Fred Hampton, the leader of the Illinois Black Panthers, was killed on this day in 1969 -- shot in his bed by Chicago police officers under the command of Cook County States Attorney Edward Hanrahan. Here are some excerpts from an article in today's Chicago Tribune:
For the public at large, it was as police officials described: a dramatic gunfight launched against police by violent black nationalists that left two dead and four wounded.
But for others, particularly socially conscious African Americans, the Dec. 4 raid on the two-flat at 2337 W. Monroe St. was a cold-blooded execution of Black Panthers leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, ordered by federal authorities eager to snuff out burgeoning black leadership.
Survivors described a far more frightening scene: Officers armed with shotguns and rifles opening fire on sleeping Black Panther members inside, among them Hampton’s pregnant fiancee. A special federal grand jury determined that police sprayed 82 to 99 gunshots through doors, walls and windows while just one shot appeared to have been fired by someone inside.
The agency’s infamous COINTELPRO, or counterintelligence program, tracked, spied on and used subterfuge against targets from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to the Ku Klux Klan. In 1976, the FBI first admitted its role in the Chicago raid in a New York Times article that described the program as “Mr. Hoover’s once‐secret effort to watch, harass and discredit thousands of Americans whose politics he opposed.”
Perhaps more shocking, a Senate report further acknowledged that Hoover’s FBI, in trying to prevent violence from black power groups “itself engaged in lawless tactics and responded to deep-seated social problems by fomenting violence and unrest."
In 1983, a federal judge approved a settlement that awarded $1.85 million to survivors of the raid and families of the two men who were killed, to be paid by the federal government, the city of Chicago and Cook County.
Hanrahan, an assistant and 12 officers present at the raid were indicted, but later acquitted. Hanrahan was forced out and never regained public office. Young Black Panthers member Bobby Rush became an alderman and eventually a U.S. congressman.
You can read the entire article here.
I was arrested in the protest demonstrations following the assassination, leading to the events I described here.
Comments