Fred Hampton Fred Hampton was born inChicago on 30th August 1948 and grew up in Maywood, a suburb of the city. A bright student, Hampton graduated from Proviso East High School in 1966 before enrolling at Triton Junior College where he studied law. While a student Hampton became active in the civil rights movement. He joined the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and was appointed leader of the Youth Council of the organizations West Suburban branch. In October 1966 Bobby Seale and Huey Newtonformed the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. Initially formed to protect local communities from police brutality and racism, the Black Panthers eventually developed into a Marxistrevolutionary group. The group also ran medical clinics and provided free food to school children. Other important members included Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Bobby Hutton andEldridge Cleaver. Hampton founded the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party in November 1968. He immediately established a community service program. This included the provision of free breakfasts for schoolchildren and a medical clinic that did not charge patients for treatment. Hampton also taught political education classes and instigated a community control of police project. One of Hamptons greatest achievements was to persuade Chicagos most powerful street gangs to stop fighting against each other. In May 1969 Hampton held a press conference where he announced a nonaggression pact between the gangs and the formation of what he called a rainbow coalition (a multiracial alliance of black, Puerto Rican, and poor youths). Later that year Hampton was arrested and charged with stealing $71 worth of sweets, which he then allegedly gave away to local children. Hampton was initially convicted of the crime but the decision was eventually overturned. The activities of the Black Panthers in Chicagocame to the attention of J. Edgar Hoover and theFBI. Hoover described the Panthers as the greatest threat to the internal security of the country and urged the Chicago police to launch an all-out assault on the organization. In 1969 the Panther party headquarters on West Monroe Street was raided three times and over 100 members were arrested. In the early hours of the 4th December, 1969, the Panther headquarters was raided by the police for the fourth time. The police later claimed that the Panthers opened fire and a shoot-out took place. During the next ten minutes Fred Hampton andMark Clark were killed. Witnesses claimed that Hampton was wounded in the shoulder and then executed by a shot to the head. The panthers left alive, including Deborah Johnson, Hamptons girlfriend, who was eight months pregnant at the time, were arrested and charged with attempting to murder the police. Afterwards, ballistic evidence revealed that only one bullet had been fired by the Panthers whereas nearly a hundred came from police guns. After the resignation of President Richard Nixon, the Senate Intelligence Committee conducted a wide-ranging investigation of Americas intelligence services. Frank Church of Idaho, the chairman of the committee, revealed in April, 1976 that William ONeal, Hamptons bodyguard, was a FBI agent-provocateur who, days before the raid, had delivered an apartment floor-plan to the Bureau with an X marking Hamptons bed. Ballistic evidence showed that most bullets during the raid were aimed at Hamptons bedroom. By John Simkin (john@spartacus-educational)© September 1997 (updated August 2014). Primary Sources(1) Fred Hampton, speech (1968) A lot of people get the word revolution mixed up and they think revolutions a bad word. Revolution is nothing but like having a sore on your body and then you put something on that sore to cure that infection. Im telling you that were living in a sick society. Were involved in a society that produces criminals, thieves and robbers and rapers. Whenever you are in a society like that, that is a sick society. Were gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and were gonna fight reactionary pigs with international proletarian revolution. Thats what it has to be. We have to understand very clearly that theres a man in our community called a capitalist. Sometimes hes Black and sometimes hes white. But that man has to be driven out of our community because anybody who comes into the community to make profit off of people by exploiting them can be defined as a c
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 03:57:33 +0000
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