Chicago has Balbo why not Hampton Street

by: Tolbert Yarkpawolo

Hampton in 1969, 20-year-old leader of the Black Panther Party of Illinois

There is absolutely no comparison between the Honorable Chairman Fred Hampton and Italo Balbo. Balbo, was an Italian fascist and an associate of Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Hampton on the other hand was a murdered African American freedom fighter. Hampton and Balbo names in the same sentence is simply a point to raise the issue of double standard and twisted Chicago justice.

At the 700^th block East of Chicago there is a street and statue named in honor of Balbo who have no relationship with Chicago, but yet a true son of the soil and a freedom fighter, Fred Hampton can not get a street in his honor.

Acting on a request from Fred Hampton Jr., who was born three weeks after his father was killed, Chicago Ald. Madeline Haithcock proposed to name one city block in honor of Fred Hampton. Haithcock’s ordinance to name a block of Monroe Street “Chairman Fred Hampton Way” unanimously breezed through a City Council committee. At the time there were nearly 1,300 honorary street signs in the city already. Naming honorary street signs is a Chicago tradition.

Haithcock’s ordinance caused furor with the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). “It’s a dark day when we honor someone who advocated killing policemen and who took great advantage of the communities he claimed to have been serving,” said FOP President Mark Donahue. The police union organized relatives of cops killed in the line of duty to lobby aldermen against the ordinance and several white aldermen expressed misgivings about the honorary designation.

A coalition of black Chicagoans, including the city’s three black Democratic congressmen—Reps. Bobby Rush, Jesse Jackson Jr. and Danny Davis urge that Haithcock’s ordinance be passed. The newly formed coalition contains a wide spectrum of supporters and genuinely represents community sentiment.

Fred Hampton was born in Chicago in 1948 and grew up in Maywood, a suburb of the city. A bright student, Hampton graduated from Proviso East High School in 1966 before enrolling at Triton Junior College where he studied law.

While a student Hampton became active in the civil rights movement. He joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and was appointed leader of the Youth Council of the organization’s West Suburban branch.

In October 1966 Bobby Seale and Huey Newton formed the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. Initially formed to protect local communities from police brutality and racism, the Black Panthers eventually developed into a Marxist revolutionary group. The group also ran medical clinics and provided free food to school children. Other important members included Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Touré), H. Rap Brown, Bobby Hutton and Eldridge Cleaver.

Hampton founded the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party in November 1968. He immediately established a community service program. This included the provision of free breakfasts for schoolchildren and a medical clinic that did not charge patients for treatment. Hampton also taught political education classes and instigated a community control of police project.

One of Hampton’s greatest achievements was to persuade Chicago’s most powerful street gangs to stop fighting against each other. In May 1969 Hampton held a press conference where he announced a nonaggression pact between the gangs and the formation of what he called a "rainbow coalition" (a multiracial alliance of black, Puerto Rican, and poor youths).

Later that year Hampton was arrested and charged with stealing $71 worth of sweets, which he then allegedly gave away to local children. Hampton was initially convicted of the crime but the decision was eventually overturned.

The activities of the Black Panthers in Chicago came to the attention of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Hoover described the Panthers as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country" and urged the Chicago police to launch an all-out assault on the organization. In 1969 the Panther party headquarters on West Monroe Street was raided three times and over 100 members were arrested.

At about 4:44 a.m. during the early hours of December 4th, 1969, the Panther headquarters located at 2337 West Monroe Street in Chicago, Illinois. was raided by the police for the fourth time. The police later claimed that the Panthers opened fire and a shoot-out took place. During the next ten minutes Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed. Witnesses claimed that Hampton was wounded in the shoulder and then executed by a shot to the head.

The death of Fred Hampton appears to the Commission to have been isolated from the killing of Mark Clark and the wounding of Brenda Harris on the one hand, and from the wounding of Ronald Satchel, Verlina Brewer, and Blair Anderson on the other. The Commission concluded that there is probable cause to believe that Fred Hampton was murdered – that he was shot by an officer or officers who could see his prostrate body lying on the bed. Unfortunately, the inadequate investigation by the police and the other officials and their inadequate examination of the available evidence make it impossible to know which officer or officers actually fired the fatal bullets.

The panthers left alive, including Deborah Johnson, Hampton’s girlfriend, who was eight months pregnant at the time, were arrested and charged with attempting to murder the police. Afterwards, ballistic evidence revealed that only one bullet had been fired by the Panthers whereas nearly a hundred came from police guns.

Depositions in a civil suit in Chicago reveal that the chief of Panther security and Hampton’s personal bodyguard, William O’Neal, was an FBI infiltrator. O’Neal gave his FBI "contracting agent," Roy Mitchell, a detailed floor plan of the apartment, which Mitchell turned over to the state’s attorney’s office shortly before the attack, along with "information" – of dubious veracity – that there were two illegal shotguns in the apartment. The availability of the floor plan presumably explains why "all the police gunfire went to the inside corners of the apartment, rather than toward the entrances. Agent Mitchell was named by the Chicago Tribune as head of the Chicago’s COINTELPRO directed against the Blank Panthers and other Black groups. For his services, O’Neal was paid over $10,000.