R wrote:
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> 5. murders. . . . .the black panther leader who was murdered while sleeping
And so Fred Hampton -- I loved that man -- has come to be a mere unidentified "black panther leader" killed by a solitary cop with a shotgun.
Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were murdered by a special squad of Chicago police assigned to the States Attorney's office. It was December 4, 1969. The Chicago Tribune printed a photograph taken inside the bedroom on their front page without first checking with the authority's as to what the story was supposed to be. The photograph shows that _all_ the shots were from the hallway into the bedroom; that none had been fired from inside the apartment. The official story was going to be that the cops had knocked on the door, that someone inside had fired through the door at them, and that they then returned fire. It was not _a_ cop; it was a whole damn army of cops. And they weren't using _a_ shotgun but a number of automatic weapons. The whole room was a shambles.
Fred Hampton was Vice-Chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party. Mark Clark was from Peoria. We (ISU SDS) had had Hampton here as a speaker just a few weeks before that. At the November meeting of the Moratorium at ISU Jan and I had begged for a resolution condemning police repression of the Panthers. The resolution was voted down. Those arguing against it claimed that the question would "turn people off." Similar events were happening all over the nation. In San Francisco at the November Moratorium the crowd booed Dave Hilliard (of the Panther leadership) when he declared the right of blacks to defend themselves against violence.
It is hard to bring people to see that solidarity is not a sentiment.
Carrol