The late Black Panther martyr Fred Hampton once said, “You can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail the revolution.” I never had the pleasure of meeting Chairman Fred Hampton in life. I read numerous articles about him in The Black Panther newspaper. I was impressed by this young man who was older than I at the time, and I found his speeches inspiring. It was this ability to organize and galvanize folks that had the eyes of the party on him, but also the eyes of the FBI.
On December 4th, 1969, the FBI, working through state agencies in Chicago and utilizing an inside snitch, an infiltrator named William O’Neal, carried out a murderous attack on 2337 West Monroe Street, a small apartment building in the “Windy City.” O’Neill had drawn up a floor plan of the apartment showing where people slept and where guards were posted. He also tampered with the weapons there and laced Fred Hampton’s kool-aid with secobarbital, a barbiturate which induced sleep. During the raid several Panthers would try to awaken the drugged chairman, but he was too deeply under to budge. Several cops killed him as he slept in his bed. They also murdered Mark Clark, a captain from Peoria, Illinois. 18-year-old Brenda Harris was shot twice while lying unarmed in her bed. Several Panthers were also shot. The state and federal so-called “investigations” were whitewashes.
In late December, 1969, several Black Panther Party members and supporters left in a rickety old sedan to join the Chicago chapter in their remembrance of their murdered leader. The chapter also did something extraordinary. They tore down the police tape and ran tours through the dark, chilled apartment to show the people directly what happened on Monroe. We walked through the scene of carnage, and it was like walking through the inside of a block of swiss cheese. Bullet holes lined the walls, revealing police machine gun fire, but the bedroom where Fred and his wife Deborah were sleeping looked like a mortuary. Thick blood still caked the floor and a mattress lay soaked, dark with the blood of Fred Hampton. If you looked at the walls of the bedroom, all shots seemed to converge where Fred’s body once laid. As Renee Johnson and I walked out of the Monroe Street apartment, our eyes adjusting to the gray winter light, we saw a line running all the way down the block and around the corner, of Black Chicagoans waiting to view the death scene.
One of the supporters from Philadelphia, who had helped drive us to Chicago, had been somewhat reluctant to join the party, although she would help. She was a young mother, and knew that such a life was dangerous, but after walking through the apartment on West Monroe Street, her heart was heartened. Her mind was set. Rosemari Mealy was no longer a supporter, but would join the Black Panther Party when she returned to Philadelphia. The murders on Monroe Street were a joint action of the FBI and Chicago police. They would later call their operation a success for they “succeeded” in extinguishing one of the brightest lights of the Black Panther Party.
To this date, not one state or federal agent has served a second in jail for this premeditated preplanned murders of Hampton and Clark. In fact, the only people arrested then and since were Panthers, presumed guilty of survival. One of those survivors, Deborah, who is now known as Akua Njeri, would shortly give birth to Fred’s son, a young man who bares a striking resemblance and similar spirit of his martyred father. There was death and life on Monroe Street. Fred Hampton, who worked for Black liberation and power to the people, remembered.
From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal. These commentaries are produced by Noel Hanrahan for Prison Radio.
