What would the Black Panthers' movement have been like if the law had not allowed everyone to carry weapons? Phyllis Carter
It is the 40th anniversary of the death of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. On December 4, 1969, Chicago police raided Hampton's apartment and shot and killed him in his bed. He was just 21 years old. Black Panther leader Mark Clark was also killed in the raid. While authorities claimed the Panthers had opened fire on the police who were there to serve a search warrant for weapons, evidence later emerged that told a very different story: that the FBI, the Cook County State's Attorney's Office and the Chicago police conspired to assassinate Fred Hampton. In this 2009 interview from the Democracy Now! archive, Amy Goodman and Juan González speak with attorney Jeffrey Haas, author of The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Today marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. On December 4th, 1969, Chicago police raided Fred Hampton's apartment, shot and killed him in his bed. He was just 21 years old. Black Panther leader Mark Clark was also killed in the raid.
While authorities claimed the Panthers had opened fire on the police who were there to serve a search warrant for weapons, evidence later emerged that told a very different story: that the FBI, the Cook County State's Attorney's Office and the Chicago police conspired to assassinate Fred Hampton. Noam Chomsky has called Hampton's killing "the gravest domestic crime of the Nixon administration."
Today, on this 40th anniversary of his death, we spend the rest of the hour on Fred Hampton. In 1969, he had emerged as the charismatic young chairman of the Chicago Black Panther Party. This is some of Fred Hampton in his own words.
FRED HAMPTON: So we say—we always say in the Black Panther Party that they can do anything they want to to us. We might not be back. I might be in jail. I might be anywhere. But when I leave, you'll remember I said, with the last words on my lips, that I am a revolutionary. And you're going to have to keep on saying that. You're going to have to say that I am a proletariat, I am the people.
A lot of people don't understand the Black Panthers Party's relationship with white mother country radicals. A lot of people don't even understand the words that Eldridge uses a lot. But what we're saying is that there are white people in the mother country that are for the same types of things that we are for stimulating revolution in the mother country. And we say that we will work with anybody and form a coalition with anybody that has revolution on their mind. We're not a racist organization, because we understand that racism is an excuse used for capitalism, and we know that racism is just—it's a byproduct of capitalism. Everything would be alright if everything was put back in the hands of the people, and we're going to have to put it back in the hands of the people.
Continued at Democracy Now
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