyed numerous police vehicles in a retaliatory bombing spree at 3600 N. Halsted Street in Chicago. In November 1968 he joined the Party's nascent Illinois chapter, founded in late 1967 by Bob Brown, a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizer. In his capacity as an NAACP youth organizer, he began to demonstrate natural leadership abilities; from a community of 27,000, he was able to muster a youth group 500-members strong. On December 4, 1969, Chicago police raided Fred Hampton’s apartment and shot and killed him in his bed. Stop shooting! On Dec. 4, 1969 Fred Hampton was assassinated while sleeping in his bed by a tactical unit of the Cook County, Illinois State's Attorney's Office, in conjunction with the Chicago Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. At just sixteen, Fred took over his local youth chapter of the NAACP and grew numbers from roughly 100 to close to 700. Afterward, as was typical, several Panthers went to his Monroe Street apartment to spend the night, including Hampton and Deborah Johnson, Blair Anderson, James Grady, Ronald "Doc" Satchell, Harold Bell, Verlina Brewer, Louis Truelock, Brenda Harris, and Mark Clark. So I—Hanrahan had given orders—Hanrahan, the police were assigned to him—not to allow anyone to see them. Revolutionary violence is the only way. [55] FBI informant William O'Neal, who had given the FBI the floor plan of the apartment and drugged Hampton, later admitted his involvement in setting up the raid. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: As I recall, a lot of the bullets were shot from the floor below, as well, as they were—. And, of course, as you mentioned his ability to unite people, very few people are aware that Fred Hampton was the original creator of the concept of the Rainbow Coalition that Jesse—, JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —that a young Jesse Jackson then adopted later, because he was building unity between the Black Panthers and the Young Lords and some white radical organizations in Chicago, and he called them the Rainbow Coalition—. Black Panther leader Mark Clark was also killed in the raid. Tens of thousands have learned that protest and marches don't do it. By Jeffrey Haas. Hampton is the son of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton and his fiancée, Deborah Johnson Johnson was over eight months pregnant when Hampton Sr. was killed by the Chicago police in a 1969 raid, which occurred 25 days before he was born. AMY GOODMAN: Juan, I want to talk about the overall context with Jeffrey Haas, but in 1969, I mean, you were one of the leaders of the Columbia student protests, one of the founders of the Young Lords. You understand what I’m saying? That floor plan was complete with all the furniture, including the bedroom where Hampton and Johnson slept and a rectangle showing the bed. and Hanrahan's men to murder Fred Hampton. But that’s alright, because we said even before this happened, and we’re going to say it after this and after I’m locked up and after everybody’s locked up, that you can jail revolutionaries, but you can’t jail the revolution. Much of the first half of "A Nation of Law? Edward V. Hanrahan, who was indicted but cleared with 13 other law-enforcement agents on charges of obstructing justice. We’re going to fight their reactions with all of us people getting together and having an international proletarian revolution. And our mandate was to expose the murders, who the killers were of Fred Hampton. The original content of this program is licensed under a. BOBBY RUSH: We can mourn today, but if we understood Fred and we are dedicated that his life wasn’t given in vain, then there will be no more mournings tomorrow, then all our sorrow will be turned into action. And I think that group and white liberals were given credit for eventually electing Harold Washington mayor, as Chicago’s first black mayor. And that’s what we’ve got to do. So it wasn’t just me. AMY GOODMAN: I want ask—just play for a minute a response—get your response to Cook County State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan. The Panthers were smart enough to invite the community in. And without leaders like Fred Hampton, I think the gangs and the drugs became much more prevalent on the West Side. Fred Hampton was born in Chicago on 30th August 1948 and grew up in Maywood, a suburb of the city. Activists and the broader Black community considered the deaths of these men unjust, and their families ultimately received a settlement stemming from a civil lawsuit. We might not be back. I heard two shots, and then the other one said, ’He’s good and dead now.’”. I came from a progressive family, but also it was a segregated South. You had the conspiracy trial starting. Fred Hampton . And Hanrahan became defensive and told the story that you just saw. to your inbox each morning. We’re not a racist organization, because we understand that racism is an excuse used for capitalism, and we know that racism is just—it’s a byproduct of capitalism. Please do your part today. A lot of people don’t even understand the words that Eldridge uses a lot. In an unsigned editorial headlined "No Quarter for Wild Beasts", the Chicago Tribune urged that Chicago police officers approaching suspected Panthers "should be ordered to be ready to shoot. For more on Fred Hampton’s life and death, we’re joined in our Democracy Now! JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the role of the FBI and of COINTELPRO, the FBI’s massive program against dissidents in the United States, how did you uncover that, as well? And also, what happened to Hanrahan as you sought to pursue the truth of the murder of Fred Hampton? "[58] Gus Savage said that such a man to whom the community could relate need not be black. Our Daily Digest brings Democracy Now! Hoover responded with a memo implying that the agent's career prospects depended on his supplying evidence to support Hoover's view that the BPP was "a violence-prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means". The Assassination of Fred Hampton is his book, How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther. [63][64] The grand jury said that the police department's raid was "ill conceived" and that there were many errors committed during the post-raid investigation and reconstruction of the events. And it talked about disrupting, destroying and neutralizing the Panthers by any means necessary. Some people have compared Hanrahan’s group to sort of a local hit squad, in order—but was utilized by the federal government and by Hoover. To learn more about Fred Hampton’s views, check out the thoughts below. On her lap, their little son, Fred Hampton, who is now an activist around prisoner rights and prisoner issues around this country. We’ve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. At age 21, Hampton was fatally shot alongside a fellow activist during a law enforcement raid. While Hampton was out of town, two Chicago police officers, John J. Gilhooly and Frank G. Rappaport, were fatally shot in a gun battle with Panthers on the night of November 13; one died the next day. He didn’t move, except for moving his head up. The remaining seven Panthers … O'Neal had slipped the 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. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I remember very well the news coming about Fred Hampton’s death. In early November, Hampton traveled to California on a speaking engagement to the UCLA Law Students Association. [51], Four weeks after witnessing Hampton's death at the hands of the police, Deborah Johnson gave birth to their son Fred Hampton Jr.[52], 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. To be sure, J. Edgar Hoover and James Angleton did not conspire to kill Fred Hampton in his bed. And interestingly enough, when the Church Committee in the ’70s began to investigate COINTELPRO—. [54], A federal grand jury did not return any indictment against any of the numerous individuals involved with the planning or execution of the raid, including the officers involved in killing Hampton. [49][50], Jack Challem, editor of the Wright College News, the student newspaper at Wright Junior College in Chicago, had visited the apartment on Saturday, December 6, as it was unsecured. O'Neal personally instigated an armed clash between them on April 2, 1969. The person who was in the room, he kept hollering, “Stop shooting! He was given the name Alfred Johnson at birth. After Hampton was killed, Black Panther leader Bobby Rush spoke at his funeral about his life and legacy. Later, the Rainbow Coalition was joined nationwide by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Brown Berets, A.I.M., and the Red Guard Party. In 1969, the FBI Special Agent in Charge (SAC) in San Francisco wrote Hoover that the agent's investigation had found that, in his city at least, the Panthers were primarily feeding breakfast to children. [73] In March 2006, supporters of Hampton's charity work proposed the naming of a Chicago street in honor of the former Black Panther leader. Fellow Black Panther Harold Bell said that he heard the following exchange: The injured Panthers said they heard two shots. He was a very flamboyant person. He attempted to build what he called a rocket that would go from the Panther office to City Hall until Fred Hampton—. This is a rush transcript. Given revelations about the illegal COINTELPRO program and documents associated with the killings, many scholars now consider Hampton's death an assassination under the FBI's initiative. After more than 18 months of testimony and at the close of the Plaintiff's case, Judge Perry dismissed the case. He worked to get more and better recreational facilities established in the neighborhoods and to improve educational resources for Maywood's impoverished black community. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And Jeff Haas, you talk in the book also about how you, a white radical raised in the South, ended up in Chicago that day as part of the People’s Law Clinic there, working with the Panthers. Pig said, “He’s good and dead now.” The pigs were running around laughing. It includes no narration, relying solely on footage shot from within the Black Panther organization and portraying Hampton and his colleagues on their own terms. A member of the Black Panthers was allowing visitors to tour the apartment. [55] The two families each shared in the settlement. 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. [88], This article is about the 1960s activist. You had the Democratic convention there. Once he became leader of the Chicago chapter, he organized weekly rallies, participated in strikes, 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. The program was promptly shuttered a few years after this incident, though its methods continue today within the organization. [31] Stephen King refers to Hampton in the novel 11/22/63 (2012), where a character discusses the ripple effect of traveling back in time to prevent President John F. Kennedy's assassination, which the character postulates would give rise to a series of events that could prevent Fred Hampton's assassination as well. While authorities claimed the Panthers had opened fire on the police who were there to serve a search warrant for weapons, evidence later emerged that told a very different story: that the FBI, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and the Chicago police conspired to assassinate Fred Hampton. It was December 4, 1969. AMY GOODMAN: The words of Fred Hampton, those excerpts courtesy of the 1969 documentary The Murder of Fred Hampton, produced by the Chicago Film Group. The door and told us to J. 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