"We are not a prison activist organization. We are a revolutionary organization." -Chairman Fred Hampton,Jr.
Prisoners Of Conscience Committee
Friday, December 29, 2017
Thursday, December 28, 2017
December 27, 2017 Free Em' All Radio w/ Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. and The Lady of Rage
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
CHAIRMAN FRED HAMPTON JR.
Debut release of CHIRAQ!
The Song, The Situation, The City.
Friday December 29, 2017
The Annual People's Ball
The Mansion 4500 S. Michigan. Chicago, Il.
Sunday, December 3, 2017
Sunday, September 17, 2017
Wednesday September 13, 2017 Free Em' All Radio With Chairman Fred & The Lady Of Rage
Free Em All Radio! w/ Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. & The Lady of Rage!
Tonight's topic, Mental Health; the Disparities, the Dialogue and How it's Dealt with...in Black and White.
This discussion and more only on the People's radio! Tune in to get tuned in!
Thursday, August 31, 2017
August 30, 2017 Free Em' All Radio w/ Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. and The Lady of Rage
Chairman Fred Hampton Jr, Momma Akua Njeri, The Lady of Rage, In Celebration of Life of Chairman Fred Hampton Sr.
August 30, 1948 - December 4, 1969.
Also discussed is Hurricane Harvey and it's impact on Black Communities in Houston, Texas and surrounding areas.
Rescue Missions are not equal or just.
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Friday, July 21, 2017
July 19, 2017 Free Em All Radio
Free Em All Radio presents Music, Movies & Movements.
A Cub critique of some of today's actions on screen, scratch and the streets!
Tonight's segment will be a Cub Critique of the recently released 4:44 from Jay-Z.
Tune in to get tuned in on Free Em All Radio! The People's Radio!
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Chairman Fred Hampton Jr on The Carl Nelson Show July 4, 2017
Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. on the more than 100 people shot in Chicago over 4th of July holiday, Chairman Fred will also discuss how the guns get into the city, the mayor’s plan requiring 12th graders to have a plan before they get their HS diploma & more. Before we get to Chairman Fred, Investigative Reporter Greg Palast on the GOP secretly turning over voter files to Trump’s man Kobach.
Monday, June 26, 2017
June 21, 2017 Free Em All Radio w/ Chairman Fred Hampton Jr and The Lady of Rage
Tune in for another dynamic episode of Free Em All Radio! w/ Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. & The Lady of Rage! Join Our Host in paying tribute to Fathers..Our Fathers who've given their lives and Those still with Us! Tune in to get tuned in to another episode of Political education for The People only on The People's Radio
June 14, 2017 Free Em' All Radio w/ Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. and The Lady of Rage
HOLLA IF YA HEAR ME!! Tupac Amaru Shakur, More than a Rapper; The Legend, The Revolutionary & Panther Cub! Join Our Host for this historic discussion on Pac and the Politics! Tune to get that weekly Political Education on the People's Radio!!
Thursday, June 8, 2017
June 7, 2017 Free Em All Radio! w/ Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. & The Lady of Rage!
Who We Be?! We Be the Great Grandchildren of Garvey...Offspring of Malcolm..and the Cubs of Panthers!
Marcus Mosiah Garvey...The Black Star to The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)..to Our Prideful banner of the Symbolic Red, Black and Green! Join Our Host for another dynamic episode of the People's Radio for some political education and discussion!
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
BY now many of you have seen these reports about an upcoming biopic of Chairman Fred Hampton Sr. & it should be clearly noted that the Chair of the Dec.4th Committee-Akua Njeri, the widow of Chairman Fred Sr. & survivor of the 12/4/69 cointelpro assassination nor their son Chairman Fred Hampton Jr., Pocc Panther Cubs, have been contacted by Fuqua, Sony or Jeff Hass (who we have learned "sold the book rights of this story to make a movie") so this is clearly an attempt to hijack legacy and capitalize off of the pain of Chairman Fred's family.
We are calling on all community members to call the question of this glaring contradiction..get @ these forces directly..demand that Chairman Fred Jr. Black Panther Party Cubs & Dec.4th committee be contacted immediately!! Every August30th is Chairman Fred Streetz Party in Chiraq & Dec.4th is International Revolutionary Day for many many years now it's clear who is carrying on the legacy of the Black Panther Party, respect it protect it and neva neglect it!! What's the call? #FreeEmAll #BPPC #WeRide
We are calling on all community members to call the question of this glaring contradiction..get @ these forces directly..demand that Chairman Fred Jr. Black Panther Party Cubs & Dec.4th committee be contacted immediately!! Every August30th is Chairman Fred Streetz Party in Chiraq & Dec.4th is International Revolutionary Day for many many years now it's clear who is carrying on the legacy of the Black Panther Party, respect it protect it and neva neglect it!! What's the call? #FreeEmAll #BPPC #WeRide
May 31, 2017 Free Em All Radio W/ Chairman Fred Hampton Jr and The Lady of Rage
MEMORIAL DAY FOR THE MASSES.....
REMEMBER THOSE WHOM RESISTED AND REMEMBERED US!
Free'em All...
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
Saturday, May 6, 2017
Tuesday, May 2, 2017
May 3, 2017 Free Em' All Radio W/ Chairman Fred Hampton Jr & The Lady Of Rage
"FREE'EM ALL RADIO" W/CHAIRMAN FRED HAMPTON JR.+CO-HOST: THE LADY OF RAGE!!!
Wed. May 3rd @ 6:30 pm Central - 8:30PM EST - 5:30 pm Pacific
CALL IN: 929-477-3785
Topics Of Discussion Include:
- Semaj Crosby & The Illinois Department of Children & Family Services. (DCFS)
- Chicago Police Torture Chambers
- John Burge, Ex- Chicago Cop Who Ran Torture Ring and His Release From Prison.
- Guest - Mark Clements
- Joseph Ligon - 79 years of age - the oldest juvenile lifer.
Join Our Hosts for this dynamic discussion as they elevate the understanding that Everything is Political!
Comments, questions or to listen call in 929-477-3785
#FreeEmAll call..plz help us build the #ChairmanFredHamptonSr Community Center in #Chiraq donate via #paypal to chairmanfredjr@gmail.com this is an urgent push for a much need base
Monday, May 1, 2017
Donate Today: The Chairman Fred Hampton Sr. Community Center
Support Our Troops.
Help The Cubs Secure A Base.
Please Donate Today @ PayPal.com via
chairmanfredjr@gmail.com
OR
Donate Via Pay Pal Button on The Right
OR
Donate Via Pay Pal Button on The Right
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
March 22, 2017 Free Em All Radio w/ Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. & the Lady of Rage
The 1992 UPRISINGS!...
As always that Fire political education for the People only on the People's Radio!
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
March 8, 2017 Free Em All Radio With Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. & The Lady Of Rage
Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. & The Lady of Rage!
This dynamic episode will continue with Part 2 of Hip Hop.. Back In Da Day' an ongoing series featuring Hip Hop's greatest Mic Controllers & Lyricists!
Broadcasting Live from Oakland, CA, Our host will be joined by Hip Hop's Greats Scarface, DJ Premiere, Mia X, Crucial Conflict & Do or Die!
And as always, that Fire political education for the People only on the People's Radio!
Our host will also take a moment for Cub & Community Condolences for Attorney Lynne Stewart aka 'The People's Lawyer'
This dynamic episode will continue with Part 2 of Hip Hop.. Back In Da Day' an ongoing series featuring Hip Hop's greatest Mic Controllers & Lyricists!
Broadcasting Live from Oakland, CA, Our host will be joined by Hip Hop's Greats Scarface, DJ Premiere, Mia X, Crucial Conflict & Do or Die!
And as always, that Fire political education for the People only on the People's Radio!
Our host will also take a moment for Cub & Community Condolences for Attorney Lynne Stewart aka 'The People's Lawyer'
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Thursday, February 9, 2017
Friday, February 3, 2017
Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. On The Carl Nelson Show
Chairman, Fred Hampton Jr. joined The Carl Nelson Show to analyze the nearly 300 shootings in his hometown, Chicago. 300 Shootings from January 1st 2017 to February 1, 2017. Chairman Fred also discussed Trumps’ threat “to send the Feds” into Chicago, if the Mayor can not solve the problem. The Washington Posts‘, David Swerdlick spoke first on the firing of United States Attorney General Salley Yates.
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
The Carl Nelson Show - Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. January 31, 2017 @ 2PM Pacific
Chairman, Fred Hampton Jr. joins us to analyze the nearly 300 shootings in his hometown, Chicago. Chairman Fred will also discuss Trumps' threat "to send in the Feds" if the Mayor can not solve the problem. Before we get to Chairman Fred Hampton, The Washington Posts', David Swerdlick on the firing of the acting AG.The Big Show starts on WOL 1450 AM & 95.9 FM at 4 pm ET., 3 pm CT., 1 pm PT., woldcnews com. Call in # 800 450 7876 to participate, & listen live also on 104.1 HD2.FM,93.9 HD2.FM, & 102.3 HD2.FM.& Tunein Radio.Follow us on Twitter @carlnelsonshow.
www.WOLDCNEWS.COM & IN D.C FM 104.1 HD2 & 93.9 HD2 &102.3 HD2, @Tunein
Friday, January 27, 2017
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Friday, January 13, 2017
2017 Justice Department Findings: Chicago Police Routinely Trampled on Civil Rights
"2017 Justice Dept. Findings?...Chicago Police Routinely Trampled on Civil Rights?...
Pinochet was at times careless in Chile?...
Papa Doc Duvalier was a bit harmful in Haiti?...
There were some incidents incurred by the Indigenous People by the colonialists?...
Flint Michigan distributed less than mediocre means for the population to quench their thirst?
Nazi Germany negated the air quality standards in the detaining centers in Auschwitz, Dhauchaw, etc.Prisons have impacted families?
Slavery had an effect on African People? ..Jus' Curious?.."
-Chairman Fred Hampton Jr.. .
#SystemsEupheminisms
#BrutalTerms
#BrutalRealities Jose Cha-C
Click Here For NY Times Article: Chicago Police Routinely Trampled on Civil Rights, Justice Dept. Says
Pinochet was at times careless in Chile?...
Papa Doc Duvalier was a bit harmful in Haiti?...
There were some incidents incurred by the Indigenous People by the colonialists?...
Flint Michigan distributed less than mediocre means for the population to quench their thirst?
Nazi Germany negated the air quality standards in the detaining centers in Auschwitz, Dhauchaw, etc.Prisons have impacted families?
Slavery had an effect on African People? ..Jus' Curious?.."
-Chairman Fred Hampton Jr.. .
#SystemsEupheminisms
#BrutalTerms
#BrutalRealities Jose Cha-C
Click Here For NY Times Article: Chicago Police Routinely Trampled on Civil Rights, Justice Dept. Says
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Saturday, January 7, 2017
Join Chairman Fred on State Of The City (SOC) with Brother Daren Muhammad Saturday January 7, 2017 @ 12PM EST 11AM CST
Join Chairman Fred on (SOC) State of The City with Brother Daren Muhammad Today, January 7, 2017 @ 12PM EST and 11AM CST
ON WFBR 1590AM & At Spreaker.com
Friday, January 6, 2017
The Sacrifices Of Slain Black Panther Party Leader Fred Hampton And His Family Are A Lesson In Black Love
By: Malaika Jabali - Essence.com
"In the wake of the Black Panther Party's 50th anniversary, and the anniversary of the state sponsored assassination of one of its rising stars, Fred Hampton, we spoke with his only child, Fred Hampton Jr. about how he and his parents sacrificed their own well being for the love of Black people and their liberation." “
The first piece of steel I felt when I was a baby wasn’t a doctor’s stethoscope,” Fred Hampton Jr. shares with ESSENCE. “It was a Chicago police officer’s revolver as he pressed it against my mother’s pregnant belly.”
While Hampton Jr. was born into the fight for Black liberation, his father died from it. This month, 47 years ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Illinois State Attorney’s Office, and the Chicago Police Department succeeded in their mission to kill Fred Hampton.
A rising star in the Black Panther Party, Hampton’s charismatic leadership and calls for economic justice and revolution across racial lines made him the target of a state-sponsored assassination. By 1969, Fred Hampton had stepped up in the Party’s leadership while Huey Newton, the Party’s co-founder, was imprisoned.
The ‘Free Huey’ campaign was galvanizing activists around the globe. Martin Luther King’s assassination a year prior devastated Black Americans and helped radicalize an increasingly militant message against capitalism and racism. It was this growing popular resentment against economic inequality — and black leaders like King and Hampton that could effectively organize the masses to fight this inequality — that frightened government officials at every level. And Fred Hampton was a brilliant organizer.
Hampton was the son of Louisiana parents who joined hundreds of thousands of other southern blacks in the Great Migration to find a better life up north. They found this new home outside of Chicago. While the economic opportunities were greater, the racism was no less detrimental. But a young Hampton battled through it.
He increased the membership of his local Junior NAACP chapter from seven to 300 members in seven and a half months. This caught the eyes of the FBI, who consequently opened a file against him. He was 14 years old. Over the phone, through a southern drawl unearthing his Louisiana roots, Fred Hampton’s son sounds just as in awe of his father’s organizing prowess as other activists likely were in the 1960s.
Hampton met his minimum goals to feed at least 3500 children a week in the Illinois chapter of the Party’s free breakfast program. When government agents attempted to pit the Blackstone Rangers against the Party, Hampton won the Rangers over. When competing gangs threatened to harm Black communities, and themselves, Hampton got them to agree to peace.
For years, government officials threw everything they could at the prodigy to end his fervor and undermine the Party. Finally, when Hampton was just 21 years old, the Cook County State Attorney, the FBI, and the local police succeeded. In 1969, still within the first year of his presidency, Richard Nixon flew over the Party’s headquarters in Chicago. According to Hampton Jr., Nixon was heard saying that the Panthers “got the last one, we’ll get the next one.” The former President was referring to the killing of two Chicago police officers, which was blamed on Black Panther Party leadership despite evidence to the contrary. Nixon’s campaign rhetoric to return America to law and order got him elected to the White House. And with J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), they made the Panthers their primary target. Instead of a war against racism or poverty, America was embroiled in a war on Black activism.
Fears of Black people — which is most visibly concentrated in sporadic, individual interactions between white vigilantes, cops, and Black victims today — were institutionalized on the highest of federal levels. This was not lost on other civil rights leaders and elected officials. Though the depth of the federal government’s role in killing Fred Hampton wasn’t fully known at the time, civil rights activists and Black elected officials knew something was amiss. Even mainstream Black groups, including the Congress for Racial Equality, SCLC, NAACP, and Urban League joined in protests against what they saw as a “calculated design of genocide” against Panther activists. As Julian Bond, a member of the Georgia state legislature, charged in the 1960s, "[t]he Black Panthers are being decimated by political assassination arranged by the federal police apparatus."
FBI documents that were uncovered once they effectively destabilized the Panthers proved this was true. The FBI planted an informant in Fred Hampton’s inner circle and enlisted the local police to raid his apartment. William O’Neal — a Black man who became the Minister of Defense for the Black Panther Party Chicago Chapter and Hampton’s bodyguard — was responsible for protecting Hampton’s life. O’Neal was also obligated by the FBI as their informant to help them end it. O’Neal provided the federal task force with the floor plan of Hampton’s apartment.
On December 4, 1969, the Chicago police shot nearly 100 bullets into Hampton’s apartment, all of which were aimed at the bedroom Hampton shared with his fiancée, Akua Njeri. Only one bullet was fired out of the apartment by any Panther. I asked Fred Hampton, Jr. what he knows of that night. He has undoubtedly shared this story countless times and has heard his mother and other survivors recalling the horrific details of that fatal shoot-in.
As police officers began firing, other Panthers who convened at their home for Party business shouted to officers that there was a pregnant woman in the room. Akua was about nine months pregnant with Hampton Jr., her only child. In an act of complete sacrifice, Akua covered her fiancée with her body as bullets ricocheted against their mattress. Through all the commotion, Hampton Sr. barely reacted. She knew something wasn’t right.
O’Neal had drugged Hampton with Seconal, a sedative that left him immobilized. Despite the hail of bullets, Akua, Fred, and many members survived the initial firestorm. In an interview with Democratic Underground, Akua recalls that two police officers entered their bedroom. “Is he dead yet?” one asked. When the officers realized Fred was still alive, they executed him at point blank range. Two bullets to the head.
The other officer responded, “well he’s good and dead now.” James “Gloves” Davis — a Black officer notorious for brutalizing his own people-- delivered the final, fatal blow. Fred Hampton Jr., born Alfred Johnson, can’t recall precisely when he learned about his father and Black liberation. “It was a way of life,” he told me. That life didn’t come without sacrifice. “It’s been some lows. We had to witness people who benefitted, who got jobs and careers.
[My mom] got fired from jobs because of who she is. But I watched her principles.” Hampton Jr. continues, “I was about 12 years old, and a book proposal [about my father] was brought to us. It was a cold, Chicago winter. Our gas was cut off. The proposal was making like the police was the protagonist. It was a story about building him up. I distinctly remember telling her, if we do this, our gas will come on. She said ‘we’re not going with it.’ She refused to compromise the legacy of Chairman Fred Hampton, of the Black Panther Party.” Around the same time, Akua legally changed her son’s name to Fred Hampton Jr. Despite the negative attention his name brought him in Chicago’s still-racist criminal justice system, neither Akua nor Hampton Jr. have shied from his father’s legacy.
After cops were acquitted for brutally attacking Rodney King, many Black neighborhoods around the country rebelled. Hampton Jr. was charged with arson, even though Korean merchants whose shop Hampton Jr. was alleged to have burned questioned if the arson even happened. The line of questioning during the trial didn’t relate to the case. Instead, they focused on his political beliefs. The junior Hampton recalls potential jurors telling the judge “his name is Fred Hampton, it’s Fred Hampton’s son, let’s just convict him.”
He was sentenced to 18 years of prison. While in prison, where he served nearly nine of his 18 years, there were assassination attempts on his life. The prison tower displayed a picture with his face on it so he could be easily recognized. Though the Hamptons have loved their people and continue to fight for Black lives, they haven’t been consistently loved back. “We paid the price for it. We’ve been shunned by a lot of people.” It’s frightening to think about a reality in which government officials have unbridled power to conspire to kill you.
In 2016, we are confronted with an America apathetic to Black pain and Black death. Of a racism that’s mutated and no longer has the power of a legalized Jim Crow caste system but that nevertheless functions, in practice, like the force of law. But few people today can remember a time when America instituted the sort of brutal racism that could operate more bluntly instead of through the surgical precision of covert racism. Government leaders, from the local level up to the president, could identify any Black activist working to make America the place it always said that it was —o f freedom and democracy and equality — and viciously, illegally, and without consequence kill them, and the American dream along with it. Hampton Jr.’s oral history provides the jarring reminder that America, with all its claims of being great, never once lived up to it. When I ask him how he feels about the apparent lack of social progress since his father’s death in the 1960s, he snaps me back to reality. For a man who experienced significant trauma, Fred Hampton Jr. is one of the most optimistic people I’d ever encountered.
Though it appears like Black people in America experience a tortured cycle of pain and triumph with no true progress, the 47-year-old reminds me that Black Americans are actually on an upward spiral. We endure similar circumstances as our ancestors, with similar solutions and similar results. But the experiences are not identical. However slight the arc may seem, we are indeed bending towards justice. Fred Hampton Jr. and Akua continue to chisel away and shape this arc, despite the fractures they have endured and the opportunities they have lost in the process. By the time Fred takes my phone call, he has just finished his “Free Em All Radio” program, which he hosts every Wednesday with Lady of Rage, the rapper best known for her 90s hit “Afro Puffs.”
While in prison, he started the Prisoners of Conscience Committee/ Black Panther Party Cubs, which produces the radio show and provides its members with a platform to discuss politics with invited guests, current events, and their community organizing. Hampton Jr. was also fresh from a trip at Standing Rock, narrowly escaping the freeze, where he was battling in solidarity with indigenous communities protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. To honor her ex-fiancée and introduce new generations to his life and the Black Panther Party, Akua regularly provides tours of the apartment where Fred was slain for International Revolutionary Day, which they celebrate every December 4th to honor Fred Hampton’s life and organize around contemporary issues.
During one of his radio programs in late October, Fred Jr. raps an interlude before continuing with the show. His closing line sums up his life’s work: Long live the legacy of the Black Panther Party, protect and respect it, and never, never neglect it."
"In the wake of the Black Panther Party's 50th anniversary, and the anniversary of the state sponsored assassination of one of its rising stars, Fred Hampton, we spoke with his only child, Fred Hampton Jr. about how he and his parents sacrificed their own well being for the love of Black people and their liberation." “
The first piece of steel I felt when I was a baby wasn’t a doctor’s stethoscope,” Fred Hampton Jr. shares with ESSENCE. “It was a Chicago police officer’s revolver as he pressed it against my mother’s pregnant belly.”
While Hampton Jr. was born into the fight for Black liberation, his father died from it. This month, 47 years ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Illinois State Attorney’s Office, and the Chicago Police Department succeeded in their mission to kill Fred Hampton.
A rising star in the Black Panther Party, Hampton’s charismatic leadership and calls for economic justice and revolution across racial lines made him the target of a state-sponsored assassination. By 1969, Fred Hampton had stepped up in the Party’s leadership while Huey Newton, the Party’s co-founder, was imprisoned.
The ‘Free Huey’ campaign was galvanizing activists around the globe. Martin Luther King’s assassination a year prior devastated Black Americans and helped radicalize an increasingly militant message against capitalism and racism. It was this growing popular resentment against economic inequality — and black leaders like King and Hampton that could effectively organize the masses to fight this inequality — that frightened government officials at every level. And Fred Hampton was a brilliant organizer.
Hampton was the son of Louisiana parents who joined hundreds of thousands of other southern blacks in the Great Migration to find a better life up north. They found this new home outside of Chicago. While the economic opportunities were greater, the racism was no less detrimental. But a young Hampton battled through it.
He increased the membership of his local Junior NAACP chapter from seven to 300 members in seven and a half months. This caught the eyes of the FBI, who consequently opened a file against him. He was 14 years old. Over the phone, through a southern drawl unearthing his Louisiana roots, Fred Hampton’s son sounds just as in awe of his father’s organizing prowess as other activists likely were in the 1960s.
Hampton met his minimum goals to feed at least 3500 children a week in the Illinois chapter of the Party’s free breakfast program. When government agents attempted to pit the Blackstone Rangers against the Party, Hampton won the Rangers over. When competing gangs threatened to harm Black communities, and themselves, Hampton got them to agree to peace.
For years, government officials threw everything they could at the prodigy to end his fervor and undermine the Party. Finally, when Hampton was just 21 years old, the Cook County State Attorney, the FBI, and the local police succeeded. In 1969, still within the first year of his presidency, Richard Nixon flew over the Party’s headquarters in Chicago. According to Hampton Jr., Nixon was heard saying that the Panthers “got the last one, we’ll get the next one.” The former President was referring to the killing of two Chicago police officers, which was blamed on Black Panther Party leadership despite evidence to the contrary. Nixon’s campaign rhetoric to return America to law and order got him elected to the White House. And with J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), they made the Panthers their primary target. Instead of a war against racism or poverty, America was embroiled in a war on Black activism.
Fears of Black people — which is most visibly concentrated in sporadic, individual interactions between white vigilantes, cops, and Black victims today — were institutionalized on the highest of federal levels. This was not lost on other civil rights leaders and elected officials. Though the depth of the federal government’s role in killing Fred Hampton wasn’t fully known at the time, civil rights activists and Black elected officials knew something was amiss. Even mainstream Black groups, including the Congress for Racial Equality, SCLC, NAACP, and Urban League joined in protests against what they saw as a “calculated design of genocide” against Panther activists. As Julian Bond, a member of the Georgia state legislature, charged in the 1960s, "[t]he Black Panthers are being decimated by political assassination arranged by the federal police apparatus."
FBI documents that were uncovered once they effectively destabilized the Panthers proved this was true. The FBI planted an informant in Fred Hampton’s inner circle and enlisted the local police to raid his apartment. William O’Neal — a Black man who became the Minister of Defense for the Black Panther Party Chicago Chapter and Hampton’s bodyguard — was responsible for protecting Hampton’s life. O’Neal was also obligated by the FBI as their informant to help them end it. O’Neal provided the federal task force with the floor plan of Hampton’s apartment.
On December 4, 1969, the Chicago police shot nearly 100 bullets into Hampton’s apartment, all of which were aimed at the bedroom Hampton shared with his fiancée, Akua Njeri. Only one bullet was fired out of the apartment by any Panther. I asked Fred Hampton, Jr. what he knows of that night. He has undoubtedly shared this story countless times and has heard his mother and other survivors recalling the horrific details of that fatal shoot-in.
As police officers began firing, other Panthers who convened at their home for Party business shouted to officers that there was a pregnant woman in the room. Akua was about nine months pregnant with Hampton Jr., her only child. In an act of complete sacrifice, Akua covered her fiancée with her body as bullets ricocheted against their mattress. Through all the commotion, Hampton Sr. barely reacted. She knew something wasn’t right.
O’Neal had drugged Hampton with Seconal, a sedative that left him immobilized. Despite the hail of bullets, Akua, Fred, and many members survived the initial firestorm. In an interview with Democratic Underground, Akua recalls that two police officers entered their bedroom. “Is he dead yet?” one asked. When the officers realized Fred was still alive, they executed him at point blank range. Two bullets to the head.
The other officer responded, “well he’s good and dead now.” James “Gloves” Davis — a Black officer notorious for brutalizing his own people-- delivered the final, fatal blow. Fred Hampton Jr., born Alfred Johnson, can’t recall precisely when he learned about his father and Black liberation. “It was a way of life,” he told me. That life didn’t come without sacrifice. “It’s been some lows. We had to witness people who benefitted, who got jobs and careers.
[My mom] got fired from jobs because of who she is. But I watched her principles.” Hampton Jr. continues, “I was about 12 years old, and a book proposal [about my father] was brought to us. It was a cold, Chicago winter. Our gas was cut off. The proposal was making like the police was the protagonist. It was a story about building him up. I distinctly remember telling her, if we do this, our gas will come on. She said ‘we’re not going with it.’ She refused to compromise the legacy of Chairman Fred Hampton, of the Black Panther Party.” Around the same time, Akua legally changed her son’s name to Fred Hampton Jr. Despite the negative attention his name brought him in Chicago’s still-racist criminal justice system, neither Akua nor Hampton Jr. have shied from his father’s legacy.
After cops were acquitted for brutally attacking Rodney King, many Black neighborhoods around the country rebelled. Hampton Jr. was charged with arson, even though Korean merchants whose shop Hampton Jr. was alleged to have burned questioned if the arson even happened. The line of questioning during the trial didn’t relate to the case. Instead, they focused on his political beliefs. The junior Hampton recalls potential jurors telling the judge “his name is Fred Hampton, it’s Fred Hampton’s son, let’s just convict him.”
He was sentenced to 18 years of prison. While in prison, where he served nearly nine of his 18 years, there were assassination attempts on his life. The prison tower displayed a picture with his face on it so he could be easily recognized. Though the Hamptons have loved their people and continue to fight for Black lives, they haven’t been consistently loved back. “We paid the price for it. We’ve been shunned by a lot of people.” It’s frightening to think about a reality in which government officials have unbridled power to conspire to kill you.
In 2016, we are confronted with an America apathetic to Black pain and Black death. Of a racism that’s mutated and no longer has the power of a legalized Jim Crow caste system but that nevertheless functions, in practice, like the force of law. But few people today can remember a time when America instituted the sort of brutal racism that could operate more bluntly instead of through the surgical precision of covert racism. Government leaders, from the local level up to the president, could identify any Black activist working to make America the place it always said that it was —o f freedom and democracy and equality — and viciously, illegally, and without consequence kill them, and the American dream along with it. Hampton Jr.’s oral history provides the jarring reminder that America, with all its claims of being great, never once lived up to it. When I ask him how he feels about the apparent lack of social progress since his father’s death in the 1960s, he snaps me back to reality. For a man who experienced significant trauma, Fred Hampton Jr. is one of the most optimistic people I’d ever encountered.
Though it appears like Black people in America experience a tortured cycle of pain and triumph with no true progress, the 47-year-old reminds me that Black Americans are actually on an upward spiral. We endure similar circumstances as our ancestors, with similar solutions and similar results. But the experiences are not identical. However slight the arc may seem, we are indeed bending towards justice. Fred Hampton Jr. and Akua continue to chisel away and shape this arc, despite the fractures they have endured and the opportunities they have lost in the process. By the time Fred takes my phone call, he has just finished his “Free Em All Radio” program, which he hosts every Wednesday with Lady of Rage, the rapper best known for her 90s hit “Afro Puffs.”
While in prison, he started the Prisoners of Conscience Committee/ Black Panther Party Cubs, which produces the radio show and provides its members with a platform to discuss politics with invited guests, current events, and their community organizing. Hampton Jr. was also fresh from a trip at Standing Rock, narrowly escaping the freeze, where he was battling in solidarity with indigenous communities protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. To honor her ex-fiancée and introduce new generations to his life and the Black Panther Party, Akua regularly provides tours of the apartment where Fred was slain for International Revolutionary Day, which they celebrate every December 4th to honor Fred Hampton’s life and organize around contemporary issues.
During one of his radio programs in late October, Fred Jr. raps an interlude before continuing with the show. His closing line sums up his life’s work: Long live the legacy of the Black Panther Party, protect and respect it, and never, never neglect it."
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. & Lady of Rage January 4, 2016
Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. on January 3, 2017 Segment of The Carl Nelson Show. Reverend Jesse Jackson & More
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