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<font size=4 color="#FF0000"><b>Wednesday November 18<br>
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</font><font size=3>An excerpt of a new book on the Black Panther
leader’s death and its aftermath by People’s Law Office cofounder Jeffrey
Haas<br><br>
</b><i>By
<a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/ArticleArchives?author=1227454">
Jeffrey
</a>
<a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/ArticleArchives?author=1227454">
Haas</a></i> <br><br>
Maybe we all have points at which our consciousness changes and we cannot
return to our former path. For many political activists, that dividing
line occurred in the late 1960s. We were fed up with a system that
thrived on war, racism, and patriarchy. We were young people who at first
hadn't understood why the United States was waging war in Vietnam but who
by 1969 believed that it was endemic to an unjust system we felt
compelled to stop or overthrow.<br><br>
I was part of a small group of lawyers who wanted to get involved. Fred
Hampton was the young chairman of the Chicago chapter of the Black
Panther Party. In the spring of 1969, after Hampton recruited some of our
members to help with the party's legal problems, we made the decision to
form the People's Law Office, an independent practice that would
represent Hampton and the movement as a whole.<br><br>
In the early morning hours of December 4, 1969, Hampton and Mark Clark
were assassinated in a raid conducted by the Cook County State's
Attorney's Office in conjunction with the Chicago police and the FBI. Our
fledgling practice sued the government on behalf of the victims' families
and the survivors of the raid. It was 13 years before the case was
settled, for $1.85 million, coming in equal parts from the city, county,
and federal governments. I've now left the PLO, but for the last 40 years
it has continued to represent victims of abuse and misconduct by police
and other government officials.<br><br>
The Hampton and Clark families and the survivors of the raid are being
honored at an event on November 5 at the law school at Northwestern
University, where Fred spoke to the students and faculty exactly 40 years
ago. It includes a reading, a discussion by a panel of scholars and
writers moderated by Bernardine Dohrn, and a public reception.<br><br>
What follows is an edited excerpt of my new book, <i>The Assassination of
Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black
Panther</i>, about the murder, the government's cover-up, and the
survivors' pursuit of justice. Jeffrey Haas<br><br>
In 1966 Fred Hampton was a high school senior working on his own version
of black empowerment. He was campaigning for more black teachers and
administrators at his school, Proviso East, and he set up a black
cultural center in Maywood with a black history section. During this
period two young Californians were similarly engaged. They demanded more
black administrators and black history courses at Merritt College in
Oakland, California. One was 24-year-old Huey Newton; the other was
30-year-old Bobby Seale.<br><br>
Newton and Seale worked at the North Oakland Poverty Center. They went
door-to-door asking residents what they needed and wanted. The
information gleaned became the basis of the "Ten Point Program"
when they formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense later that
year. . . .<br><br>
The party urged members to arm themselves, which was legal in California
as long as the weapons were not concealed. Panthers followed Oakland
police cars around the ghetto to monitor their treatment of black
citizens. This outraged the Oakland Police Department and gave the
Panthers immediate visibility. Incidents of police brutality decreased
substantially during their patrols, increasing acceptance of the Panthers
by the black community.<br><br>
In Chicago Fred Hampton also spoke out against police brutality. As the
leader of the NAACP Youth Chapter, he originally marched for raises of
police salaries to get more professional police in Maywood. Later he
pushed to make the police more accountable and to give Maywood citizens
the power to fire brutal cops. . . .<br><br>
In May 1967, 30 Oakland Panthers, 24 men and six women, went to the
California legislature in Sacramento carrying rifles to dramatize their
right of self-defense and to protest pending legislation that would
overturn the law allowing people to carry unconcealed weapons. The photos
and TV images of the armed Panthers in leather jackets and black berets
at the capitol steps was a shot heard round the world. Seale and many of
the other Panthers ended up with six-month sentences for "conspiracy
to disturb the peace," and Panther chapters started up in Los
Angeles, Atlanta, New York, and Detroit.<br><br>
Black militancy was on the rise in Chicago as well. In the fall of 1967,
Hampton and Bill Ivory, a respected dentist and NAACP member, addressed a
Maywood rally of more than a hundred young people. Fred urged his
listeners to come to the Maywood Village Board meeting the next night to
press their demands for a public swimming pool and recreational
center.<br><br>
A large crowd, mostly young blacks, went to the meeting, but not all were
allowed inside. Fred urged the board to find a larger space or let those
outside come in, even if they had to stand. The Maywood police panicked,
tear-gassing those outside. Angered by the police reaction, the young
people left the village hall and ran down Fifth Avenue, Maywood's main
street, breaking store windows and threatening passersby.<br><br>
Though they were inside the village hall when the violence took place,
Hampton and Bill Ivory were arrested and charged with mob action because
of their speeches the night before. Fred was in jail for three days
before he could post the $500 bail. . . .<br><br>
After the board meeting, Fred was targeted by the Maywood police and
arrested on several occasions for technical traffic violations. He
eventually stopped driving to avoid the harassment. The local police
weren't the only ones watching Fred Hampton. After his arrest for mob
action, he was put on the FBI's Key Agitator Index, a list of activists
that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover ordered agents to monitor closely. . .
.<br><br>
[Documents I've obtained since I finished the book show that Hoover
reported to the White House, the CIA, the secretary of state, and the
U.S. Army that Fred had led the Maywood protesters through the streets
breaking windows and attacking bystanders.]<br><br>
Later that year Bobby Rush, then a leader in the Chicago chapter of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and now an Illinois
congressman, went to Oakland, where he met with the Panther Central
Committee. Rush returned with a mandate to form a Panther chapter in
Chicago. The first person he recruited was Hampton, and they opened the
Chicago office in November 1968. In four years Fred had evolved from
organizing for black homecoming queens to becoming chairman of the
Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers.<br><br>
Following the Oakland Panthers' lead, Fred set up a local Breakfast for
Children Program, providing free hot breakfasts for kids before school,
and then expanded it beyond its first site, the Better Boys Foundation,
to several other locations. Securing the food from merchants, getting it
prepared and delivered to the kitchens, supervising the kids eating
before school, and cleaning up afterward was major work for many of the
Panther cadre. The rest of the day was often spent selling Panther
newspapers, interviewing people and filling out questionnaires on their
needs and priorities, getting petitions for community control of police
signed, attending political education classes, and maintaining the
office. . . .<br><br>
Fred went from site to site working at the breakfast programs and talking
to the kids and their parents about what the Black Panther Party was
trying to do for the community. Kids were taught revolutionary songs.
Parents were asked to participate in the programs, although it was not a
requirement for their kids to get fed. In one of his later speeches, Fred
said:<br><br>
"The pigs say, 'Well the Breakfast for Children Program is a
socialistic program, it's a communistic program.' And the women say, 'I
don't know if I like communism. I don't know if I like socialism. But I
know that the Breakfast for Children Program feeds my kids.' A lot of
people think the Breakfast for Children Program is charity. But what does
it do? It takes the people from a stage to another stage. Any program
that's revolutionary is an advancing program. Revolution is change.
Honey, if you just keep on changing, before you know itin fact, you
don't have to know what it isthey're endorsing it, they're participating
in it, and supporting socialism."<br><br>
Doc Satchel, who started Chicago's Panther health clinic, put it another
way:<br><br>
"The Panthers were an armed propaganda unit that raised the
contradictions, set the example, and provided the vehicle that the people
could ride to revolution. We do not say the Black Panther Party will be
overthrowing the government; we heighten the contradictions so the people
can decide if they want to change the government."<br><br>
Fred frequently spoke about how nationalism could not replace education:
"You can't build a revolution with no education. Jomo Kenyatta did
this in Africa and because the people were not educated he became as much
an oppressor as the people he overthrew. Look at Papa Doc Duvalier in
Haiti. He got everyone to hate whites and he turned into the dictator
himself. How will people end up without education?" . . .<br><br>
While the Panthers' vision of how the revolutionary struggle would
actually come about was not always clearly articulated or understood, at
least by me, the work of the programs and organizing was always present.
They provided a reality check and a complement to the revolutionary
rhetoric. . . .<br><br>
Panther members in Chicago went door-to-door in many black communities to
find out what peoples' complaints and priorities were and to get
signatures on petitions for community control of the police. These
neighborhood activities sometimes put them in conflict with Chicago
street gangs, who considered many areas their exclusive territories. The
gangs were armed and organized. Sometimes they exercised their power to
benefit the community. The Black P. Stone Nation, successor to the
Blackstone Rangers, carried out a "no-vote" campaign on the
south side to take votes away from the Democratic machine in favor of
more progressive and community-oriented candidates. In 1969 members of
the Black Disciples, the city's second-largest street gang, made up the
majority of demonstrators who picketed and actually halted Chicago
construction projects in the Loop until they won positions for
African-Americans in the building trades unions, which had been a bastion
of discrimination. Fred met and worked out a treaty with Black Disciples
leader David Barksdale that allowed the Panthers to organize and recruit
in areas controlled by the gang.<br><br>
Fred had been less successful when he'd met with the leadership of the
Blackstone Rangers. One face-to-face meeting took place at the Rangers'
headquarters in Woodlawn. Fred and several other armed Panthers went to
the meeting but were quickly surrounded by many better-armed Rangers,
including Jeff Fort, their leader, and other representatives of the Main
21, the Rangers' governing body. Fort told Fred he could be rich if he
and the Panthers joined the Rangers' drug operation. Fred refused: he
didn't use drugs and he and Panther policy did not allow other Panthers
to use them.<br><br>
The meeting ended with Fort acknowledging that the Panthers were not a
rival gang but still refusing to permit them to operate in Ranger
territory. The meeting lessened tensions only slightly. Nevertheless,
Fred's efforts to work with and organize gang members caused fear
throughout the police and FBI. After the meeting at the Rangers'
headquarters, Chicago police, following an FBI tip, arrested a carload of
armed Panthers driving away. This resulted in criminal charges against
the Panthers and set off speculation that the Rangers had snitched on
them. Years later we would learn that an FBI informant in the Panthers
had tipped off his FBI control, who then notified the police. . .
.<br><br>
In October 1969, Fred was still spending some nights at his parents' home
in Maywood and some in other Panther apartments. Deborah Johnson was
seven months pregnant with Fred's baby; she and Fred wanted to live
together. Despite warnings from their friends to stay in the suburbs,
farther from the Chicago police, Fred and Deborah rented a small
five-room apartment on the first floor of a two-flat at 2337 W. Monroe,
one street over from the Panther office. It quickly became a Panther
hangout. . . .<br><br>
Fred and the Panthers knew that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI as well as
the local police were out to get them. Fred understood he was a marked
man, but the security at the new Panther crib was irregular and
haphazard. . . .<br><br>
I'd worked an all-nighter and had just fallen asleep on the morning of
December 4 when I heard a loud knock at the front door. Dazed, I got up
and opened it. My partner Skip Andrew was standing there dressed in suit
and tie. "Chairman Fred is dead," he said. "I just got a
call from Rush. The pigs vamped on the chairman's crib this
morning."<br><br>
I remained stuck on the words Chairman Fred is dead.<br><br>
"Someone else was killed and a lot of people were shot. Deborah
Johnson and some others are at the Wood Street police station; the people
wounded are at Cook County Hospital."<br><br>
"What should I do?" I asked.<br><br>
"I'm meeting Rush at the morgue, and then we're going to the
chairman's crib," Skip replied. "Why don't you go to Wood
Street and try to talk to some of the survivors?"<br><br>
Fred Hampton dead. I had just seen him at the Panther office looking
larger than life. I couldn't imagine him motionless. On my way to the
police station, I heard the news flash: "Fred Hampton and another
Panther member were killed this morning in a predawn raid by police
officers assigned to state's attorney Edward Hanrahan. Hanrahan's office
indicated the officers were serving a search warrant for weapons when
they were fired upon by the occupants and returned the
fire."<br><br>
Why was Hanrahan the prosecutor in charge of a police raid? . .
.<br><br>
At Wood Street a patrolman came out from behind the counter and led me to
the back of the station. He unlocked the door to a tiny, windowless
interview room with a small wooden table and two wooden chairs on either
side. There was a knock at the door. The patrolman unlocked it and
Deborah Johnson was brought into the cramped room. This was our first
meeting. She leaned over, crying and shaking, supporting herself with one
hand on the table. Slowly she sat down. She looked at me guardedly, not
quite fathoming who I was or why I was there.<br><br>
"I'm Jeff Haas with the People's Law Office. How are you and your
baby?" I asked.<br><br>
There was a pause as if she didn't hear me, then she responded, "I
wasn't shot like a lot of the others. The pigs pushed me around, but I
think my baby is OK." She paused again. "Fred never really woke
up. We were sleeping. I woke up hearing shots from the front and back. I
shook Fred but he didn't open his eyes."<br><br>
Deborah demonstrated how she had pushed against Fred several times trying
to wake him. "At one point he sort of raised up and then lay back
down again." She repeated that he never opened his eyes. "I got
on top of him to try to protect him from the gunshots. The bed was
shaking from the bullets."<br><br>
She said the shooting stopped only after someone in the bedroom with her
yelled, "We got a pregnant sister in here." She told me two
"pigs" came into the bedroom. One of them pulled up her
nightgown and called out, "Look, we got a broad here." Then
they pulled her out into the kitchen.<br><br>
Deborah stopped talking as she wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her
nightgown. "Fred never really woke up," she repeated. "He
was lying there when they pulled me out of the bedroom." She paused.
Then she described two police officers going into their bedroom and
hearing one of them fire two shots, followed by, "He's good and dead
now." Deborah put her head down. A moment later she raised it
suddenly and looked at me. "What can you do?" she
asked.<br><br>
What could I do about the horrible murder she had just described? Not
knowing what to say, I asked her, "Did it look like Fred had been
shot already when you were pulled out of the bedroom?"<br><br>
"He didn't have any blood on him that I could see," she
replied. "I crawled on top of him during the shooting to try to
protect him." She showed me her patterned blue- and-white nightgown.
There was no blood. Deborah's description of Fred rising up but not
opening his eyes, then lying back down, seemed strange. I couldn't
understand why he appeared dazed and semiconscious when he had not been
shot. "Were the men who raided the apartment in
uniform?"<br><br>
"No," she said, "but they were definitely the
pigs." <br><br>
©2009 Jeffrey Haas<br><br>
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