[Ppnews] Assasination of Fred Hampton - Jeff Haas CA Book Tour 11-18 to 12-1

[Political Prisoner News]

Wednesday November 18
Los Angeles, CA
Ese Won Books, 4331 Degnan Avenue

Thursday November 19
West Hollywood, CA
Book Soup 7 pm
8818 Sunset Blvd.

Friday November 20
The Black Repertory Theater
3201 Adeline St, Berkeley
510-652-2120

Monday November 30
Berkeley, CA
Books, Inc
1760 Fourth Street
7:00 PM

Tuesday December 1
San Francisco, CA
City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue at Broadway 7pm

An excerpt of a new book on the Black Panther 
leader’s death and its aftermath by People’s Law Office cofounder Jeffrey Haas

By 
<http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/ArticleArchives?author=1227454>Jeffrey 
<http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/ArticleArchives?author=1227454>Haas

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.

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.

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.

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.

What follows is an edited excerpt of my new book, 
The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI 
and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther, 
about the murder, the government's cover-up, and 
the survivors' pursuit of justice. ­Jeffrey Haas

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.

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. . . .

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.

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. . . .

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.

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.

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.

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. . . .

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. . . .

[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.]

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.

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. . . .

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:

"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."

Doc Satchel, who started Chicago's Panther health clinic, put it another way:

"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."

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?" . . .

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. . . .

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.

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.

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. . . .

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. . . .

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. . . .

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."

I remained stuck on the words Chairman Fred is dead.

"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."

"What should I do?" I asked.

"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?"

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."

Why was Hanrahan the prosecutor in charge of a police raid? . . .

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.

"I'm Jeff Haas with the People's Law Office. How 
are you and your baby?" I asked.

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."

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."

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.

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.

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?"

"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?"

"No," she said, "but they were definitely the pigs."

©2009 Jeffrey Haas




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