Hampton case still resonates
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20091210/GUARDIAN/912101046/1002
By PREXY NESBITT
December 10, 2009
Forty years ago in Chicago, on Dec. 4, 1969, the government killed
two black activists.
Their names were Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Both had been active in
the Black Panther Party.
Fourteen Chicago police officers - supervised by Cook County State's
Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan, as well as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
- raided their apartment at 4 a.m., guns ablazing.
A new book by one of Hampton's lawyers, Jeffrey Haas, called "The
Assassination of Fred Hampton," has details of the operation.
In it, Hampton's fiancee, Deborah Johnson, tells how the policemen
went into the bedroom where Hampton lay wounded, and recalls hearing
two shots ring out and then the phrase, "He's good and dead now!"
Haas recounts a talk he had with Fred's mother, Iberia Hampton, and
explains his theory of the case: "Fred was more than a target of the
Chicago police and Hanrahan ... We think his death was instigated by
FBI agents carrying out a national program targeting black leaders.
FBI Director Hoover ordered those agents to stop - 'neutralize' was
the word they used - up-and-coming leaders like your son."
Hoover staged campaigns against black leaders like Paul and Eslanda
Robeson, Alphaeus Hunton, W.E.B. Du Bois, the Rev. Martin Luther
King, Bayard Rustin, Jack O'Dell, Harry Belafonte, H. Rap Brown and
Stokely Carmichael, to name just a few.
And Hoover launched the CounterIntelligence Program to infiltrate and
subvert the work of organizations such as the Black Panthers and the
American Indian Movement.
But the Hampton operation, like these other campaigns, cannot solely
be laid at the feet of a lone government official.
Domestically, as Haas' book shows, police departments violently
assaulted young black men in cities and towns all over the United States.
It should not be forgotten that Chicago's mayor at that time, Richard
J. Daley, had given an infamous "shoot to kill" order against those
protesting the assassination of King in April 1968.
In U.S. foreign policy, a similar approach was standard operating
procedure for decades.
The U.S. government was involved in overthrowing or destabilizing the
governments of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, Patrice Lumumba in the
Congo, Salvador Allende in Chile and Maurice Bishop in Grenada.
Washington also tried to "neutralize" Fidel Castro in Cuba.
The CIA was involved in Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, which carried
out perhaps as many as 20,000 assassinations in that country.
Dec. 4, 1969, is a day to remember.
It should remind us that there are no boundaries to what our
government is sometimes capable of.
It also should remind us that when the FBI and local law enforcement
work together - as they did in the Hampton case and as they are doing
today in joint terrorism task forces around the country - the
potential for abuse is great.
We need to be vigilant about violence by agents of our own government.
We should never have to fear that they will shoot up our doors at 4 a.m.
--
Prexy Nesbitt teaches in the history department of Columbia College
in Chicago. The writer wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a
source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it
is affiliated with The Progressive magazine.
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