To Die for the People

[December 1st, 2004] By 1969, Fred Hampton, leader of the Illinois Black Panther Party, was one of the most important and influential civil-rights leaders in America. The U.S. government thought he was one of the most dangerous.

Under Hampton's leadership, the Chicago-based party had grown into the largest and most powerful of all Panther chapters, operating successful programs such as Serve the People, which included a breakfast program for children, a free health clinic and political education classes.

Hampton had come dangerously close to recruiting the Blackstone Rangers into the ranks of the Panthers, which would have politicized the notorious street gang and transformed the party into a small army. And with key leaders of the Black Panthers either dead or in jail, Hampton had managed to move quickly through the ranks, until he was a key figure in the national party. At age 20, Hampton was charismatic, personable and outspoken, all of which, according to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, made him a threat to domestic security.

In 1968, producer Mike Gray and director Howard Alk began filming a documentary about Hampton and the Illinois Black Panther Party. The film began as a straightforward portrait of the dynamic leader, and the first half of it consists primarily of rare footage of Hampton speaking at rallies. Even though the grainy black-and-white footage is sometimes out of focus or overexposed, from these clips it's easy to see the power Hampton possessed. He was part militant revolutionary, part street philosopher, and part fire-and-brimstone preacher.

But it's what happened next, when Hampton's life came to an abrupt, tragic ending, that turned Gray and Alk's film into such a revolutionary document.

On the morning of Dec. 4, 1969, 14 Chicago police officers broke into Hampton's apartment under the auspices of serving a warrant to confiscate a cache of weapons. The police opened fire on the sleeping occupants of the apartment, some of them party members, and no one was spared from the hail of bullets and indiscriminate beatings the cops served up.

Hampton's fiancée, Deborah Johnson, who was eight months pregnant, was dragged, naked, into the street and beaten. Fred Hampton, who was then 21 years old, was shot twice through the head by two police officers at point-blank range; he was killed along with fellow Panther Mark Clark.

News of the raid spread rapidly through the media, with detailed accounts provided by the police and state Attorney General Edward Hanrahan. Just hours later, Gray and Alk began filming at the scene of the crime, and what they saw and captured on film directly contradicted news reports.

Chicago newspapers published photos of doors and walls, riddled with bullets, along with claims that Panther Party members had fired at police from inside the apartment. But what the film proved was that the bullets had been fired by police weapons, from outside the apartment. The police claimed the Panthers had fired the first shots, but what the film revealed was that only one bullet came from a party member's weapon--the result of an involuntary muscle spasm after Clark was shot. The other 99 shots all came from police guns.

The Murder of Fred Hampton was instrumental in helping discredit police reports that were intended to cover up a cold-blooded killing. What the film doesn't reveal, because the facts didn't come to light until years later, was that Hampton's head of security, William O'Neal, was a paid FBI informant. O'Neal had drugged Hampton and the others the night of the raid after providing the police with a detailed map of the apartment. The raid and killings were part of the FBI's Counter-Intelligence Program, and Hampton's murder was part of a plan spelled out in a FBI memo that was designed to "prevent the rise of a black 'messiah' who could unite and electrify the militant black antinationalist movement."

This week marks the 35th anniversary of the murder of Fred Hampton. Gary and Alk's revolutionary film, which rarely screens in public, is showing in Portland this weekend in conjunction with Louder than Words, a touring photo exhibit curated by Bill Jennings, a former Panther. The photo exhibit will be at Reflections Bookstore (330 N Killingsworth St., 288-9003) on Saturday, Dec. 4. On Sunday, the exhibit will move to Reed College, where former Panther Billy X and Yippie founder Stew Albert will be speaking.

The film was never released on home video, so opportunities to see The Murder of Fred Hampton are rare. As a documentary it serves as a lasting memorial to Hampton's great legacy and tragic murder. Equally important, the film is an example of the power of independent media in providing the truth, when all the mainstream media choose to do is recycle the information they are given without digging beneath the surface.