Feb 10, 2021

By Dray Breezy

---

This is a transcript of The Breeze Podcast, found streaming on all major platforms.

Organizing from the Jump

Fred Hampton, deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, was born on August 30, 1948 and raised in the Chicago suburb of Maywood, Illinois. As a young boy, he is described as very intelligent and a natural born organizer. He began organizing in high school where he got the attention of the NAACP president after addressing rampant racism at his high school.

Hampton started going attending Crane Junior college in Maywood where he was responsible for advocating for a community swimming pool for black people and led a protest pushing back against the formal rule that only white girls can be nominated for homecoming queen. This led to students electing the first black homecoming queen.

Even as  a young teenager, Fred was deeply committed to uniting marginalized people of all races and strongly criticizing the capitalist forces behind racial division. Hampton had realized that the powers that be and the gatekeepers were using fear of communism, racism and bigtory to pit poor people against each other.

Growth at the NAACP

He quickly rose to the position of Youth Council President in the NAACP, at 14 years old he helped the group grow from a couple members to over 700,

Hampton realized that young people with more options had less chance for crime.

Schools and Swimming Pools

Black people have historically been banned from swimming, learning to swim, and were restricted access to neighborhood swimming pools. In 1968, a heated confrontation began between the black community and the Chicago police force over this issue.

After 3 days of unrest, Illinois Governor Otto Kerner sent 1500 national guards and instructed them to respond with deadly force if attacked. You know, he could have just funded a pool but instead he threatened Black Americans with death for protesting. Didn’t want those uppity Blacks getting the wrong idea.

This behavior fits into the pattern of the outrageous level of aggression the American government uses when interacting with upset and disenfranchised Black Americans. American law enforcement consistently treats Black Americans as a group that needed to be beaten down. After last summer’s BLM protest, there is no doubt that this is a trend that continues to exist today. When Black people express that they are being treated unequally, we are met with government sanctioned violence.

Growth with Black Panthers

In 1968, Hampton joined the Black Panther Party (BPP), headquartered in Oakland, California. Many believed this was prompted by the assassination of MLK jr. which was in April of the same year.  Hampton then started his own chapter in Illinois. Welcome to Wakanda my friend.

The founding members included Bobby Rush, Bob Brown, Jewel Cook, Drew Ferguson, Henry English, Bob Clay, Rufus Walls, and others. 

[Short description of the Black Panther Party (BPP)]

 The BPP devised a concise 10 Point Programme that directly addressed the needs of African Americans for equality. 

The BPP also campaigned forcefully against the Vietnam War; drawing particular attention to the fact African-Americans represented 11% of the population but 25% of combat deaths in the conflict.

During his brief BPP tenure, Hampton formed a “Rainbow Coalition” which included Students for a Democratic Society, the Blackstone Rangers, a street gang and the National Young Lords, a Puerto Rican organization. Hampton the first to negotiate a gang truce on television

Hampton’s success led to the growth of the Illinois BPP, and various new chapters were sprouting by early 1969.

Here are some of the other activism that Hampton was a part of…

Here is a clip of Hampton speaking in 1969.

Hoover’s Racist FBI

Once Hampton began to attack the economic system that funds America’s Imperialism and bigotry, he became a threat too big to ignore. FBI Director J.Edgar Hoover had already created the wholly unconstitutional Cointel program which had the distinct duty to, “Prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement”.

In 1987, Fred Hampton was added to Hoover’s Key Agitator Index. A few other targets for CointelPro- Malcolm X as a martyr of the Black Nationalist movement and lists Dr. King, Elijah Muhammed, and Stokely Carmichael  

After this FBI and law enforcement were working together to continually harass 19 year old Hampton. He was arrested on BS charges multiple times and generally had extreme restrictions placed on his freedom and constitutional right to assemble.

The FBI also began to pay informants to spy on the BPP. In a multi paged memo dated March 4, 1968, FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover outlined His memo outlines the following five summarized points as the focus of COINTELPRO:

Of course, racists like Hoover that any black person speaking against racism is speaking against America. Similar to the reaction of many NFL fans to Colin Kaepernick.

Because law enforcement was not able to harass Hampton into submission, they decided they needed to permanently silence him.

Hampton’s Assassination

At 4:30am on December 4, 1969, a dozen officers burst into Hampton’s apartment in a weapon’s raid. This planned raid was the result of information that was passed on to the CPD by the FBI. The FBI was able to gather enough evidence to justify the need for a raid, based on the information supplied to them by an informant. Along with Hampton, twenty-two year old Mark Clark, of Peoria, Illinois was killed by a single shotgun blast. Police also seriously wounded four other Panther members.

It has been shown that there were about one hundred rounds fired in the “shootout” that morning, and only one or two shots came from any of the Panthers. It is also noted by most sources that informant O’neal put a dose of sleeping agents in Hampton’s drink earlier in the night to ensure that Hampton would remain asleep during the raid.

One of the women, nineteen year-old  Deborah Johnson, the girlfriend of Hampton, would give testimony stating that Fred Hampton was still sleeping in his bed, and reportedly survived the barrage of gunfire. Deborah was 8 months pregnant with Hampton’s child. The assassination was completed by one of the officers that went an Officer Edward Carmody who shot Hampton “with a .45 caliber pistol at close range in the head while he lay unconscious in his bed.” He was only 21.

The assasination was covered up for many years until 1971 until a break-in and leak at the FBI released Cointel documents.

Still, nobody was arrested for the murders, even after hundreds of FBI files were released over the next decade. It took a civil lawsuit to get anything out of the federal government: $1.8 million for the surviving family members of both murdered activists in 1983.

Fred Hampton is one of the many black people that were murdered by the American government for advocating for progressive change. Hampton was feeding children, keeping people healthy and fighting racism and the American government killed him for it. The crazy thing is that Hampton wasn’t even asking for Uncle Sam’s help, he was making the change that he wanted to see in his neighborhood and it upset powerful rich white men so much that they conducted a campaign of harassment and then finally a full fledged execution. Fred Hampton’s life clarifies that the American government would rather black people be dead than have access to healthcare, food, and freedom or even worse, socialism. 

The first movie telling his story, “Judas and the black Messiah, directed by Ryan Coogler will be released this friday.

I want to end this episode with a speech made by Hampton in 1969, months before his assassination. you all be safe and happy Black History Month.

Here is a lovely copy of this episode of The Breeze Podcast, Now streaming on all major platforms!