On March 4, 1968, then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover described in a memo his department’s renewed focus on hindering the efforts of various black-led political organizations. Hoover wrote how he feared the rise of a black “messiah” who “could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement.” Tellingly, the memo was sent exactly one month before the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., whom Hoover describes as “a very real contender for the position.” But King wasn’t the only leader the FBI had an interest in defeating. In 1969, Illinois Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton was killed at the age of 21 during an FBI-directed raid of his apartment. The story of the promising Hampton’s brief life, and that of the BPP’s Illinois chapter, is the subject of “Black Panther Party 50 Year Retrospective,” now on view at the Westside Justice Center.
Nearby, a headline from a 1973 edition of The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, the BPP’s nationally distributed paper, which at its height had a circulation of 250,000, reads: “Chicagoans Unite for Community Control of Police.” Neighborhood control of policing was an important issue for the Illinois chapter, which hosted several citywide conferences on the subject. At the Survival Conference to End Police Brutality and Establish Community Control, held in 1972, the BPP offered attendees bags of food, shoes for children, and sickle cell anemia tests, all free of charge. These calls for ending police brutality and gaining community control of the police should sound familiar to anyone following local news—such demands are just a few of the similarities between the Illinois BPP and other groups, such as Black Lives Matter, that are struggling for political change today.
Police had a warrant to search the property, based on an alleged tip that the Panthers were storing an illegal stockpile of weapons. Years of litigation eventually brought the truth: the FBI had orchestrated the raid as part of its COINTELPRO plan to disrupt Panther activities and the rise of a black “messiah.” As the Nation reported during the civil trial in 1976, the FBI first approached CPD to conduct the raid, but were twice turned down; Hanrahan eventually agreed. FBI documents would later show the weapons story to be false. William O’Neal, an Illinois BPP member who was working as an FBI informant, provided information to the bureau, well ahead of the raid, that the party’s weapons were legally obtained. (This information is among the documents displayed in the show.) O’Neal also provided the FBI with a thorough floor plan of the Monroe apartment, including the location of Hampton’s bed.
Through 4/2018: Mon-Wed, Fri, 10 AM-3 PM, Thu 10 AM-8 PM Westside Justice Center, Movement & Justice Gallery 601 S. California 773-940-2213westsidejustice.org Free To arrange a group visit go to westsidejustice.org
