Assassinated By The State
The federally sanctioned murder of a Black Panther.
By Salim Muwakkil
In These Times
November 25, 2009
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5203/assassinated_by_the_state
It's clear that
`the greatest threat to the internal security of the
country' provided law enforcement with a virtual license to kill.
Jeffrey Haas tells a story that many of us have long
waited to read. His book, The Assassination of Fred
Black Panther (Lawrence Hill Books, November), is a
much-needed corrective to a badly distorted mainstream
narrative of a key event in the history of the left and
African-American politics of the late '60s. Haas reveals
just how deeply the Nixon Justice Department was
involved in the
that killed Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and
Mark Clark.
and Clark the
It is now clear that Hampton and Clark were victims of a
plot hatched by the FBI and executed by the
State's Attorney and Chicago police officers.
Nonetheless, conventional wisdom portrays the Panthers
as the villains. In 2006,
pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police, voted down
a routine city ordinance to name the block on which
The accumulation of facts presented in Haas' book
portrays
the constitutional rights of Panther members and
supporters. He reveals the cynical treachery of State
Attorney Edward Hanrahan, whose office planned the raid
under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover's
Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO). Haas also
provides a damning portrayal of one obstinate judge's
continued attempts to thwart the legal process.
But Haas also offers captivating details that add color
and context to those turbulent times. He evokes the
infectious spirit of change and activism that infused so
many idealistic young Americans during the hallowed
'60s. His accounts of growing up Jewish and middle-class
in
unconventional political leanings. Haas' grandfather,
for example, was an attorney for Leo Frank, a Jewish
factory owner who was lynched in
wrongly accused of murdering a teenage girl. His father
was deeply involved in the civil rights movement in the
South. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), an icon of that
movement, wrote the eulogy for his father's funeral.
Haas' forebears held radical positions for Southern
whites, and it seems Haas was simply following ancestral
footsteps when he aligned himself with the emergent
black radical movement of the 1960s. Although many
thought it unusual for an attorney with University of
associate with black radicals, it was a natural move for Haas.
His accounts of the life at the U of C law school, where
he met a "persuasive" Bernardine Dohrn, who would become
the leader of the Weathermen faction of Students for a
Democratic Society, evoke a period infused with
political passions. At that time, Dohrn chaired a group
that sent law students to the South for summer jobs with
civil rights lawyers. Haas was sent to his home,
"I had to go to
confront segregation where I grew up," he writes. Though
easily parodied, the earnest idealism of those days
provoked real change. Haas' volume reminds us how
important naïve and optimistic students were to toppling
barriers of segregation in the South.
Back in
defending suspects arrested during the violence that
erupted following the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., Haas met a like-minded attorney named
Dennis Cunningham. They formed a friendship and
partnership, and in 1969 they joined with two other
lawyers to open the People's Law Office, which has since
gained an international reputation for conscientiously
defending victims of overzealous law enforcement.
Haas also provides some historical context for the rise
of the Black Panther Party, a group started in 1966 by
college students Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale to
address issues of police brutality in their hometown of
organization of armed volunteers to confront abusive
police officers directly. At the time, it was still
legal to brandish unconcealed weapons in
The idea that African-Americans could physically resist
police mistreatment was very attractive to urban black
youth of that era. I was one of them. And, like me, many
had grown weary of watching nonviolent protesters for
civil rights endure humiliating beatings at the hands of police.
The Black Panther Party's disciplined audacity offered
black youth an alternative that resonated with the
militant tenor of the times. Although the group embraced
a quasi-Marxist ideology and provocatively challenged
police authority, it spread like wildfire-mostly in the
urban north. Their urgent sense of commitment to social
justice permanently altered the street-gang culture of urban
The first Panther office opened in
1968. Fred Hampton, a charismatic 20-year-old who
formerly led the
given the leadership role by Bobby Rush, now an
congressman, but then the Defense Minister of the
accounts of
the Panthers.
suburbs, the third child of
and
The true strength of this book is Haas' meticulous
reconstruction of the particulars that led to the
partial victory (the plaintiffs received a $1.85 million
settlement, although the government admitted no
wrongdoing) and legal vindication of the People's Law
Office. He details how the FBI, the
Attorney's office and the
assassinate Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. He clearly
reveals, for example, how COINTELPRO, which sought to
"neutralize" black leaders, provided motivation for the
incident is one of the few investigations to explore the
of
COINTELPRO program, uncovered in 1973 by the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by
Senator Frank Church, sought to "prevent the rise of a
messiah who could unify and electrify the militant Black
Nationalist movement." That FBI directive helps us
understand just how deeply the federal government feared
the Black Panthers and someone like Fred Hampton. A
popular leader with great potential,
the electrifying appeal of the Black Panther Party among
a certain segment of black youth.
In retrospect, it's clear that
the Panthers as "the greatest threat to the internal
security of the country" provided law enforcement with a
virtual license to kill. What's more, the reckless
bravado of the Panthers often provided police a
convenient pretext.
Haas' important book clarifies how the racial paranoia
of an out-of-touch federal government produced a
deceitful policy that trashed constitutional rights even
as it ignored legitimate grievances.
This book should alter the conventional wisdom that the
Panthers were a dangerous threat that the police had to
eliminate at all costs. Haas reveals that the cost was much too high.
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