Fellow Black Panther Harold Bell said that he heard the following exchange: The injured Panthers said they heard two shots. It was reported to have been the longest federal trial up to that time. The pigs vamped on his crib this morning.” And I couldn’t believe it, because I had seen Fred just two days earlier in the office, bigger than life, giving orders, talking about the breakfast program, talking about political education classes. A … But, of course, it turned out that way. And we are going to have to fight. 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. And about this time, I jumped on top of the chairman. And I think we started it with a sense of collectivity. He is the author of a new book called The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther. Why? In exchange for having his felony charges dropped and a monthly stipend, O'Neal agreed to infiltrate the BPP as a counterintelligence operative. It is due to be released in 2021. He was arrested twice with Jimenez at the Wicker Park Welfare Office, and both were charged with "mob action" at a peaceful picket of the office. And Hanrahan became defensive and told the story that you just saw. FRED HAMPTON: So we say—we always say in the Black Panther Party that they can do anything they want to to us. So, that morning, which was exactly 40 years ago this morning, just about this time, I went to see the survivors. To be sure, J. Edgar Hoover and James Angleton did not conspire to kill Fred Hampton in his bed. Fred Hampton, chair of the Black Panther Party of Illinois, died of two gunshots to the head. Emphasizing that racial and ethnic conflict among gangs would only keep its members entrenched in poverty, Hampton strove to forge a class-conscious, multiracial alliance among the BPP, the neo-confederate Young Patriots Organization, and the Young Lords under the leadership of Jose Cha Cha Jimenez, leading to the Rainbow Coalition. [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. 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. In December 1969, Hampton was shot and killed in his bed during a predawn raid at his Chicago apartment by a tactical unit of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office in conjunction with the Chicago Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation; during the raid, Panther Mark Clark was also killed and several others were seriously wounded. The article included photographs, supplied by Hanrahan's office, that depicted bullet holes in a thin white curtain and door jamb as evidence that the Panthers fired multiple bullets at the police. is a 501(c)3 non-profit news organization. But when I leave, you’ll remember I said, with the last words on my lips, that I am a revolutionary. He never got elected to anything again. And that was his real threat. His murder, along with that of fellow Panther Mark Clark, sent waves of shock and outrage through their community. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —which is what Jesse then adopted into his main program. "[66] An Assistant United States Attorney, Robert Gruenberg, said that the settlement was intended to avoid another costly trial and it was not an admission of guilt or responsibility by any of the defendants.[66]. Bernard Carey, a Republican, defeated him in the next election, in part because of the support of outraged black voters. [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. It was December 4, 1969. We don’t think you fight fire with fire; we think you fight fire with water. And he’s never admitted it, but some of that evidence suggests that O’Neal was the one who drugged him the night of the raid. But what we uncovered was that the FBI had obtained a floor plan of Fred Hampton’s apartment. In 1967, Hampton was identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a radical threat. Chicago was sort of the hub of all this political activity. And I guess my idea of an informant was somebody who sits quietly in the corner and takes mental notes. I think it made cowards of us all. During the trial, the Chicago Police Department claimed that the Panthers were the first to fire shots. He was seen as a threat by the federal government, and they eliminated him. Noam Chomsky has called Hampton’s killing “the gravest domestic crime of the Nixon administration.”. When I opened the door, he was already dressed in a suit and tie and said, “The chairman’s been killed. [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. Rep. Ro Khanna: Republicans Should Back Impeachment After Trump Incited Mob Violence Against Them, “A Troubling History”: Biden’s AG Pick Merrick Garland Has Record of Not Holding Cops Accountable, Survival of the Fittest? [includes rush transcript]. And I guess—we all knew William O’Neal. It turns out those dots were nail heads. Much of the first half of "A Nation of Law? [57] On December 23, Toman announced four additions to the jury, who included two African-American men: physician Theodore K. Lawless and attorney Julian B. Wilkins, the son of J. Ernest Wilkins, Sr.[57] He said the four were selected from a group of candidates submitted to his office by groups and individuals representing both Chicago's black and white communities. And there was evidence that Fred Hampton was drugged. At age 21, Hampton was fatally shot alongside a fellow activist during a law enforcement raid. We’re going to fight their reactions with all of us people getting together and having an international proletarian revolution. 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. Fred Hampton Jr. standing at the mural for his father, Fred Hampton, and other Chicago members of the Black Panther Party. And I thought, “Wow! What the coalition groups would do was based on common action. 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".[77]. Ten days afterward, Bobby Rush, then the deputy minister of defense for the Illinois Black Panther party, called the raiding party an "execution squad". Looked like all the pigs had converged at the entranceway to the bedroom area, back bedroom area. Over the next year, Hampton and his friend and associates made a number of significant achievements in Chicago. 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. [13] In late 1968, the Racial Matters squad of the FBI's Chicago field office recruited William O'Neal to work with it; he had recently been arrested twice for interstate car theft and impersonating a federal officer. We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work. I might be in jail. Chicago's chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police opposed this effort. [13][14], In November 1969, Hampton traveled to California and met with the National BPP leadership at UCLA. 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. "[58] Gus Savage said that such a man to whom the community could relate need not be black. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: As I recall, a lot of the bullets were shot from the floor below, as well, as they were—. Hampton was wounded in the shoulder by the shooting. It said that the refusal of the surviving Black Panthers to cooperate hampered the investigation, and that the press "improperly and grossly exaggerated stories". Talk about what came of that, after this day, 40 years ago. He was a provocateur. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We wanted to be—so we started the People’s Law Office in a sausage shop. So I think another legacy is to try to hold our government officials accountable. The Assassination of Fred Hampton is his book, How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther. 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. Challem's photographs did not show the bullet holes as reported by the Chicago Tribune. In this capacity, he founded the Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots, and the Young Lords, and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. Where were you when Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were gunned down in their beds in Chicago by the police? 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. [18], The FBI opened a file on Hampton in 1967. The film stars Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton. Heard a pig say, “He’s barely alive. You understand what I’m saying? 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. Pigs kept on shooting. "[26], The FBI, determined to prevent any enhancement of the BPP leadership's effectiveness, decided to set up an armed raid on Hampton's Chicago apartment. But what we’re saying is that there are white people in the mother country that are for the same types of things that we are for stimulating revolution in the mother country. Fred Hampton was assassinated. An excerpt from a documentary about the death of Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party. [65] The $1.85 million settlement was believed to be the largest ever in a civil rights case. Fred Hampton was born in Chicago on 30th August 1948 and grew up in Maywood, a suburb of the city. The footage was later released as part of the 1971 documentary The Murder of Fred Hampton. 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". On December 3, 1969, 21-year-old Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers, led a political education class, had some dinner, and talked to his mom on the phone. You might run a liberator like Eldridge Cleaver out of the country, but you can’t run liberation out of the country. That floor plan was complete with all the furniture, including the bedroom where Hampton and Johnson slept and a rectangle showing the bed. Tens of thousands have learned that protest and marches don't do it. Youth chapter of the country, but we ’ re not going to have been the longest federal trial to. 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