Remembering Fred Hampton
"You can kill a revolutionary, but you can't kill a revolution!"
In December, at the Annual Peace Dance at the Harwood Art Center, Allen Cooper auctioned off a "Remember Fred Hampton" T-shirt, which he'd had hanging on his living room wall for many years. It brought to my mind my memories of Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party (BPP) when he was alive, and then his shooting death by the Cook County State's Attorney's Police in connection with the FBI, as part of the Cointelpro Program, while he lay in his bed asleep, after he had been drugged, on December 4, 1969. I remember hearing him speak and remarking on the charismatic quality of his rousing political rhetoric. One time, at least, was in the basement of what was then known as the Young Lords Church on the Near North Side, on Armitage.
I remember visiting the site of his death, the apartment with the walls riddled with bullet holes, the bloody mattress. Another young Black Panther, Mark Clark, was killed at the same time, and many people wounded in the shoot-out, including Ronald "Doc" Satchel, Minister of Health, BPP. It was only a miracle that Fred's pregnant baby's mother, Deborah Johnson (a.k.a. Akua Njeri), survived that night. (For information about Fred Hampton, Jr., who was sentenced to 18 years in prison on a trumped up arson charge, see the website http://www.providence.edu/afro/students/panther/hamptonjr.html. He now lives with his mother in Chicago) Later the People's Law Office conducted a case against the infamous State's Attorney for masterminding the assassination. Skip Andrew really spear-headed the investigation into Fred's death and the police lies. He's prominent in the movie. Flint Taylor, Jeff Haas and others were counsel in the suit. They had taken the bullet-riddled door from the apartment, and used it as evidence during the sensational courtroom trial. (see link from the 20th anniversary at http://www.peopleslawoffice.com/hamptonlink.htm ) From Wikipedia:
The officers involved in the raid were cleared by a grand jury of any crimes. The families of Hampton and Clark filed a $47.7 million civil suit against the city, state, and federal governments. More than a decade later, the suit was finally settled, and the two families each received a large but undisclosed sum. In 1990, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution declaring "Fred Hampton Day" in honor of the slain leader.
Meanwhile, us movement activists were picketing the state's attorney's home on the lily-white Northwest Side. I wasn't sure I remembered his name correctly, so I perused a few of the websites telling about Fred Hampton, but none of them mentioned his name. On the website that tells about the movie that was made, "The Murder of Fred Hampton," in 1971, I finally found it, Edward Hanrahan.
It's been reported that 5000 people attended Fred's funeral. I was one of them.
(Thanks to Marie Leaner for helping by filling in a few gaps in my memory.)
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