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  • December 4th, 1969.

  • Akua Njeri was 19 years old,

  • and sleeping next to her fiancée:

  • the Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton.

  • The next thing I remember was someone in our room

  • shaking Chairman Fred. "Chairman, Chairman, wake up, wake up."

  • Plaster was flying off the wall.

  • You could smell the cordite from the gunshot.

  • If you've ever been under gunfire, five minutes is five hours.

  • To you, it seems like forever.

  • The shooting started back again.

  • Then another voice unfamiliar to me said:

  • I knew they were talking about Chairman Fred.

  • Fred Hampton was murdered by his government.

  • But before that,

  • he was a leader in a movement practicing a new kind of activism.

  • A movement targeted because of its power to unite people.

  • "Marking 1964 as a historic year in race relations,

  • on July 2, President Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act."

  • In the 1960s, racial progress in the US was at a turning point.

  • Activists won major civil rights victories, and the era of Jim Crow laws came to an end.

  • But at the end of the decade,

  • there were still deep social and economic gaps for Black people across the country.

  • Black Americans continued to face high poverty,

  • poor housing,

  • and unemployment,

  • and they still had little to no political representation.

  • These disparities, and an increase in brutal police violence,

  • led to uprisings across the country.

  • Many young Black activists grew frustrated

  • that the changes they'd hoped for hadn't come.

  • After the police killing of an unarmed Black teen in San Francisco,

  • two activists in Oakland, California,

  • Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, founded what was initially called

  • the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.

  • Newton had studied law,

  • and knew it was legal to carry arms in California, as long as they were not concealed.

  • The Panthers began to patrol their communities.

  • As the movement grew, several highly-publicized confrontations with police

  • would bring about mainstream awareness of the Black Panther Party.

  • The allegations in these confrontations were serious.

  • But the public accounts of them were typically one-sided,

  • and shaped largely by police.

  • Media coverage depicted party members as a caricature of Black militancy.

  • The Black Panther Party was portrayed as a marauding gang.

  • They say our goal was to kill all the white people.

  • In reality, the Panthers did call for radical change.

  • What they were hoping for was a revolution.

  • A revolution to overthrow the capitalist enterprise.

  • But what they called revolution might not actually sound so radical today.

  • They focused on socialism as a way of solving economic means.

  • They looked to places like Canada, which always had a democratic political system,

  • but the economic system has always been socialism.

  • So they wanted a democratic socialist country here in the United States,

  • which they saw as a more equitable, more humane system.

  • They released a "Ten Point Plan" for broad social reform,

  • that called for an end to police brutality,

  • and for Black employment,

  • housing,

  • education, and freedom from prisons and jails.

  • Chapters began forming across the country.

  • They started to implement social programs,

  • which they called "survival programs."

  • The Panthers would say, put that theory into practice.

  • If you really want to change minds, and you really want to meet the people where they are,

  • you have to give them the services which they need.

  • The programs included food and clothing drives,

  • free health clinics,

  • and sickle cell disease testing,

  • and were funded largely by volunteers and donations from businesses.

  • One of their biggest programs was a free breakfast for children initiative.

  • Here we are, living in 1966, '67, it's the most wealthy nation in the world.

  • And kids were going to school hungry,

  • especially in the African American communities.

  • So one of the first community service programs was free breakfast for school children.

  • And all the children had to do was come.

  • It was during this time

  • that Akua Njeri, then known as Deborah Johnson,

  • met Fred Hampton.

  • I was a student at Wright City College

  • and Chairman Fred had come up to the school to speak.

  • And he said, "in the breakfast program,

  • we're feeding over 3,000 children a week.

  • We're serious about making power to the people a reality,

  • we're not just sitting up here jaw jabbin and talking shit.

  • You know, we're about work."

  • And I said, damn, he's serious about this business.

  • Fred Hampton grew up in Maywood, Illinois,

  • just west of downtown Chicago.

  • He became president of his local NAACP Youth Council in 1967,

  • at 19 years old.

  • Shortly after, he was recruited by a founder of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party.

  • "You can jail a revolutionary,

  • but you can't jail a revolution."

  • Because of his charismatic skills,

  • he quickly rises to the top of the crop.

  • Here he is at age 21,

  • building and leading the Illinois chapter of Black Panther Party.

  • Soon after they met, Njeri and Hampton became a couple.

  • Anybody that has met him or heard him speak,

  • they say he wasn't bullshit.

  • He was for real.

  • Chicago in particular was a place where the party's ideals especially resonated.

  • It was then the second largest American city,

  • and due to decades of discriminatory policies,

  • also one of the most segregated.

  • Chicago's mayor at the time, Richard J. Daley, opposed neighborhood integration.

  • And in the 1950s, the city had begun to redevelop certain neighborhoods,

  • pushing low income residents out, and into densely packed, high-rise public housing

  • in already overcrowded neighborhoods.

  • Black people were pushed primarily to the south and west side of Chicago.

  • A large Puerto Rican population was here, in Lincoln Park.

  • And poor white people were concentrated here, in Uptown.

  • These groups all faced similar problems.

  • They all had dilapidated schools.

  • They all had dilapidated homes.

  • They were all being drafted into Vietnam.

  • Very few of those communities had health care.

  • In 1969, Hampton led the Panthers towards an unexpected alliance:

  • a coalition of activists, working across racial lines,

  • against a corrupt city government that threatened their communities.

  • What they had in common was their poverty.

  • So they were building a revolution based on class solidarity that transcends race.

  • That they all had the same hell to pay.

  • Hampton named the group: the Rainbow Coalition.

  • It included the Black Panthers,

  • a Puerto Rican group called the Young Lords,

  • and a group called the Young Patriots,

  • made up of largely poor white migrants from Appalachia,

  • who had moved to Chicago seeking economic opportunity.

  • "We don't hate the white people, we hate the oppressor,

  • whether we be white, Black, brown or yellow."

  • I don't mean sing Kumbaya and make a quilt.

  • I'm talking about bringing them together

  • on common things they can unite on.

  • Not everything, but who could say the children do not deserve to have a healthy meal?

  • Hampton and other Panthers helped the Young Lords and Young Patriots

  • launch their own social programs.

  • They organized protests together.

  • And it was working.

  • Members were traveling across the country to organize Rainbow Coalition chapters.

  • Particularly where Black Panther chapters were,

  • but also in these rural white communities as well,

  • to bring the revolution to bear.

  • This blows people's minds.

  • These people are not supposed to get along,

  • but here they are operating as brothers of the struggle,

  • as revolutionaries against the capitalist structure.

  • And that was the threat.

  • To the state, at the local level, but also at the national level.

  • In 1968, the FBI had sent around this internal memo.

  • It outlined goals:

  • to "prevent the coalition of militant Black nationalist groups"

  • and "prevent the rise of a messiah,"

  • "who could unify and electrify the militant Black nationalist movement."

  • It wasn't written about Hampton specifically.

  • But by 1969,

  • Chairman Fred Hampton was the one that fit the bill.

  • Revolution was in the air.

  • And the ways in which the Panthers were able to transcend those racial lines,

  • especially the charismatic leadership of one like Fred Hampton,

  • they saw him as a greater threat.

  • A greater threat even than Martin Luther King or Malcolm X ever was.

  • In one FBI memo about the Black Panthers' breakfast program,

  • they claimed the real purpose was to "poison minds" with "anti-white propaganda"

  • and "indoctrinate youngsters in hate and violence."

  • The FBI, under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover,

  • had deemed the Black Panther Party,

  • as the number one threat to the internal security of this country.

  • The FBI operated a counterintelligence program,

  • called COINTELPRO.

  • It was a program that targeted dissident political groups in the US.

  • Their methods typically went outside the law.

  • They were using tactics such as

  • assassination,

  • discrediting,

  • false narratives.

  • They were falsely putting people in prison and exile,

  • which were all illegal.

  • Several Black Panthers were killed or imprisoned,

  • including the party co-founders.

  • In Chicago, the party was also targeted by Mayor Daley and the Chicago Police.

  • Our office was burned down at least three times.

  • People would disappear.

  • You'd never see their bodies again.

  • Hampton, a rising star at just 21 years old,

  • knew he was a target, too.

  • He'd been arrested in 1968 for

  • allegedly robbing an ice cream truck

  • and handing out $71 of ice cream.

  • In 1969, he was sentenced to two to five years in prison.

  • He appealed, and was released on bond,

  • but lost the appeal.

  • He'd have to return to prison by December 6th.

  • "Free Fred Hampton, free Fred Hampton..."

  • On December 4th around 4 am,

  • 14 Chicago police officers arrived outside Hampton's apartment

  • on Chicago's West Side.

  • Inside, Hampton, Njeri, and seven other Panthers

  • were asleep.

  • I was very pregnant.

  • And the first thing I remember

  • was Chairman Fred had fell asleep while talking on the phone.

  • The next thing I remember

  • was someone in our room

  • shaking the chairman.

  • Chairman, chairman, chairman, wake up, wake up.

  • The pigs are vamping.

  • And I'm seeing Chairman Fred look up and then he laid his head back down real slow.

  • Officers kicked open the door

  • and shot Mark Clark,

  • a visitor from another party chapter.

  • They shot a sleeping 18-year-old named Brenda Harris.

  • Then, they shot in the direction of Hampton's bed.

  • I had moved over on top of Chairman Fred

  • because they were shooting into our mattress.

  • The person that had come into the room kept shouting,

  • Stop shooting, stop shooting.

  • We have a pregnant sister in here.

  • Eventually, the shooting stopped.

  • Njeri was forced into the kitchen,

  • when she heard another voice.

  • Someone said, he's barely alive,

  • he'll barely make it.

  • I assume they were talking about Chairman Fred.

  • The pig said, he's good and dead now.

  • As they took me out and jammed a revolver to my stomach,

  • as I was handcuffed behind my back,

  • I didn't look towards our bedroom because I didn't know what I would see,

  • or how I would respond.

  • The police fired nearly 100 shots.

  • Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were dead.

  • The seven surviving Panthers were arrested.

  • And police smiled as they removed Hampton's body from the scene.

  • The Chicago Police and the state's attorney's office

  • quickly shaped the narrative

  • to call it a gun fight, a battle, and a shoot-out.

  • "Officers involved in the raid testified they were fired on from four different rooms in the apartment by shotgun."

  • "Before I could get past the threshold,

  • there were three shots fired from the rear bedroom."

  • They played back a story that you could not even fathom.

  • They gave a fictional account of what happened, again vilifying the Black Panther Party.

  • "Yes sir, we saw the shots coming out of the two bedrooms."

  • "This attack by the Black Panthers on the police

  • clearly demonstrates the true character of the Black Panther Party."

  • But experts and lawyers hired by the Panthers,

  • along with other journalists, inspected the crime scene.

  • The Panthers even opened the apartment so that anyone could examine it.

  • And a drastically different picture emerged:

  • it was clear that the police had fired unprovoked.

  • Of the nearly 100 shots fired,

  • only one possible shot could have come from a Panther's gun,

  • likely from Mark Clark at the front door.

  • The bullet holes that the police said came from Black Panthers,

  • were nail heads.

  • Later, it also emerged that the FBI had assisted Chicago Police with the raid.

  • The FBI had an informant within the Black Panther Party,

  • named William O'Neal,

  • who had become chief of security and Hampton's bodyguard.

  • O'Neal had provided the FBI with a hand drawn floor plan of the apartment,

  • which the FBI then gave to Chicago Police.

  • And evidence strongly suggests that before the raid,

  • O'Neal had drugged Hampton.

  • In the years after Hampton's assassination,

  • the police and the FBI continued to imprison dozens of party members across the country.

  • The official Black Panther Party would continue to exist until 1982.

  • But membership decreased dramatically

  • and it would never be the same.

  • Fred Hampton wanted revolution.

  • Those in power wanted to destroy him, and what he stood for.

  • But they weren't totally successful.

  • Chairman Fred lives, you know what I'm saying?

  • Through the military assault,

  • through the destruction of the party as an organization itself,

  • you know, by the state.

  • The legacy of the party is still here.

  • Today, the work of Fred Hampton is alive

  • through some of the same programs that marked him as a threat.

  • Many of the programs that the Panthers created

  • are now staples of our society.

  • We didn't have free breakfast in schools prior to the Black Panther Party's free breakfast program.

  • Those free clinics. Almost every major college campus got a free legal aid clinic.

  • The ways in which sickle cell testing is now respected

  • as a disease by the CDC and others.

  • None of that stuff existed before the party.

  • I think that's revolutionary.

  • The history of the Black Panther Party, as going toe to toe with this government,

  • will never die.

  • Never die.

  • Thanks for watching this video.

  • If you want to learn more about Fred Hampton,

  • there's an amazing 1971 documentary

  • called "The Murder of Fred Hampton,"

  • available to stream via the Chicago Film Archives at the link in the description.

  • They also have a film called American Revolution II,

  • which documents the work of the Rainbow Coalition in action,

  • and the many activists who helped to spearhead the movement.

  • Thanks again for watching our piece

  • and stay tuned for one more episode in this season of Missing Chapter.

December 4th, 1969.

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Why the US government murdered Fred Hampton

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    林宜悉 に公開 2022 年 03 月 20 日
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