| Table of contents |
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2 Chicago 3 The FBI 4 The raid 5 Aftermath 6 Quotes 7 Reference |
Youth
Hampton was born in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in Maywood, a suburb to
the west of the city.
His parents had moved north from Louisiana, and both worked at the
Argo Starch Company.
As a youth, Hampton was gifted both in the classroom and on the athletic field,
graduating from high school with honors in 1966.
Following his graduation, Hampton enrolled at Triton Junior College in nearby River Grove, Illinois, majoring in pre-law. He also became active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), assuming leadership of the Youth Council of the organization's West Suburban Branch. In his capacity as an NAACP youth organizer, Hampton began to show signs of his natural leadership abilities; from a community of 27,000, he was able to muster a youth group 500-members strong. He worked to get more and better recreational facilities established in the neighborhoods, and to improve educational resources for Maywood's impoverished black community. Through his involvement with the NAACP, Hampton hoped to achieve social change through nonviolent activism and community organizing.
Chicago
At about the same time that Hampton was successfully organizing young African
Americans for the NAACP, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (as it
was originally called) started rising
to national prominence. Hampton was quickly attracted to the Black Panther's
approach, which was based on a ten-point program of black
self-determination. Hampton joined the Party and relocated to
downtown Chicago, and in November of 1968 he joined the Party's nascent Illinois
chapter — founded by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizer Bob Brown in late 1967.
Over the next year, Hampton and his associates made a number of significant achievements in Chicago. Perhaps his most important accomplishment was his brokering of a nonaggression pact between Chicago's most powerful street gangs. By emphasizing that racial and ethnic conflict between gangs would only keep its members entrenched in poverty, Hampton strove to forge a class-conscious, multiracial albeit tenuous alliance between the BPP, SDS (a white political action group), the Blackstone Rangers, the Young Lords (a Puerto Rican organization), and the Young Patriots (a white group). In May of 1969, Hampton called a press conference to announce that a truce had been declared among this "rainbow coalition," a phrase coined by Hampton and made popular over the years by Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Due to his organizing skills, oratorical gifts, and personal charisma, he rose quickly in the organization, becoming leader of the Chicago chapter of the party. He organized weekly rallies, worked with a People's Clinic, taught political education classes every morning at 6am, and launched a project for community supervision of the police. Hampton was also instrumental in the BPP's Free Breakfast Program. When Brown left the Party with Stokely Carmichael in the FBI fomented SNCC/Panther split, Hampton assumed chairmanship of the Illinois state BPP, automatically making him a national BPP deputy chairman. As the panther leadership across the country began to be decimated by the impact of the FBI's COINTELPRO, Hampton's prominence in the national hierarchy increased rapidly and dramatically. Hampton was in line to be appointed to the Party's Central Committee's Chief of Staff was it not for his untimely death on the night of December 4, 1969.
The FBI
While Hampton impressed many of the people with whom he came into contact as a great leader and talented communicator, those very qualities marked him as a major threat in the eyes of the FBI. It began keeping close tabs on his activities. Subsequent investigations have shown that FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover was determined to prevent the formation of a cohesive Black radical movement in the United States. Hoover saw the Panthers, and gang coalitions like that forged by Hampton in Chicago, as a frightening stepping stone toward the creation of just such a revolutionary body.
The FBI opened a file on Hampton in 1967 that over the next two years expanded to twelve volumes containing over four-thousand pages. A wire tap was placed on Hampton's mother's phone in February of 1968. By May of that year, the young Panther's name was placed on the "Agitator Index" and he would be designated a "key militant leader for Bureau reporting purposes."
In late 1968, the Racial Matters squad of the FBI's Chicago field office brought in an individual named William O'Neal, who had recently been arrested twice, for interstate car theft and impersonating a federal officer. Apparently in exchange for a dropping the felony charges and a monthly stipend, O'Neal agreed to infiltrate the BPP as a counterintelligence operative. He joined the Party and quickly rose in the organization, becoming Director of Chapter security and Hampton's bodyguard.
By means of anonymous letters, the FBI sowed distrust and eventually a split between the Panthers and the Rangers, with O'Neal himself instigating an armed clash between the two on April 2, 1969. With the Panthers effectively isolated from their powerbase in the ghetto, the FBI went to work to undermine its ties with other radical organizations. O'Neal was instructed to "create a rift" between the Party and the SDS, whose Chicago headquarters was near the Panther's. The Bureau released a batch of racists cartoons in the Panther's name aimed to alienate white activists, and launched a disinformation program to forestall the realization of the Rainbow Coalition, a clear threat to the political status quo. In repeated directives, J. Edgar Hoover demanded that the COINTELPRO personnel "destroy what the [BPP] stands for" and "eradicate its 'serve the people' programs".
Meanwhile, the local Chicago police did not stand idly by. Urged on by the FBI, it launched an all-out assault on the Black Panthers and their allies, characterizing the group as nothing more than a criminal gang. The CPD instigated an unprovoked armed confrontation with party members on July 16, which left one member mortally wounded and six others arrested on serious charges. On July 31, the CPD raided and ransacked the Monroe Street office, smashing typewriters, destroying food and medical supplies for the Panther health clinic and breakfast program, setting several small fires, and beating and arresting a number of Panthers for obstruction. The raid was repeated on October 31.
In May, Hampton was successfully prosecuted for in a dubious case related to a theft in May 1967 of US$72 worth of ice cream in Maywood. He was sentenced to two to five years but he managed to obtain an appeal bond and was released in August.
In early October, Hampton and his fiancee, Deborah Johnson, pregnant with their first child, rented a four-and-a-half room apartment on 2337 West Monroe Street to be closer to BPP headquarters. O'Neal report to his superiors that much of the Panthers "provocative" stockpile of arms was being stored there. In early November, Hampton travelled to California on a speaking engagement to the UCLA Law Students Association. While there, he met with the remaining BPP national hierarchy who appointed him to the Party's Central Committee, to soon assume the position of Chief of Staff and major spokesman. This, combined with Chicago BPP chapter having become one of the strongest in the country, with one of the most successful Serve the People programs, motivated the FBI to look for a more permanent way of neutralizing Hampton.
At 4AM, the heavily armed police team arrived at the site, dividing into two teams, eight for the front of the building and six for the year. At 4:45, they stormed in the apartment. Mark Clark, asleep in a front room with a shotgun in his lap, was killed instantly, firing off a single round — the only shot the Panthers fired — in a death spasm. The automatic gunfire converged at the head of the bedroom where Hampton slept. Two officers found him wounded in the shoulder, and the following exchange took place:
The raiders then directed their gunfire towards the remaining Panthers, hiding in another bedroom. They were wounded, then beaten and dragged into the street, and arrested on charges of attempting to murder their assailants and aggravated assault. They were held on US$100,000 bail apiece.
Hampton's funeral was attended by 5,000 people, and he was eulogized by such
black leaders as Jesse Jackson and Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King's
successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In his
eulogy, Jackson noted that "when Fred was shot in Chicago, black people in
particular, and decent people in general, bled everywhere."
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.
Aftermath
At a press conference the next day, the police announced the arrest team had
been "attacked" by the "violent" and "extremely vicious" Panthers and had
defended themselves accordingly. In a second press conference on December 8, in
which the assault team was praised for their "remarkable restraint" "bravery"
and "professional discipline" in not killing all the Panthers present.
Photographic evidence was presented of bullet holes made by shots fired by the
Panthers, but this was soon demolished by reporters, causing an uproar. An
hasty internal investigation was undertaken, exonerating the assault team. But
investigators themselves later admitted it was a "whitewash". It took years of
incessant public pressure to expose the lies, and eventually it was proven that
all but one of the ninety-nine shots were fired by the police.Quotes
Reference