Remembering Fred Hampton

If you dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not struggle, then goddammit, you don't deserve to win.

– Fred Hampton

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Chicago Police Department’s assassination of Fred Hampton, the 21-year-old chairman of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP).

Notes Wikipedia:

Fred Hampton (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was an American activist and revolutionary socialist. He came to prominence in Chicago as chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and deputy chairman of the national BPP. In this capacity, he founded a prominent multicultural political organization, known as the “Rainbow Coalition,” creating an alliance among major street gangs to end their fighting among themselves and work for social change.

Because of his strong leadership, the FBI identified Hampton in 1967 as a radical threat and began to try to subvert his activities in Chicago, sowing disinformation among these groups and placing a counterintelligence operative in the local Panthers. In December 1969 Hampton was shot and killed in his bed during a pre-dawn raid at his Chicago apartment by a tactical unit of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, in conjunction with the Chicago Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation; during this raid, another Panther was killed and several were seriously wounded. In January 1970, a coroner's jury held an inquest and ruled the deaths of Hampton and Mark Clark to be justifiable homicide.

A civil lawsuit was later filed on behalf of the survivors and the relatives of Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark. It was eventually resolved in 1982 for a settlement of $1.85 million; the City of Chicago, Cook County, and the federal government each paid one-third to a group of nine plaintiffs. Given revelations about the illegal COINTELPRO program and documents associated with the killings, scholars now widely consider Hampton's death to have been an assassination under the FBI's initiative.

Related Off-site Links:
50 Years Ago Today, Police Murdered Fred Hampton. His Activism Lives On – Claudia Garcia-Rojas (TruthOut, December 4, 2019)
Considering Fred Hampton’s Legacy, 50 Years After His Death in Police Raid – Gaynor Hall (WGN 9, December 3, 2019).
In 1969, Charismatic Black Panthers Leader Fred Hampton Was Killed in a Hail of Gunfire. 50 Years Later, the Fight Against Police Brutality Continues – William Lee (Chicago Tribune (December 3, 2019).
Fred Hampton Remembered as a “Focused and Caring” Visionary – Kathy Chaney (Chicago Sun Times, December 4, 2019).
The Revolutionary Love of Fred Hampton – Why Am I Not Surprised? (December 4, 2008).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Remembering the “Brave and Brilliant” Gil Scott-Heron
• Changes
• Remembering Prince, “Fabulous Freak, Defiant Outsider, Dark Dandy” – 1958-2016
• Trump's America: Normalized White Supremacy and a Rising Tide of Racist Violence
• Quote of the Day – June 20, 2017
• Something to Think About – July 10, 2016
• Remembering Philando Castile and Demanding Abolition of the System That Targets and Kills People of Color
• Our New Possibility
• Something to Think About – December 29, 2015
• “We Are All One” – #Justice4Jamar and the 4th Precinct Occupation
• “Say Her Name” Solidarity Action
• “And Still We Rise!” – Mayday 2015 (Part 1)
• “And Still We Rise!” – Mayday 2015 (Part 2)
• In Minneapolis, Rallying in Solidarity with Black Lives in Baltimore
• At the Mall of America Today, a Necessary Disruption to “Business as Usual”
• Rallying in Solidarity with Eric Garner and Other Victims of Police Brutality

Images: Photographers unknown.