-Fred Hampton was a black activist from Chicago – an extraordinary speaker, youth organizer for the NAACP.
-He joined the Black Panthers and shone so brightly that he was made chair of the Chicago chapter when he was only 20.
-He founded the Rainbow Coalition, which brought together Black and Latino activists and radical anti-poverty Catholics. He forged an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them make peace and work for social change.
-In 1967, when he was just 19, Hampton was identified by the FBI as a “radical threat.” The FBI tried to subvert his activities in Chicago, sowing disinformation to get the groups he’d drawn together to distrust each other, and getting an FBI plant next to him as a bodyguard.
-(This is part of an illegal FBI program called COINTELPRO, which aimed to paint black civil rights activists (among others) as violent and threatening. If you’ve only seen pictures of the Black Panthers as armed and dangerous revolutionaries, and never heard of their children’s breakfast program, their community health clinics, or their “copwatch” patrols, this is why. It’s because COINTELPRO was a highly successful work of political propaganda.)
-On December 3, 1969, Hampton taught a political education course at a local church, and then several Panthers gathered at his apartment for a late dinner. One of them was the FBI plant bodyguard, who drugged Hampton.
-At 4:45 AM on December 4, a squad of Chicago Police officers and FBI agents with a warrant to search for weapons stormed the apartment. Investigations later showed they fired between 90 and 99 times. The Panther on security detail, Mark Clark, was holding a shotgun. He was shot, and the gun went off into the ceiling. This was the only shot fired by the Panthers.
-Fred Hampton, in another room, didn’t awaken. He was shot in his bed. Twice, in the head, at point-blank range. He was 21.
-Four weeks after witnessing Hampton’s death, his finance Deborah Johnson gave birth to their son, Fred Hampton Jr. That’s him in the photograph, visiting the grave of a father who died before he was born. A resting place riddled with bullets.
It’s neat that the wikipedia article about him seems to lack proper citations for the circumstances of his death, citing an archived court document that is no longer being hosted on archivedotorg.
Every news story from the time and the police themselves claim the panthers shot first, and they police did have a warrant to search the premises for illegal firearms.
I tend to treat the Black Panthers as a terrorist organization after reading about how they murdered their own secretary after she whistleblew some of their financial crimes. Yes, black people are victims in the USA. Yes, there is still to this day a strong bias against them and a structural inequality. Is that reason to support people who threaten violence, who reject the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr, and who have been manipulated into violence by the federal agencies in the past? No, fuck the black panthers.
Whole lotta words there when “I like the taste of boots” would suffice.
Black Panthers wear boots. How do those taste?
Hahahaha
Oh, you’re REAL fucking stupid, ain’t ya?
So when I do something it’s stupid, when you do the exact same thing it’s smart?
Yes.
Because I’m not fucking stupid.
Hope that clears that up for you.
No I’m in agreement with them. You’re fucking stupid. You strike me as a weak-willed liberal without any constitution.
Found the poster who deepthroated COINTELPRO.
COINTELPRO was highly illegal which is why the 9 plaintiffs won their wrongful death court case over 20 years after the events.
Being illegal is irrelevant when it is successful and nobody was held accountable.
Sure, a few people out of the millions who were and still are impacted to this day got some monetary compensation. It still has ripple effects like morons who think the Black Panthers are terrorists spreading the lies to this day.
Are you going to sit there and tell me that Black Panthers have not and will not encourage the use of violence to achieve political goals? The entire reason the police got away with this murder is because the Black Panthers were in a compound filled with young men with guns, including the shotgun that they fired into the ceiling during the raid.
Oh, are they not allowed to use weapons to defend themselves like white people?
Can’t imagine why they would expect armed intruders with all those police keeping an eye on the building!
When white people collect guns and form a compound they get raided, too. Here is a random example: Branch Davidians
Forming a military compound is not self defence. People looking to protect themselves don’t do that.
Can you elaborate on what’s illegal about young men having guns? How does this differ from any rural bar in the country?
Your opinions here are ridiculous as every aspect of your argument was fed to you by the very same people who did the murdering here and you even acknowledge that the government lost the civil case yet still think the Panthers are guilty of the crimes alleged in the very same civil case.
Any rural bar in the country with private membership stockpiling weapons better have a permit for each and every one of those weapons and they should get searched/raided frequently by the police. If those rural club members are holding shotguns and being confrontational I wouldn’t blame the police for killing two injuring multiple in a rural bar.
If a Nazi Skinhead was drugged and shot while unconscious I wouldn’t mourn him one bit.
The laws as written don’t stop applying just because of your skin color. That era should be far behind us. And we have the power to keep it that way, unless we do something stupid and reject the system used to make our ideal future a reality.
Since when are you required to have a permit for every firearm you own? You’re just making shit up here.
“Holding shotguns and being confrontational” according to whom exactly, the police who murdered this man?
What does this have to do with the Black Panthers?
Doesn’t this directly contradict your previous statement about “Nazi Skinheads?” You’re all over the place trying to dig yourself out of the hole you’ve created here.
What fucking system is that exactly? You speak like you’ve never stepped foot in the US.
430 ILCS 65 Firearm Owners Identification Card Act in Illinois
and also Federal
26 U.S. Code § 5841 - Registration of firearms which was effective as of the National Firearms Act of 1968, over a year before Hampton was killed and the Black Panther compound was raided
All legal firearms in the USA are registered from the moment they are manufactured and that registry is updated between each new owner.
We were crafting an equivalent hypothetical to the death of Fred. In what way are the Black Panther’s methods different from Nazi Skinheads?
That’s a much lower bar than being terrorists. In the 20th century, loads of people used violence to achieve the political goal of not being oppressed by Nazis, and no reasonable person would claim everyone who supported that was a terrorist.
Do you really think the Nazis would have paid the victims families in a wrongful death suit? The Black Panthers aren’t freedom fighters, they’re just a different group with plans for their own regime.
There are plenty of successful black politicians and activists who do not promote violence.
How many bullet holes are yours?