Thanksgiving is here on November 22, 2023. Time has gone so far in this year as we approach 2023 A.D. For years, we know that Thanksgiving-type holidays and celebrations have existed for thousands of years among many cultures of humanity. It is a time of the year when reflection is made known, families unite, and togetherness is advanced as a sacred custom. It has been celebrated in modern times in America, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, Brazil, the Philippines, and other areas of the world. Thanksgiving means to honor the sacrifice of our ancestors and heroes today along with connecting with family, friends, and loved ones. Many people celebrate football games, eat foods (like turkey, stuffing, yams, sweet potato pie, greens, etc.), and visit relatives. The Thanksgiving in America deals with the Thanksgiving that deals with New England and North America in general. This history is rooted in the Protestant Reformation, Native Americans, and other issues. The common lie is that Native Americans never experienced any form of genocide by imperialism. The other lie is that every believer in God is an abhorrent genocidal murderer. These two lies are advanced by far-right extremists and religious bigots who don't care for true religious freedom. So, we have to put history into truth and context. In the final analysis, we have to repent, live a better life than the past, and let the Holy Spirit (with truth, wisdom, and power) guide our lives justly into a fruitful existence triumphally. For centuries and millennia, Native Americans created their own complex, advanced cultures with diverse languages, creeds, calendar systems, roads, sports, celebrations, and other facets of civilization. These items of contributions to humanity were found in the Aztec, Inca, Olmec, Mound cultures, and other civilizations in the Americas. Native Americans came from Asia (i.e. Siberia) over 10,000 years ago.
Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1588, in 1605, and in other times like in 1619 in Virginia. In America, there is the common story of the Pilgrims and Puritans. It started long ago. To understand this situation, we have to go way back in history. Inside Europe by the 17th century, there was massive political and religious upheaval. Europe was controlled by mostly monarchical rule and religious oligarchs who wanted to centralize control over the people. The dominant religious institution in Europe during the 1600's was the Vatican. This time period existed for about 100 years after the Protestant Reformation (which challenged the heresies of the Roman Catholic Church like purgatory, indulgences, the Inquisition, Papal infallibility, the veneration of images, viewing Mary as an Ever-Virgin, and the great blasphemy of transubstantiation). There is nowhere in the Bible saying that we must do the Rosary, that religious clergy must be forced to not marry, and that the Pope is the Holy Father or the Vicar of Christ (which is outright blasphemy). Erasmus tried to make reforms in the Roman Catholic Church. Erasmus was a great religious scholar and a prominent intellectual. Martin Luther made his 95 Theses to protest the Roman Catholic Church's policies. The Roman Catholic Church refused to change, and the Reformation existed by 1517. The Vatican created the Counter-Reformation (with support from the Jesuits too) to counteract the influence of the Protestant Reformation. Major wars among Protestants and Catholics existed well into the 1600s and beyond in places like Ireland. Obviously, we can agree to disagree on religious matters without being violently disagreeable as religious freedom including the separation of church and state are hallmarks of a progressive society. The fruit of the Jesuit-inspired Counter-Reformation is the Ecumenical Movement (which is promoted by the leaders of the Vatican and some Protestant movements to develop a compromise on theological matters explicitly). Even some Protestants were wrong to persecute Baptists and Anabaptists centuries ago (because the Baptists and Anabaptists rightfully rejected infant baptism. Infant baptism has no basis in scripture or logic as an infant can't make a conscious decision to join a church or religious organization at all).
Many Pilgrims were in conflict with the English King James I. He believed in the divine right of kings heresy, which is very similar to the Pope falsely claiming divine authority over all believers of God. King James I was right to disagree with many of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. King James I was right to disagree with witchcraft as he wrote literature in opposition to it. His error was that King James I made it his business to persecute Baptists and other separatists who didn't want to submit to the state church. I believe in the separation of church and state. Back then, human beings, who disagreed with state church institutions, were imprisoned or killed during the early 1600's in Europe. To disagree with a government authority back then was equivalent to treason (according to extremists). That is why many Baptists, Puritans, and other Protestant separatists left the UK and came to America. These dissidents made errors too, so that will be shown later. For now, we know that the Anglican Church was nearly identical to the Catholic Church in its ecclesiology. Also, William Schaw worked with King James VI of Scotland. William Schaw (who was accused of being a suspected Jesuit and holding anti-English views during the 1590’s. We know about the pro-Jesuits zealots involved in the evil Gunpowder terrorist plot in England against King James I and his government. The plot was led by Roman Catholic Robert Catesby) who helped to build castles and palaces.
The Pilgrims and Puritans emigrated from England to America 1620's and the 1630's. Many of them wanted to enjoy religious freedom. The Pilgrims wanted total separation from the Church of England, and the Puritans hoped for a reconciliation with the Church of England. Back then, many Baptists, Pilgrims, and other religious groups were persecuted by the Catholics and the Church of English. The Pilgrims wanted voluntary democratic congregations. It was against the law in England to resist many policies from the Anglican Church, so many Pilgrims escaped into the Netherlands to Leiden, Holland to escape persecution. William Brewster taught English at Leiden University. Later, the Pilgrims left the Netherlands as their language and customs were difficult for them to ascertain. They left on the Mayflower to America. They came to America in November 1620. The Native Americans including Squanto helped the Pilgrims to survive literally. Previously, many British forces enslaved many Native American tribes unjustly. The Pilgrims realized that a king in Europe, especially in the UK, having authoritarian powers is antithetical to democratic rights. Now, many of them did the wrong thing in murdering Native Americans and enslaving innocent black Africans. I want to make that perfectly clear. The English Pilgrims was led by William Bradford. They experienced religious persecution in England (they lived in the village of Scrooby near East Retford, Nottinghamshire). By 1607, Archbishop Tobias Matthew raided homes and imprisoned several members of the congregation. The congregation left England in 1608 and emigrated to the Netherlands, settling first in Amsterdam and then in Leiden.
The Mayflower Compact was created while people were on the ship. It was signed on November 1620. The compact was about them forming their own government while showing allegiance to the Crown of England. The settlers showed allegiance to the king. It was a social contract that settlers would consent to the community's rules to survive and have order. Early on, the Pilgrims struggled to survive. Peregrine White was born being the first child born to the Pilgrims in America by Susanna White. They searched for corn to plant. As early as December 6, in their third expedition, they took the Native Americans' corn and fired upon them in the First Encounter near Eastham, Massachusetts. By December 21, 1620, a brutal winter caused the Pilgrims to suffer at Plymouth. Native Americans literally saved their lives. One such Native American was Samoset. On March 16, 1621, the Pilgrims had more contact with Native peoples. Samoset learned some English from fishermen and trappers in Maine. He said, "Welcome, Englishmen!" The Pilgrims learned that many Natives died of an epidemic. They also knew of a great leader in the region who was the Wampanoag chief Massasoit. Also, they learned about Squanto (Tisquantum) who was the sole survivor from Patuxent. Squanto had spent time in Europe and spoke English quite well. Samoset spent the night in Plymouth and agreed to arrange a meeting with some of Massasoit's men. There is the statue today of the sachem Massasoit (Ousamequin). The sachem or leader of the Wampanoag confederacy. Massasoit means Great Sachem. Squanto has a large importance in history.
The 1621 Plymouth, Massachusetts Thanksgiving was promoted by a good harvest. They celebrated with the Wampanoags Native American tribes along with the Patuxent. They formed an alliance against the rival Narragansett tribe. This situation didn't last. Native American leader Massasoit was ill by the winter of 1623. The colonists nursed him back to health. In 1632, the Narragansetts attacked Massaiot's village in Sowam. The colonists helped the Wampanoag to drive them back. The Puritans later destroyed the Pequot Confederation.
Massasoit and Squanto were apprehensive about the Pilgrims, as several men of his tribe had been killed by English sailors. He also knew that the Pilgrims had taken some corn stores in their landings at Provincetown. Squanto himself had been abducted in 1614 by English explorer Thomas Hunt and had spent five years in Europe, first as a slave for a group of Spanish monks, then as a freeman in England. He had returned to New England in 1619, acting as a guide to explorer Capt. Robert Gorges, but Massasoit and his men had killed the crew of the ship and had taken Squanto. Samoset returned to Plymouth on March 22 with a delegation from Massasoit that included Squanto; Massasoit joined them shortly after, and he and Governor Carver established a formal treaty of peace after exchanging gifts. This treaty ensured that each group of people would not bring harm to the other, that Massasoit would send his allies to make peaceful negotiations with Plymouth, and that they would come to each other's aid in a time of war. Many Plymouth settlers died during that winter.
In November 1621, the surviving Pilgrims and some Native Americans celebrated their First Thanksgiving. The celebration involved the 53 surviving Pilgrims, along with Massasoit and 90 of his men. Three contemporaneous accounts of the event survive: Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford; Mourt's Relation probably written by Edward Winslow; and New England's Memorial by Plymouth Colony Secretary (and Bradford's nephew) Capt. Nathaniel Morton. The celebration lasted three days and featured a feast that included numerous types of waterfowl, wild turkeys and fish procured by the colonists, and five deer brought by the indigenous people. After the departure of Massasoit and his men, Squanto remained in Plymouth to teach the Pilgrims how to survive in New England, such as using dead fish to fertilize the soil. For the first few years of colonial life, the fur trade was the dominant source of income beyond subsistence farming. Colonists were buying furs from Native Americans and selling them to Europeans. Governor Carver suddenly died shortly after the Mayflower returned to England. William Bradford was elected to replace him and went on to lead the colony through much of its formative years. Many Native Americans came to Plymouth in the middle of 1621 to promise peace. On July 2, a party of Pilgrims led by Edward Winslow (who later became the chief diplomat of the colony) set out to continue negotiations with the chief. The delegation also included Squanto, who acted as a translator. After traveling for several days, they arrived at Massasoit's village of Sowams near Narragansett Bay. After meals and an exchange of gifts, Massasoit agreed to an exclusive trading pact with the Plymouth colonists. Squanto remained behind and traveled throughout the area to establish trading relations with several tribes. By July 1621, the missing boy John Billington almost ended the peace, but the peace existed for a time. The Nauset tribe found him. The Pilgrims reimburse the corn that they unwittingly stole from them for the return of the boy.
During their dealings with the Nausets over the release of John Billington, the Pilgrims learned of the troubles that Massasoit was experiencing. Massasoit, Squanto, and several other Wampanoags had been captured by Corbitant, sachem of the Narragansett tribe. A party of ten men under the leadership of Myles Standish set out to find and execute Corbitant. While hunting for him, they learned that Squanto had escaped, and Massasoit was back in power. Standish and his men had injured several Native Americans, so the colonists offered them medical attention in Plymouth. They had failed to capture Corbitant, but the show of force by Standish had garnered respect for the Pilgrims and, as a result, nine of the most powerful sachems in the area signed a treaty in September, including Massasoit and Corbitant, pledging their loyalty to King James.
In my view, the man (including many other people) responsible for the breaking of the treaties, the ruin of tons of Native American lives, and the changing of an era was Myles Standish. He was a murderer and the breaker of the peace in the region. The settlement of Wessaguessett north of Weymouth, Massachusetts was short-lived (by colonists from the ship The Sparrow in May 1622). Reports reached Plymouth of a military threat to Wessagussett, and Myles Standish organized a militia to defend them. However, he found that there had been no attack. He (i.e. Myles Standish) therefore decided on a pre-emptive strike, an event which historian Nathaniel Philbrick calls "Standish's raid." He lured two prominent Massachusett military leaders into a house at Wessagussett under the pretense of sharing a meal and making negotiations. Standish and his men then stabbed and killed them. Standish and his men pursued Obtakiest, a local sachem, but he escaped with three prisoners from Wessagussett; he then executed them. Within a short time, Wessagussett was disbanded, and the survivors were integrated into the town of Plymouth. After Standish's raid, many Native Americans fled the area, and many left their villages. The Pilgrims lost trade in furs. Standish's raid had disastrous consequences for the colony, as attested by William Bradford in a letter to the Merchant Adventurers: "...we had much damaged our trade, for there where we had most skins the Indians are run away from their habitations." The closest Pilgrim ally in the region that increased their power who was the Massasoit-led Wampanoag tribe. In November 1621, the Fortune ship camped in Plymouth. Among the passengers of the Fortune were several of the original Leiden congregation, including William Brewster's son Jonathan, Edward Winslow's brother John, and Philip Delano (the family name was earlier "de la Noye") whose descendants include President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Myles Standish was the military leader of the Plymouth Colony.
The Pequot War existed in 1637. The war's roots go back to 1632, when a dispute arose between Dutch fur traders and Plymouth officials over control of the Connecticut River Valley near modern Hartford, Connecticut. Representatives from the Dutch East India Company and Plymouth Colony both had deeds that claimed that they had rightfully purchased the land from the Pequots. A sort of land rush occurred as settlers from Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies tried to beat the Dutch in settling the area; the influx of English settlers also threatened the Pequot. Other confederations in the area sided with the English, including the Narragansetts and Mohegans, who were the traditional enemies of the Pequots. The murder of John Oldham in 1636 was blamed on allies of the Pequots. In April 1637, a raid on a Pequot village by John Endicott led to a retaliatory raid by Pequot warriors on the town of Wethersfield, Connecticut, where some 30 English settlers were killed. This led to a further retaliation, where a raid led by Captain John Underhill and Captain John Mason burned a Pequot village to the ground near modern Mystic, Connecticut, killing hundreds of Pequots. Plymouth Colony had little to do with the actual fighting in the war.
The 1637 Massacre in Mystic caused at least 700 Native Americans to be murdered by Europeans. Men, women, and children Native Americans were burned alive, and their buildings were destroyed. William Bradford or the Governor of Plymouth praised the massacre in sick terms by the following words: "... Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire...horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy."
“This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots," read Governor John Winthrop’s proclamation.
In 1637, Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford described the massacre of a community of Pequot people by white settlers:
“Those that scraped the fire were [slain] with the sword; some hewed to [pieces], others [run] [through] with their rapiers, so as they were quickly [dispatched], and very few [escaped]. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the [fire], and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the [stink] and [scent] thereof, but the victory seemed a [sweet] sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to [enclose] their [enemies] in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an [enemy]."
You couldn’t make this stuff up. This is real and these massacres against Native Americans are totally evil plus disgusting. Later, Pequots prisoners were executed. Pequot women and children were sold into slavery in the West Indies. The Pequot War killed most of the Pequot people.
In 1643, the Mohegans defeated the Narragansetts in a war with support from the colonists. When Massasoit died, then more problems happened. His brother Phillip (Metacom was the sachem or leader of the Wampanoag. Philip wanted the colonists gone. He formed an alliance with many Native American tribes. Then, Native American John Assamon was murdered. King Philip's War existed when the colonists brutally defeated the Native American forces. Philip's wife and child were kidnapped by colonial terrorists and made into slaves in the West Indies. Philip was murdered on August 12, 1676. Then, the colonists exterminated most of the Native Americans in the region. Now, you know the truth. Today, Native Americans suffer massive kidnappings and rapes of Native American women, lax infrastructure, oil pipelines on their lands, racism, stereotypes, and other evils that must be confronted and dealt with. Standing up against injustice so justice can flourish in the Universe is what we are born to do indeed.
Fred Hampton
The late Brother Fred Hampton existed as a very heroic human being. Being a revolutionary was an important calling in his life. As a natural-born leader, he fought for human rights when he was a child. He was born in Summit Argo, Illinois. His parents moved to Maywood, Illinois when he was 10 years old. His parents traveled from Louisiana to Illinois as part of the Great Migration of African Americans during the 20th century. Fred Hampton was gifted to be very intelligent academically and athletically. That is why he wanted to play center field for the New York Yankees. His political and social consciousness developed early during his life. Even at 10, he hosted weekend breakfasts for other children from the neighborhood (cooking the food himself), which was before the Panthers' free breakfast program. During high school, Hampton protested his school's discrimination against black staff and black students. By 1966, he became more socialist. He worked in the NAACP to help the Maywood black community, and he joined the Black Panther Party. He formed the Rainbow Coalition to unite the Black Panthers, Young Patriots, Young Lords, and many Chicago street gangs to fight for social change and end infighting. This scared Hoover and the FBI. They used COINTELPRO to try to stop the advancements made by the Black Panthers. Chicago police officers, with the help of an informant, organized the assassination of Mark Clark and Fred Hampton in a home on December 4, 1969. The assassination was so unjust and evil that the authorities had no choice but to send money to the Hampton and Clark families back then. Fred Hampton was right to say that people have the right to be revolutionaries, and we have to stop fascism in our society. He was one leader of the black freedom struggle who inspired freedom fighters globally.
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The Beginning
Fred Hampton only lived for 22 years on Earth, but he made tons of contributions to the freedom struggle worldwide. He was born in the location of Summit Argo, Illinois in the Midwest. The date of his birth was August 30, 1948. By the time he was 10 years old, his parents moved him and his family to another Chicago suburb named Maywood. His parents came from Louisiana as part of the Great Migration of Americans in the early 20th century out of the South. There were 2 major Great Migrations of black Americans during the 20th century (the first one was from 1910-1930 and the second one was from 1940-1970). His parents were working at the Argo Starch Company, a corn starch processor. When Fred Hampton was young, he loved to learn and play sports. When he was only 10 years old, he started hosting weekend breakfasts for other children from the neighborhood, cooking the meals himself in what could be described as a precursor to the Panthers' free breakfast program. In high school, he led walkouts protesting black students' exclusion from the competition for homecoming queen and calling on officials to hire more black teachers and administrators. Hampton graduated from Proviso East High School with honors and varsity letters, and a Junior Achievement Award, in 1966. Fred Hampton turned 18 in the year of 1966. During that time, he started to identify with the Third World socialist struggles. He read literature from communist revolutionaries Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Zedong. Shortly after, Hampton urged not only peace in the Vietnam War but also North Vietnam's victory. Obviously, I don't agree with the Vietnam War and I'm progressive on economic issues, but I don't agree with Communism (because at its core, Communism is atheism. The vast majority of Communists on Earth are atheists. I'm not an atheist as I believe in Almighty God). Also, I don't agree with laissez-faire capitalism either. Capitalism and Communism are not infallible. Fred Hampton was active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and assumed leadership of its West Suburban Branch's Youth Council. In his capacity as an NAACP youth organizer, he demonstrated natural leadership abilities: from a community of 27,000, he was able to muster a youth group of 500 members strong. He worked to get more, and better recreational facilities established in the neighborhoods and to improve educational resources for Maywood's impoverished black community. So, Fred Hampton was a naturally born leader. In 1968, Hampton was accused of assaulting an ice cream truck driver, stealing $71 worth of ice cream bars, and giving them to kids in the street. He was convicted in May 1969 and served time in prison. In a memoir, Frank B. Wilderson III places this incident in the context of COINTELPRO's efforts to disrupt the Black Panthers of Chicago by the "leveling of trumped-up charges."
A Natural Leader and Activist
By the late 1960's, Fred Hampton was a prominent leader of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. In 1969, Hampton, now deputy chairman of the BPP Illinois chapter, conducted a meeting condemning sexism. After 1969, the party considered sexism counter-revolutionary. In 1970, about 40–70% of party members were women. Fred Hampton has unique plans of solidarity. In 1969, Fred Hampton and his friends and associates achieved many successes in Chicago. Perhaps the most important was a nonaggression pact among Chicago's most powerful street gangs. Emphasizing that racial and ethnic conflict among gangs would only keep its members entrenched in poverty, Hampton strove to forge an anti-racist, class-conscious, multiracial alliance among the BPP, the Young Patriots Organization, and the Young Lords under the leadership of Jose Cha Cha Jimenez, leading to the Rainbow Coalition.
Hampton met the Young Lords in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood the day after they were in the news for occupying a police community workshop at the Chicago 18th District Police Station. He was arrested twice with Jimenez at the Wicker Park Welfare Office, and both were charged with "mob action" at a peaceful picket of the office. Later, the Rainbow Coalition was joined nationwide by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Brown Berets, AIM, and the Red Guard Party. In May 1969, Hampton called a press conference to announce that the coalition had formed. What the coalition groups would do was based on common action. Some of their joint issues were poverty, anti-racism, corruption, police brutality, and substandard housing. If there was a protest or a demonstration, the groups would attend the event and support each other. Jeffrey Haas, who was Hampton's lawyer, has praised some of Hampton's politics and his success in unifying movements. But Haas criticizes the way Hampton and the BPP organized in a pyramidal/vertical structure, contrasting this with the horizontal structure of Black Lives Matter: "They may also have picked up on the vulnerability of a hierarchical movement where you have one leader, which makes the movement very vulnerable if that leader is imprisoned, killed, or otherwise compromised. I think the fact that Black Lives Matter says 'We're leaderful, not leaderless' perhaps makes them less vulnerable to this kind of government assault."
I slightly disagree with Haas, because we don't need movements to have one single person to run everything obviously (as diverse leaders are necessary), but there is a problem with too much decentralization that causes no widespread solutions to solve problems (in other words, you need infrastructure, a cogent plan, and strategies in getting what you want). As Standford historian and civil rights writer Clayborn Carson has accurately stated in an interview in 2020,
"...One thing that I think everyone would agree on is that the young people who are sparking these protests have no single charismatic, supremely articulate leader. One of the consequences is they don’t control the messaging of it. I think that is one of the weaknesses of Black Lives Matter. There is no established leadership to articulate messages. What is the goal? Is it simply to express anger or is to achieve reform about police behavior? If it is to bring about reform, then what would that look like? It doesn’t have to be one charismatic spokesperson. It could be many leaders, but there needs to be people saying, ‘This is what we want’ and clearly articulating that. That’s just not happening now with any consistency...I think he [in reference to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.] would be very pleased to see that the protests were not simply black people protesting. People who are not black are recognizing the urgency of the moment and the righteousness of the anger. I think he would also caution that some specific objectives should be clearly articulated. At some point, the anger and protest have to be linked to some concrete reforms, but I recognize that the protest organizers are reacting to recent events that could not be anticipated. The very strength of the Black Lives Matter movement is that it is decentralized and a lot of the protest is more spontaneous. But that’s also a weakness...."
Chicago Police and FBI Harassment
Fred Hampton was known for his organizing skills, oratorical ability, and charisma. Hampton was the leader of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers. He organized weekly rallies, participated in strikes, worked closely with the BPP's local People's Clinic, taught political education classes every morning at 6 am, and launched a project for community supervision of the police. Fred Hampton was a great leader. Hampton was also instrumental in the BPP's Free Breakfast Program. When Bob Brown left the party with Kwame Ture, in the FBI-fomented SNCC/Panther split, Hampton assumed chairmanship of the Illinois state BPP. This automatically made him a national BPP deputy chairman. As the FBI's COINTELPRO began to decimate the nationwide Panther leadership, Hampton's prominence in the national hierarchy increased rapidly and dramatically. Eventually, he was in line to be appointed to the party's Central Committee Chief of Staff. He would have achieved this position had he not been killed on December 4, 1969. The FBI hated Fred Hampton and was jealous of his leadership and talent for communication plus organization. He was a major threat to the FBI among Black Panther leaders. So, the FBI illegally took tabs on his activities. Investigations have shown that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was determined to prevent the formation of a cohesive Black movement in the United States. Hoover believed the Panthers, Young Patriots, Young Lords, and similar radical coalitions that Hampton forged in Chicago were a steppingstone to the rise of a revolution that could cause a radical change in the U.S. government. As early as 1967, the FBI opened a file on Fred Hampton. The FBI tapped Hampton's mother's phone by February of 1968. In May, the FBI placed Hampton on the bureau's "Agitator Index" as a "key militant leader." In late 1968, the Racial Matters squad of the FBI's Chicago field office recruited William O'Neal to work with it; he had recently been arrested twice for interstate car theft and impersonating a federal officer. In exchange for having his felony charges dropped and receiving a monthly stipend, O'Neal agreed to infiltrate the BPP as a counterintelligence operative.
O'Neal joined the party and quickly rose in the organization, becoming Director of Chapter Security and Hampton's bodyguard. In 1969, the FBI Special Agent in Charge (SAC) in San Francisco wrote Hoover that the agent's investigation had found that, in his city at least, the Panthers were primarily feeding breakfast to children. Hoover responded with a memo implying that the agent's career prospects depended on his supplying evidence to support Hoover's view that the BPP was "a violence-prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means." That is ironic because Hoover was a hypocritical, anti-democratic extremist who lied to people, violated due process, and was a disgrace to anybody who loves democracy. Using anonymous letters, the FBI sowed distrust and eventually instigated a split between the Panthers and the Blackstone Rangers. O'Neal instigated an armed clash between them on April 2, 1969. The Panthers became effectively isolated from their power base in the Chicago ghetto, so the FBI worked to undermine its ties with other radical organizations. O'Neal was instructed to "create a rift" between the party and Students for a Democratic Society, whose Chicago headquarters was near that of the Panthers. This fact showed that the FBI was disingenuous because they wouldn't use lying if they were all about truth and justice.
The FBI released a batch of racist cartoons in the Panthers' name, aimed at alienating white activists. It also launched a disinformation program to forestall the formation of the Rainbow Coalition, but the BPP did make an alliance with the Young Patriots and Young Lords. In repeated directives, Hoover demanded that COINTELPRO personnel investigate the Rainbow Coalition, "destroy what the [BPP] stands for", and "eradicate its 'serve the people' programs." Documents secured by Senate investigators in the early 1970s revealed that the FBI actively encouraged violence between the Panthers and other radical groups, which provoked multiple murders in cities throughout the country. On July 16, 1969, an armed confrontation between party members and the Chicago Police Department resulted in one BPP member being mortally wounded, and six others arrested on serious charges. In early October, Hampton and his girlfriend Deborah Johnson (now known as Akua Njeri), who was pregnant with their child (Fred Hampton Jr.), rented a four-and-a-half-room apartment at 2337 West Monroe Street to be closer to BPP headquarters. O'Neal reported to his superiors that much of the Panthers' "provocative" arms stockpile was stored there. He drew them a map of the apartment. In early November, Hampton traveled to California on a speaking engagement with the UCLA Law Students Association. He met with the remaining BPP national hierarchy, who appointed him to the party's central committee. He was soon to take the position of chief of staff and major spokesman.
His Assassination
During the night of November 13, 1969, Fred Hampton was in California. During that time, Chicago police officers John J. Gilhooly and Frank G. Rappaport were killed in a gun battle with Panthers; one died the next day. A total of nine police officers were shot. Spurgeon Winter Jr., a 19-year-old Panther, was killed by police. Another Panther, Lawrence S. Bell, was charged with murder. In a racist unsigned editorial headlined "No Quarter for Wild Beasts", the Chicago Tribune urged that Chicago police officers approaching suspected Panthers "should be ordered to be ready to shoot." The FBI used the COINTELPRO program to try to prevent any improvement in the effectiveness of the BPP leadership. The FBI orchestrated an armed raid with the Chicago police and Cook County State's Attorney on Hampton's Chicago apartment. They had obtained detailed information about the apartment, including a layout of furniture, from O'Neal. An augmented, 14-man team of the SAO (state Special Prosecutions Unit) was organized for a predawn raid; they were armed with a search warrant for illegal weapons. On the evening of December 3, Hampton taught a political education course at a local church, which was attended by most Panther members. Afterward, as was typical, he was accompanied to his Monroe Street apartment by Johnson and several Panthers: Blair Anderson, James Grady, Ronald "Doc" Satchell, Harold Bell, Verlina Brewer, Louis Truelock, Brenda Harris, and Mark Clark. O'Neal was already there, having prepared a late dinner, which the group ate around midnight. O'Neal had slipped the secobarbital into a drink that Hampton consumed during the dinner to sedate Hampton so he would not awaken during the subsequent raid. O'Neal left after dinner. At about 1:30 a.m., December 4, Hampton fell asleep mid-sentence while talking to his mother on the telephone. Although Hampton was not known to take drugs, Cook County chemist Eleanor Berman later reported that she had run two tests, each showing evidence of barbiturates in Hampton's blood. An FBI chemist failed to find similar traces, but Berman stood by her findings.
The raid happened on December 4, 1969. The office of Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan organized the raid, using officers attached to his office. Hampton had recently strongly criticized Hanrahan, saying that Hanrahan's talk about a "war on gangs" was really rhetoric used to enable him to carry out a "war on black youth." It happened at 4 am. The heavily armed police team arrived at the site. It had 2 teams. 8 cops were in the front of the building, and six were in the back. At 4:45 a.m., they stormed the apartment. Mark Clark, sitting in the front room of the apartment with a shotgun in his lap, was on security duty. The police shot him in the chest, killing him instantly. An alternative account said that Clark answered the door and police immediately shot him. Either way, Clark's gun discharged once into the ceiling. This single round was fired when he suffered a reflexive death-convulsion after being shot. This was the only shot fired by the Panthers. Hampton, drugged by barbiturates, was sleeping on a mattress in the bedroom with Johnson, who was nine months pregnant with their child. Police officers removed her from the room while Hampton lay unconscious in bed. Then the raiding team fired at the head of the south bedroom. Hampton was wounded in the shoulder by the shooting. According to the National Archives and Records Administration, "Upon that discovery, an officer shot him twice in his head and killed him."
Fellow Black Panther Harold Bell said that he heard the following exchange:
"That's Fred Hampton."
"Is he dead?... Bring him out."
"He's barely alive."
"He'll make it."
The injured Panthers said they heard two shots. According to Hampton's supporters, the shots were fired point-blank at Hampton's head. According to Johnson, an officer then said: "He's good and dead now." Fred Hampton's body was dragged into the bedroom doorway and left in a pool of blood. The officers directed their gunfire at the remaining Panthers who had been sleeping in the north bedroom (Satchel, Anderson, Brewer, and Harris). They were seriously wounded, beaten, and dragged into the street. They were arrested on charges of aggravated assault and attempted murder of the officers. They were each held on $100,000 bail. Many of the officers smiled when they carried Hampton's body out of the house. In the early 1990s, Jose "Cha Cha" Jimenez, a former president and co-founder of the Young Lords who had developed close ties to Hampton and the Chicago Black Panther Party during the late 1960s, interviewed Johnson about the raid. She said:
"I believe Fred Hampton was drugged. The reason why is because when he woke up when the person [Truelock] said, "Chairman, chairman," he was shaking Fred's arm, you know, Fred's arm was folded across the head of the bed. And Fred—he just raised his head up real slow. It was like watching a slow motion. He raised. His eyes were open. He raised his head up real slow, you know, with his eyes toward the entranceway, toward the bedroom and laid his head back down. That was the only movement he made [..."
The seven Panthers who survived the raid were indicted by a grand jury on charges of attempted murder, armed violence, and other weapons charges. These charges were subsequently dropped. During the trial, the Chicago Police Department claimed that the Panthers were the first to fire shots. But a later investigation found that the Chicago police fired between 90 and 99 shots, while the only Panthers shot was from Clark's dropped shotgun. After the raid, the apartment was left unguarded. The Panthers sent some members to investigate, accompanied by videographer Mike Gray and stills photographer Norris McNamara to document the scene. This footage was instrumental in proving the raid was an assassination. The footage was later released as part of the 1971 documentary The Murder of Fred Hampton. After a break-in at an FBI office in Pennsylvania, the existence of COINTELPRO, an illegal counter-intelligence program, was revealed and reported. With this program revealed, many activists and others began to suspect that the police raid and Hampton's killing were conducted under this program. One of the documents released after the break-in was a floor plan of Hampton's apartment. Another document outlined a deal that the FBI brokered with US Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst to conceal the FBI's role in Hampton's death and the existence of COINTELPRO.
His Funeral
After Fred Hampton's unjust murder, the police lied about his death immediately. At a press conference during the next day, the police said that the arrest team were attacked by the Black Panthers and defended themselves accordingly. This obviously wasn't the case. During the 2nd press conference on December 8, the police leadership praised the assault team for their "remarkable restraint", "bravery", and "professional discipline" in not killing all the Panthers present. Photographic evidence was presented of "bullet holes" allegedly made by shots fired by the Panthers, but reporters soon challenged this claim. Crooked, terrorist cops lied about what happened, because they have a callous attitude about black activists seeking real social change in society. There was an internal investigation that existed. The police claimed that their l investigation was undertaken, and the police claimed that their colleagues on the assault team were exonerated of any wrongdoing, concluding that they "used lawful means to overcome the assault." As time went on, we shall see that this distorted assumption was false. Five thousand people attended Fred Hampton's funeral. He was eulogized by many black leaders like Jesse Jackson and Ralph Abernathy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In his eulogy, Jackson said that "when Fred was shot in Chicago, black people in particular, and decent people in general, bled everywhere." On December 6, members of the Weather Underground destroyed numerous police vehicles in a retaliatory bombing spree at 3600 N. Halsted Street, Chicago. The police called their raid on Hampton's apartment a "shootout." The Black Panthers called it a "shoot-in", because so many shots were fired by police. On December 11 and 12, the two competing daily newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, published vivid accounts of the events but drew different conclusions. The Tribune has long been considered the politically conservative newspaper, and the Sun-Times the liberal paper. On December 11, the Tribune published a page 1 article titled, "Exclusive – Hanrahan, Police Tell Panther Story." The article included photographs supplied by Hanrahan's office that depicted bullet holes in a thin white curtain and door jamb as evidence that the Panthers fired multiple bullets at the police.
Jack Challem, editor of the Wright College News, the student newspaper at Wright Junior College in Chicago, had visited the apartment on December 6, when it was still unsecured. He took numerous photographs of the crime scenes. A member of the Black Panthers was allowing visitors to tour the apartment. Challem's photographs did not show the bullet holes reported by the Tribune. On the morning of December 12, after the Tribune article had appeared with the Hanrahan-supplied photos, Challem contacted a reporter at the Sun-Times, showed him his own photographs, and encouraged the other reporter to visit the apartment. That evening, the Sun-Times published a page 1 article with the headline: "Those 'bullet holes' aren't." According to the article, the alleged bullet holes (supposedly the result of the Panthers shooting in the direction of the police) were nail heads. Fred Hampton Jr. was born four weeks after his mother (then Johnson) saw Fred Hampton's murder. Civil rights activists Roy Wilkins and Ramsey Clark, styled as "The Commission of Inquiry into the Black Panthers and the Police", alleged that the Chicago police had killed Hampton without justification or provocation and had violated the Panthers' constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure. "The Commission" further alleged that the Chicago Police Department had imposed a summary punishment on the Panthers.
The Fight for Accountability
A federal grand jury did not return any indictment against any of the individuals involved with the planning or execution of the raid, including the officers involved in killing Hampton. O'Neal, who had given the FBI the floor plan of the apartment and drugged Hampton, later admitted his involvement in setting up the raid. He committed suicide on January 15, 1990. The injury into a real investigation of the assassination of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark came in stages. Cook County Coroner Andrew Toman started to form a special six-member coroner's jury to the deaths of Hampton and Clark. On December 23, Toman announced four additions to the jury, who included two African-American men: physician Theodore K. Lawless and attorney Julian B. Wilkins, the son of J. Ernest Wilkins Sr. He said the four were selected from a group of candidates submitted to his office by groups and individuals representing both Chicago's black and white communities. Civil rights leaders and spokesmen for the black community were reportedly disappointed with the selection. An official with the Chicago Urban League said, "I would have had more confidence in the jury if one of them had been a black man who has a rapport with the young and the grass roots in the community." Gus Savage said that such a man to whom the community could relate need not be black. The jury eventually included a third black man, who had been a member of the first coroner's jury sworn in on December 4.
The blue-ribbon panel started on January 6, 1970. On January 21, they ruled the deaths of Hampton and Clark to be justifiable homicides. The jury qualified their verdict on Hampton's death as "based solely and exclusively on the evidence presented to this inquisition"; police and expert witnesses provided the only testimony during the inquest. This ruling was wrong obviously. Jury foreman James T. Hicks stated that they could not consider the charges made by surviving Black Panthers who had been in the apartment; they had told reporters that the police had entered the apartment shooting. The survivors were reported to have refused to testify during the inquest because they faced criminal charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault during the raid. Attorneys for the Hampton and Clark families did not introduce any witnesses during the proceedings but called the inquest "a well-rehearsed theatrical performance designed to vindicate the police officers." Hanrahan said the verdict was recognition "of the truthfulness of our police officers' account of the events." Released on May 15, 1970, the reports of a federal grand jury criticized the actions of the police, the surviving Black Panthers, and the Chicago news media. The grand jury called the police department's raid "ill conceived" and said many errors were committed during the post-raid investigation and reconstruction of the events. It said that the surviving Black Panthers' refusal to cooperate hampered the investigation and that the press "improperly and grossly exaggerated stories."
By 1970, the survivors and relatives of Hampton and Clark filed a civil suit saying that the police and FBI violated human rights. They sought $47.7 million damages. Twenty-eight defendants were named, including Hanrahan as well as the City of Chicago, Cook County, and federal governments. It took years for the case to get to trial, which lasted 18 months. It was reported to have been the longest federal trial up to that time. After its conclusion in 1977, Judge Joseph Sam Perry of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois dismissed the suit against 21 of the defendants before jury deliberations. After jurors deadlocked on a verdict, Perry dismissed the suit against the remaining defendants.
The plaintiffs appealed. In 1979, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago found that the government had withheld relevant documents, thereby obstructing the judicial process. Reinstating the case against 24 of the defendants, the Court of Appeals ordered a new trial. The Supreme Court of the United States heard an appeal by the defendants but voted 5–3 in 1980 to remand the case to the District Court for a new trial.
In 1982, the City of Chicago, Cook County, and the federal government agreed to a settlement in which each would pay $616,333 (equivalent to $1.87 million per payee in 2022) to a group of nine plaintiffs, including the mothers of Hampton and Clark. The $1.85 million settlement (equivalent to $5.61 million in 2022) was believed to be the largest ever in a civil rights case during that time. G. Flint Taylor, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, said, "The settlement is an admission of the conspiracy that existed between the FBI and Hanrahan's men to murder Fred Hampton." Assistant United States Attorney Robert Gruenberg said the settlement was intended to avoid another costly trial and was not an admission of guilt or responsibility by any of the defendants. The Chicago police officers were complicit in the murder of Hampton and Clark. Ten days afterward, Bobby Rush, the then deputy minister of defense for the Illinois Black Panther Party, called the raiding party an "execution squad." As is typical in settlements, the three government defendants did not acknowledge claims of responsibility for plaintiffs' allegations. Hampton was very close with Chicago Black Catholic priest George Clements, who served as his mentor and as a chaplain for the local Panther chapter. Hampton and the Panthers also used Clements's parish, Holy Angels Catholic Church in Chicago (now the parish of Our Lady of Africa), as a refuge in times of particular surveillance or pursuit from the police. They also provided security for several of Clements's "Black Unity Masses", part of his revolutionary activities during the Black Catholic Movement. Clements spoke at Hampton's funeral, and also said a Requiem Mass for him at Holy Angels.
Michael Newton is among the writers who have concluded that Hampton was assassinated. In his 2016 book Unsolved Civil Rights Murder Cases, 1934–1970, Newton writes that Hampton "was murdered in his sleep by Chicago police with FBI collusion." This view is also presented in Jakobi Williams's book From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago. According to a 2007 Chicago Tribune report, "The raid ended the promising political career of Cook County State's Atty. Edward V. Hanrahan, who was indicted but cleared with 13 other law-enforcement agents on charges of obstructing justice. Bernard Carey, a Republican, defeated him in the next election, in part because of the support of outraged black voters. Jeffrey Haas, with his law partners G. Flint Taylor and Dennis Cunningham and attorney James D. Montgomery, were the attorneys for the plaintiffs in the federal suit Hampton v. Hanrahan, conducted additional research and wrote a book about these events. It was published in 2009. He wrote that Fred Hampton would make Chicago's West Side become much better today with his leadership, programs, community development, and educating the people on solving problems. In 1990, the Chicago City Council unanimously passed a resolution, introduced by then-Alderman Madeline Haithcock, commemorating December 4, 2004, as Fred Hampton Day in Chicago. The resolution read in part:
"Fred Hampton, who was only 21 years old, made his mark in Chicago history not so much by his death as by the heroic efforts of his life and by his goals of empowering the most oppressed sector of Chicago's Black community, bringing people into political life through participation in their own freedom fighting organization."
Fred Hampton's Legacy
There are many people who changed history. Fred Hampton changed history forever with his activism, courage, and a sense of leadership. He wanted a revolution in society to end the oppressive, capitalist, and imperialistic system harming black people in Chicago and all freedom-loving people (of every background) globally. By the late 1960's, the anti-Vietnam War movement was growing, the Civil Rights Movement became more progressive, and the Black Power movement saw millions of supporters in America alone. Fred Hampton was a gifted orator, scholar, athlete, and activist. He used his God-given skills to not only inspire change, but he worked on programs to end gang warfare, to fight poverty, to feed children, to educate the people on political/social consciousness, and be a beacon of hope and light for our community. Jealousy and hatred caused the FBI and the Chicago Police Department to harass many Black Panthers in Chicago, including Fred Hampton. The FBI's COINTELPRO explicitly mentioned that they wanted to spread division and crisis in the black freedom movements in order to stop progressive activism from growing in society (and prevent the rise of what they deemed a "Black Messiah" that would galvanize humanity in a positive direction). Fred Hampton wanted the people, not a single person, to have the power to grow the community. He was a dedicated socialist who was making results real in Chicago. Many wanted him to be part of the Chairman Board of the Black Panthers nationwide. The Chicago police and the FBI used the informant O'Neal to monitor Hampton plus find out where he was living. The Chicago police murdered Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in cold blood. It would take years for the government to give the Hampton and Clark families economic compensation. Today, we have a long way to go with book bans, voter suppression laws, and other policies that harm democratic rights. Wars are still in existence, and record strikes seeking economic justice are commonplace. Likewise, we are motivated by Fred Hampton's life to desire solutions in a complex world. Our communities stand on the foundations of giants like Frances Thompson, Ida B. Wells, Auturo A. Schomburg, Rosa Parks, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Highland Garnett, Paul Cuffee, Sojourner Truth, and other heroes who sacrificed their lives in order for us to have freedom and justice. We are now focused on doing what is right for power ought to be for the people completely.
Rest in Power Brother Fred Hampton
By Timothy
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