Black Against Empire

by Joshua Bloom

  Some in the coalition believed that resisting the repression of the Panthers was a matter of life and death. And for good reason. In July, the ambulance had delivered Larry Roberson to the county hospital in good condition after being shot by police. Yet he died in the hospital on September 4 from some combination of injuries sustained in the shooting and improper medical care.34

  What made the stories of Panther repression so compelling to many young blacks in Chicago was not how unusual they were but how common. The summer had been filled with violence, and many young black people had died in conflicts with the Chicago police. On October 5, police shot sixteen-year-old John Soto in the back of the head, killing him. Eyewitnesses said police, unprovoked, had fired as Soto walked away. Soto’s older brother, Michael Soto, a black community activist and a decorated army sergeant on leave from Vietnam, helped organize rallies to protest John’s killing by police. On October 10, police fatally shot Michael Soto as well, claiming they had caught him in a robbery attempt.35 In August, police killed nineteen-year-old Linda Anderson by firing a shotgun through her apartment door. They claimed they had been trying to protect her from rape by an acquaintance.36 In 1969 and 1970, Chicago police killed fifty-nine blacks versus nineteen whites in a city where whites outnumbered blacks by more than two to one. A black person in Chicago was six times more likely to be killed by the police than a white person.37

  Panther Spurgeon Jake Winters, nineteen, knew Roberson and took the police actions harder than most. A scrawny and studious kid, he had received a scholarship to the Catholic Xavier University. But on Thursday November 13, 1969, he was not thinking about school. The city was cold. Snow fell lightly on the streets. Winters’ heart was full of rage. He went with his friend and fellow Panther Lance Bell to their hideout at the abandoned Washington Park Hotel on 58th Street at Calumet Avenue. At some point someone called the police and Bell fled, leaving Winters to stand alone. As the first police officer approached the abandoned building, Winters picked up one of two rifles, took aim, and pulled the trigger. The officer fell dead. In the ensuing rush of police cars and sirens and volley after volley of police fire, Winters ran from room to room shooting at the police through the windows of the empty hotel. Over the next twenty minutes, in the storm of his rage, Winters wounded nine officers and totaled five police cars. One police officer and military veteran later recalled that the firefight was hotter than any he had experienced in Vietnam.

  Bleeding badly, Winters escaped out of the east side of the building and through a dark tunnel leading to King Drive and Washington Park. Instead of fleeing into the safety of his neighborhood, he climbed the nearby stairs. This was his last stand, and he waited, gun in hand. When the first officer came through the tunnel, Winters shot him, knocking him to the ground. Then, as other officers rushed forward, Winters walked to the fallen officer, purposefully raised his gun, and shot the officer in the face, killing him, as the remaining officers gunned Winters down.38

  DECEMBER 4, 1969

  As directed by national headquarters, the Chicago FBI office had first established a counterintelligence program against the Chicago Black Panther Party in the fall of 1968, at which point agents began closely monitoring the Panthers via a warrantless wiretap of their office and other means. A special FBI Racial Matters Squad was organized to spearhead actions against the Panthers. Roy M. Mitchell, a special agent in the squad, was the person who had approached William O’Neal while he was a prisoner in the Cook County jail and recruited him to infiltrate the Panthers and provide information to the FBI. On November 1, the day the Chicago Black Panther office opened, O’Neal, already on the FBI payroll, went to the office and joined the Black Panther Party. As a seemingly eager early recruit, O’Neal soon was appointed chief of security for the Chicago Panthers.39

  The Chicago FBI worked closely with local law enforcement, mostly through the offices of Edward V. Hanrahan, who was elected Cook County state’s attorney in November 1968. Hanrahan created a Special Prosecutions Unit (SPU), putting Assistant State’s Attorney Richard Jalovec in charge. Starting in April 1969, FBI Special Agent Mitchell worked closely with Jalovec to target the Panthers. That June, as the FBI began coordinating raids on the Chicago Panther offices, a special squad of nine Chicago police officers was assigned to report directly to the Special Prosecutions Unit, which in turn was working closely with the FBI Racial Matters Squad.40

  On the night of November 13, FBI Special Agent Mitchell met with informant William O’Neal and showed him photos of the two dead police officers killed earlier that day by Spurgeon Winters. In a series of meetings in the following days, Mitchell had O’Neal help map out the exact layout of Fred Hampton’s apartment, including the specific location of his bed and nightstand. He also asked O’Neal to keep tabs on who was coming and going from the apartment and to determine what weapons were kept there.41

  Armed with this information, a raiding party of fourteen SPU officers arrived outside Hampton’s apartment at 4:30 A.M. on December 4. They did not bring the standard raiding equipment they had used in previous Chicago Panther raids, such as tear gas or sound equipment; instead, they carried a Thompson submachine gun, five shotguns, a carbine, nineteen .38 caliber pistols, and one .357 caliber pistol. The assault was quick and decisive. Within fifteen minutes, Fred Hampton was dead, shot twice through the head while he lay in bed. Peoria, Illinois, Panther leader Mark Clark, in Chicago attending a statewide meeting of Party leaders, was also dead. The seven other Panthers in the apartment—four with bullet wounds—were arrested on charges of attempted murder, aggravated battery, and unlawful use of weapons. One SPU officer was shot in the leg.42

  Hanrahan told the press that the Panthers fired first and continued to shoot repeatedly despite warnings from police that they were at the door: “The immediate, violent, criminal reaction of the occupants in shooting at announced police officers emphasizes the extreme viciousness of the Black Panther Party. So does their refusal to cease firing at the police officers when urged to do so several times.” Panther survivors claimed the SPU never knocked and came in shooting.43

  The Chicago FBI viewed the raid as a success, attributable in part to the information provided by William O’Neal. Following the raid, the Chicago field office wrote to the FBI headquarters requesting a $300 bonus for O’Neal: “[Prior to the raid], a detailed inventory of the weapons and also a detailed floor plan of the apartment were furnished to local authorities. In addition, the identities of [Black Panther Party] members utilizing the apartment at the above address were furnished. This information was not available from any other source and subsequently proved to be of tremendous value . . . to police officers participating in a raid . . . on the morning of 12/4/69. The raid was based on the information furnished by the informant.” The bonus was approved.44

  Before sunrise on Friday December 5, the morning after Hampton and Clark were killed, police raided Bobby Rush’s South Side apartment, but Rush was not there.45 Later that same day, still alive and free, Rush began conducting tours of the blood-stained and bullet-ridden apartment where Hampton and Clark had been killed. He told the reporters and community residents who lined up to see the apartment, “This was no shootout. Nobody in the apartment had a chance to fire a gun and we can prove it by the fact that there are no bullet holes outside in the hallways or outside, just big gaping holes in Fred’s bedroom where they fired on him.” The New York Times reported, “Most of the rooms and walls appeared to be free of scars, pockmarks and bullet holes. There were clusters of bullet holes and the gouges of shotgun blasts in the places where the Panthers said the two men had been killed and four others had been wounded. . . . There were no bullet marks in the area of the two doors through which the police said they entered.”46

  WE ARE ALL BLACK PEOPLE

  There was an immediate outpouring of support for Hampton, Clark, and the Panthers. By early evening, three Chicago aldermen, the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League, the Illinois division of the American Civil Liberti
es Union, and a variety of black community groups had called for an independent investigation of the incident.47 New Left attorneys Francis Andrew, Kermit Coleman, and James Montgomery stepped forward to represent the Panthers and the families of Hampton and Clark.48 Black Chicago alderman and funeral home director A. A. Rayner, who viewed the Panthers as a much-needed “youth group” and had previously supported them by cosigning their office lease, offered to hold Fred Hampton’s body at his funeral home for public viewing.49

  Rush, working with Rayner, and Hampton’s mother and father, arranged for an independent autopsy of Hampton at Rayner’s funeral home that evening.50 Dr. Victor Levine, who had served as chief pathologist for the Cook County coroner in the 1950s, conducted the autopsy, assisted by Dr. Carl Caldwell and Dr. Quentin Young. The three doctors found that Hampton had been killed by bullets shot from an angle slightly above and behind his head as he was lying down. They found no powder burns on his hands, contradicting police claims that Hampton had fired at them.51

  On that same Friday, Rush learned that a warrant had been issued for his arrest on charges of failing to register a gun. He arranged to surrender publicly to police on Saturday at a meeting organized by Operation Breadbasket. An overflow crowd of five thousand people, mostly black and many middle class and middle-aged, crammed into the Capitol Theater to witness the surrender. Rev. Jesse Jackson spoke to the crowd, contending that the problem was the exclusion of black people from leadership in the police department. He maintained that white police should be withdrawn from the black community, or black people should be appointed to leadership in the police department: “If we’re 42 percent of the population, then we should have 42 percent of decision-making jobs in the department.”52

  Fred Hampton’s brother Bill also spoke, delivering a message from his parents asking people to maintain the peace—not to riot but to unite. He reported that the independent autopsy conducted Friday at Rayner’s Funeral Home confirmed that Hampton had been murdered while he slept. When Rush walked on stage and embraced Jackson, the crowd cheered wildly. Rush told the audience, “I am turning myself in to black people, who will dictate my future actions.” Police then took Rush into custody. A black ACLU lawyer and the head of the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League accompanied Rush to prevent police wrongdoing.53

  Later that day, released on $1,500 bond, Rush appeared at a Panther rally at the Church of Epiphany. More than three thousand people crammed into the church, and more than one thousand others were turned away. The audience was again predominantly black, but this group was younger, less affluent, and more radical; some three hundred whites and a number of Puerto Rican New Leftists were in the crowd as well. Speakers, including city officials, a college president, a representative of the Puerto Rican Young Lords Organization, a representative of the Communist Party, and various Black Panthers, paid homage to Hampton and Clark. When Rush spoke, he told the audience that the killing of Hampton and Clark threatened them all: “Wake up and see the handwriting on the wall with your lives being threatened and murderers at your doorstep.” Someone passed him a note, which he paused to read. He looked up at the audience and reported that Ronald Satchel, the Chicago Panther deputy minister of health, who had been shot five times by police in the December 4 raid, was in critical condition: “We just got word from the hospital that brother Ronald is fighting for his life.” The audience gasped. “If he dies, this beautiful brother . . .”—Rush’s voice broke off, and two uniformed Panthers leapt to his side. Rush composed himself and continued: “Brother Ron was a former medical student, nineteen years old. He was getting ready to open the Panther’s free medical center before he was gunned down. And now he’s fighting for his life.”54

  Another Panther speaker angrily denounced the “pig power structure that has murdered our dear brothers.” When the speaker urged the audience to “get you some guns and defend yourselves against the pigs,” the crowd broke into a foot stomping, handclapping chant:

  All Power to the People!

  Right On!

  All Power to the People!

  Right On! 55

  The Panthers used the public attention to organize support through popular education, offering more tours of the apartment where Fred Hampton and Mark Clark had been murdered. In the following weeks, thousands of people—and many journalists—flocked to the apartment to mourn the deaths and to consider the evidence for themselves. Most who came were black, representing a wide swath of society, from high school students to professionals in suit and tie, “workmen in paintstained clothes, middle-aged women in flowered hats, neatly dressed office workers, elderly people and postal workers in gray uniform,” according to the New York Times. “Many [gave] a clenched fist salute” as they left. Young New Leftists from across the city put on their political buttons espousing radical causes and made the trip to learn about Fred Hampton. Tours of the apartment ran all day and continued until 8:00 each evening. Panther tour guides showed visitors unscathed walls where police had entered and where they reportedly had stood during the raid, and then the clusters of bullet holes and large pools of blood where the Panthers had been shot. Tours continued until December 17, when Cook County authorities halted them by sealing off the apartment.56

  The National Black Panther Party understood and sought to portray the killing of Hampton and Clark as political assassination and as part of a national government conspiracy to repress the Party. Chief attorney for the Panthers Charles Garry made a claim, widely publicized in the mainstream press, that Hampton and Clark were the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth Panthers killed by police since January 1968.57 Panther Chief of Staff David Hilliard declared, “The organized attempt to destroy the B.P.P. [has] brought to the attention of the American people the atrociousness of the American Government, in terms of its subjects. People are moving for their freedom. The very fact that they attacked us so openly shows that they’re a very brutal people—that they are barbarous, criminal elements against society.”58

  While the number of people who agreed with the Black Panthers’ revolutionary politics was relatively small, many were concerned that the killing of Hampton and Clark was part of a pattern of government repression that posed a broader threat to life and freedom. Many mainstream political organizations—including the NAACP, CORE, the American Jewish Committee, the mayor’s office of Maywood, the Chicago ACLU, and the United Auto Workers—joined the call for an independent investigation of the killings.59

  The director of the Chicago Urban League contended, “Whatever the Panthers believe in, they shouldn’t be shot down like dogs in the street.”60 On December 8, the Chicago Daily Defender, the nation’s largest black newspaper, decried the apparent government conspiracy to repress the Panthers: “Are blacks to be murdered for what they believe or what they say? Is the slaying of leaders of the Black Panthers across the nation a part of a national conspiracy to destroy their organization? These and similar questions are being asked in the black community of Chicago even by those who have little or no sympathy for the Panther Party.”61

  Simultaneously, the New Left took to the streets. Sixty-five young New Leftists were arrested on Park Avenue in New York on December 9 for protesting Hampton’s killing outside an award dinner attended by President Nixon. Many of the protestors were charged with breaking windows at Saks Fifth Avenue and five other upscale stores, and with assaulting police officers.62 And at Panther offices nationwide, young white allies—some of them lawyers—held around-the-clock vigils to prevent further raids, some bringing their bedrolls and sleeping in the Panther offices each night. Allan Brotsky, a lawyer, explained, “We feel this will be a deterrent to lawless raids by the police on Panther headquarters.”63

  On Tuesday December 9, Fred Hampton’s parents, working with the Panthers and SCLC, held memorial services for their slain son. About five thousand people jammed into a church in Maywood and crowded around loudspeakers outside. The Rev. Ralph Abernathy, a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr. and head of the SCLC
, delivered the main eulogy, declaring, “If the United States is successful in crushing the Black Panthers, it won’t be too long before they will crush SCLC, the Urban League and any other organization trying to make things better.”64 Bobby Rush asked the mourners to channel their sorrow into active support for the struggle: “We can mourn today. But if we understood Fred . . . that his life wasn’t given in vain, then there won’t be no more mourning tomorrow. Then all our sorrow will be turned into action.”65 Following the memorial for Fred Hampton, who had been born in the suburbs of Chicago, Hampton’s parents sent their son’s body “home” to be buried in Haynesville, Louisiana, where they had both been born.66

  Wide black support for an independent investigation continued to grow. On the day of the memorial, six black Chicago aldermen—Wilson Frost, George Collins, Fred Hubbard, Robert Biggs, William Shannon, Kenneth Campbell, and Ralph Metcalf—submitted a resolution to the city council calling for an independent investigation: “All of Chicago is entitled to complete clarification of every obtainable fact and circumstance surrounding the deaths of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.”67 The same day, the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League issued a statement denouncing Hanrahan’s Special Prosecutions Unit. The league announced that it would begin its own investigation into the shooting. A spokesman pointedly questioned Hanrahan’s motives and told the press that the shootings were “obviously political assassination.”68 Also that day, the Chicago Conference on Religion and Race, an alliance of Chicago’s black churches, issued its own call for an inquiry.69 The Northern Area Conference of the NAACP issued a statement condemning the police murder of Fred Hampton and the repression of the Black Panther Party: “Although we may differ with the Black Panthers in political philosophies . . . WE ARE ALL BLACK PEOPLE and when these kinds of actions are held by our police departments, we feel that all Black people are being threatened with the loss of their very lives.” The statement called on U.S. Attorney General Mitchell and President Nixon to investigate the killings.70