Remembering Fred Hampton and Mark Clark
http://www.workers.org/2009/us/fred_hampton_and_mark_clark_1217/
By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Published Dec 11, 2009
Dec. 4 marked the 40th anniversary of the targeted assassinations of
Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, two leading members of the Illinois
Chapter of the Black Panther Party. These young revolutionary
activists were killed in a Panther residence on Chicago's West Side
in a neighborhood where the organization ran free breakfast programs
and was in the process of establishing a free medical clinic.
Hampton was 21 when he was killed in his apartment while sleeping.
Clark was 22 and was visiting Chicago from Peoria, Ill. Despite their
youth, both Hampton and Clark had been organizers for several years.
Hampton had worked with the NAACP Youth Council in Maywood, a Chicago
suburb. Clark had worked with the NAACP in Peoria, which sought to
educate and mobilize young people to fight segregation and racism.
In 1969 the Federal Bureau of Investigation had identified the Black
Panther Party for liquidation. Corporate media accounts of the BPP
falsely portrayed the organization as violent and bent on inflicting
harm on whites in general and the police in particular.
Hundreds of Panther leaders and cadres were arrested on trumped-up
charges. Several were killed, including Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter
and John Huggins. Other Panthers were driven underground and into
exile, such as Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver, who eventually took
refuge in Algeria where they established the International Section of
the BPP in 1969.
Origins of the Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party grew out of the civil rights and Black Power
struggles in the United States. In Alabama in 1965-66, the Lowndes
County Freedom Organization utilized the black panther symbol to
build an independent political organization in the state. By early
1966 other areas of Alabama had set up Panther organizations, and
these efforts entailed the armed self-defense of African Americans
against the racist attacks by the Ku Klux Klan and law-enforcement agents.
Stokely Carmichael (aka Kwame Turé), Willie Ricks (aka Mukasa Dada)
and H. Rap Brown (aka Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin) were leading
organizers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which
built the initial Black Panther organizations in Alabama. After the
cry for "Black Power" gained national attention in the summer of
1966, several groups around the country began to form Black Panther
organizations.
In California there were at least three different Black Panther
organizations in both the southern and northern areas of the state.
In October 1966 Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, along with a few
other young men such Bobby Hutton and Elbert Howard, formed the Black
Panther Party for Self-Defense. Eventually this grouping became known
as the Black Panther Party, and went on to open approximately 40
chapters throughout the U.S. and the International Section in Algiers.
In 1969 Fred Hampton had gained a national reputation for his
organizing efforts in Chicago. He had joined the Black Panther Party
in 1968 and quickly rose through the ranks to become Deputy Chairman
of the Illinois chapter. He soon became a target for neutralization
by the police and the FBI.
In early 1969 Hampton was falsely accused of robbing an ice cream
truck. He was convicted and sent to state prison in Menard, Ill. He
was released in August 1969 on appeal and continued his organizing work.
Hampton was instrumental in forming alliances between the Panthers
and youth organizations such as the Disciples on Chicago's West Side.
He later formed coalitions with the Young Lords, a youth group of
Puerto Ricans who sought to build a revolutionary movement in Chicago
and New York.
Hampton also worked with organizations from the Chicano community as
well as whites from Appalachia, who formed a group called the Young
Patriots. He worked with other leftists from the student movement,
including members of Students for a Democratic Society.
Police, FBI target Panthers
During the fall of 1969 the Chicago 8 conspiracy trial began. Bobby
Seale, the BPP chairman, was a co-defendant, along with seven members
of anti-war, peace and student groups who were charged with plotting
to disrupt the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Seale
was attacked by presiding Judge Julius Hoffman, who denied him the
right to represent himself in the absence of attorney Charles Gerry.
Hoffman ordered Seale bound and gagged. Seale was eventually removed
from the trial and thrown into prison.
The Black Panther Party in Chicago was attacked on numerous occasions
by the police during 1969. In one armed confrontation at the BPP
office, five police officers were wounded along with three Panthers.
On Nov. 13, 1969, former Panther Spurgeon "Jake" Winters was killed
in a shootout where three police officers were killed. Hampton
eulogized Winters as a fallen comrade.
After the deaths of the three Chicago police officers in November,
FBI and police efforts intensified against the Illinois chapter of
the BPP. FBI Special Agent in Charge Marlin Johnson recruited William
O'Neal, a petty thief who had been arrested for taking a stolen car
across state lines, to infiltrate the Panthers.
O'Neal engaged in agent-provocateur behavior inside the organization.
He was reported to have built an electric chair to torture
informants, when he himself was an FBI snitch. O'Neal drafted a floor
plan of the Monroe Street apartment where Hampton and other Panthers
lived and turned it over to the FBI.
The FBI did not carry out the deadly raid, but utilized Illinois
State Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan, who had political aspirations to
become governor of the state. Hanrahan recruited 14 Chicago police
officers to conduct the raid. Prior to the raid, O'Neal drugged the
apartment occupants so they would be unable to defend the residence
against the police, as the Panthers had done at their offices on the West Side.
When the police conducted the raid at 4:45 a.m., they killed both
Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Four other PanthersRonald "Doc"
Satchell, Verlina Brewer, Brenda "China Doll" Harris and Blair
Andersonand one supporter were wounded in the raid.
Louis Truelock and Harold Bell were brutally beaten in jail after the
raid. Deborah Johnson, later known as Akua Njeri, was eight months'
pregnant with Fred Hampton's child. The seven survivors of the raid
were falsely charged with numerous felonies, including attempted murder.
Even though the charges against the survivors were eventually
dropped, the coroner's inquest reached a verdict of "justifiable
homicide." A federal inquiry said the raid was botched and resulted
unnecessarily in the deaths of two people. No criminal charges,
however, were filed against the police.
A civil suit filed by the survivors, which went on for over a decade,
led to an out-of-court settlement. No one was ever found criminally
liable by the courts for the murder of Hampton and Clark or for the
wounding and false prosecution of the others in the apartment on Dec. 4, 1969.
.
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