Fred Hampton, deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, was born on August 30, 1948 and raised in the Chicago suburb of Maywood, Illinois. In high school he excelled in academics and athletics. After Hampton graduated from high school, he enrolled in a pre-law program at Triton Junior College in River Grove, Illinois. Hampton also became involved in the civil rights movement, joining his local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His dynamic leadership and organizational skills in the branch enabled him to rise to the position of Youth Council President. Hampton mobilized a racially integrated group of five hundred young people who successfully lobbied city officials to create better academic services and recreational facilities for African American children.
In 1968, Hampton joined the Black Panther Party (BPP), headquartered in Oakland, California. Using his NAACP experience, he soon headed the Chicago chapter. During his brief BPP tenure, Hampton formed a “Rainbow Coalition” which included Students for a Democratic Society, the Blackstone Rangers, a street gang and the National Young Lords, a Puerto Rican organization. Hampton was also successful in negotiating a gang truce on local television.
In an effort to neutralize the Chicago BPP, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Chicago Police Department placed the chapter under heavy surveillance and conducted several harassment campaigns. In 1969, several BPP members and police officers were either injured or killed in shootouts, and over one hundred local members of the BPP were arrested.
During an early morning police raid of the BPP headquarters at 2337 W. Monroe Street on December 4, 1969, twelve officers opened fire, killing the 21-year-old Hampton and Peoria, Illinois Panther leader Mark Clark. Police also seriously wounded four other Panther members. Many in the Chicago African American community were outraged over the raid and what they saw as the unnecessary deaths of Hampton and Clark. Over 5,000 people attended Hampton’s funeral where Reverends Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference eulogized the slain activist. Years later, law enforcement officials admitted wrongdoing in the killing of Hampton and Clark. In 1990, and later in 2004, the Chicago City Council passed resolutions commemorating December 4 as Fred Hampton Day.
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I'm curious about if anyone knows any books on the Panthers and Mr. Hampton. Always open to more reading suggestions.
I started working on a new theme for my web stuff last week after getting a bug up my ass about why navbars have to look like navbars anyway? I was just messing with it and now it's turning into a full blown website project where I am basically doing all the things you aren't supposed to do, but on purpose. I have a scrolling text marquee and zero container width/margin so everything is full width. It's actually turning out pretty bad ass. I stumbled upon a few wallpapers of Pulp Fiction and decided to use those as sort of lose guidelines. The hero section is a minimalist wallpaper of Mia after she snorts the heroin thinking it was coke but I changed the colors to neon pink and have a background color blending thing built in with Tailwind and have the color set to a lighter pink so it has this almost deep-fried affect but not like annoyingly so. Just a bit of pink where it was white.
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On panthers, I highly recommend Black against Empire by Joshua Bloom. It goes through the whole history of the BPP and focuses on their ideological evolution as well. Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton and Seize the Time by Bobby Seale are also great works from the founders of the BPP. About Fred Hampton, I like recommending the movie Judas and the Black Messiah (2021), it has great acting and great plot.
Awesome, thanks! I wasn't able to find all but Seize the Time in .epub format. I'm grabbing the movie as well. One of these days I am gonna make it to my black liberation reading list I started like 2 years ago.
E: I wasn't able to find Seize the Time, stupid cold meds...
The Assassination of Fred Hampton was one of the books that I will credit on being crucial to my radicalization
Groovy. Grabbed it as well. Thanks!