[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 193 (Wednesday, December 4, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H9249-H9251]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             PAYING TRIBUTE TO FRED HAMPTON AND MARK CLARK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. 
Danny K. Davis) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to join 
with Representative   Bobby Rush, who reserved the time to talk about 
an event that occurred 50 years ago when I guess Bobby was pretty much 
still a teenager and I was a young adult.
  The event took place in our city, the city of the big shoulders, the 
city of Chicago, the city that sits on a lake founded by an African 
American, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. An event took place where the 
Chicago police, led by an assistant State's attorney, invaded the 
province of a group of young leaders known to be members of the Black 
Panther Party. They raided the group while they were inside asleep. 
They shot up the building and killed two of the leaders.
  One was a young gentleman, 21 years old, Fred Hampton, articulate, 
graduated from high school with honors, head of the youth NAACP, but a 
member of the Black Panther Party. Another young fellow was an 
outstanding American, the son of ministers and churchgoing people. The 
apartment was raided, and these two individuals were killed, 
assassinated.
  It is my understanding that one of the reasons that Congressman Bobby 
Rush is alive today--he was supposed to have been there but had gone 
home to his apartment rather than spending the night where the Panthers 
were. As a result, he was spared.
  Obviously, there was a hue and cry, and there were years of activity 
and litigation.
  Madam Speaker, it is good to see that Bobby has arrived. I just said 
that fate is such that he is here today, as opposed to being where Fred 
Hampton and Mark Clark are, wherever that is, because as fate would 
have it, he went someplace else.
  Of course, as fate would also have it, I can't help but note that I 
spoke with one of Father George Clements' sons the other day, who I 
understand helped to kind of conceal and hide him out while the police 
were looking for him. Fortunately, fate intervened.
  The activity caused a big hue and cry from the community. As a result 
of that, people began to look differently at what was known as law 
enforcement misconduct, police brutality. Sometimes law enforcement 
individuals take matters into their own hands, not worrying about what 
judges might do or judges might say, or courts of law, but would 
sometimes become executioners.
  As a result of that, the African American community, of Chicago 
especially, changed its approach to politics. While there was a big 
Democratic voting bloc, they decided--we decided, because I was voting 
age. Bobby may not have been, but I was voting age. We elected a 
Republican, Bernard Carey, to be the State's attorney for Cook County.
  That also led to, ultimately, the changes that elected Harold 
Washington, the first Black mayor of Chicago, which evolved, 
ultimately, into the election of Barack Obama as President of the 
United States of America, because that is where his beginning was. That 
was the base.
  I just happen to have represented the Hampton family in the 
congressional district that I represent. Until recently, not a year 
went by that I didn't spend some time with the Hampton family, that is, 
with Fred's mother, his father, and his brother, Bill, who carried on 
the work. As a result of that, that work is still going on.
  I know that, on Sunday, in the community where I live, there is going 
to be a demonstration or an acknowledgment. I wouldn't call it a 
demonstration. A group of people is going to go to the location where 
Fred and Mark were killed, and they are simply going to pay tribute.
  I pay tribute now, and I pay tribute to my colleague U.S. 
Representative Bobby Rush because it was Bobby who initiated this 
Special Order. Madam Speaker, because of the Congressman, I am here.
  It has been a pleasure to know that our paths have been crossing one 
way or another for more than 50 years because I sat in the funeral home 
that night after Fred and Mark had been assassinated. My brother 
happened to be a friend of Trey Rayner, and we sat kind of keeping 
vigil.
  My other good friend Frank Lipscomb and I, we were both young 
schoolteachers. We went over to the house that afternoon after we left 
school and peered and peeked and walked through. We were, quite 
frankly, afraid but wanted to see with our own eyes, and so we did see.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rush) and 
thank him for initiating this Special Order.
  Mr. RUSH. Madam Speaker, it goes without saying that the love and 
respect that I have for my colleague from the Seventh Congressional 
District of Illinois, my good friend Congressman Danny K. Davis, a man 
who is such an inspiration to us all, a man who is steadfast in all 
that is good as it relates to what an elected official and public 
servant should look like, should be like, should walk like, and, 
hopefully, if they are giving it, should talk like, speak like. If we 
all could have the voice of Congressman Davis, we would be much better 
off. But if we can't have his voice, maybe we can aspire to the heart 
that Congressman Davis possesses.
  Madam Speaker, I am here this afternoon, as I have been many years 
now, speaking from the well of this Congress in this institution that 
is the envy of all governments throughout the world.
  I am here for one purpose today and one purpose only, and that is to 
commemorate the life of a young man who was killed on this very day, 
December 4, in 1969. His murder was not an accident. His murder was 
planned by the highest levels of law enforcement in our Nation.
  Madam Speaker, the Federal Bureau of Investigation collaborated on, 
conspired on, and coordinated the assassination of Frank Hampton and 
Mark Clark. Fred's and Mark's assassinations, if not the only, were two 
of a few instances of proven political assassination by police forces 
or law enforcement agencies of this country.
  I say that because toxicologists' reports concluded after the autopsy 
on the body of Fred Hampton that he had the barbiturate Seconal in his 
body. He had been drugged with Seconal. They said he had enough Seconal 
in his body to immobilize an elephant.

[[Page H9250]]

  They came into that apartment, Madam Speaker, on a cold December 
morning at 4:30 a.m. Nobody was moving on the streets. They came into 
the West Side community camouflaged in Commonwealth Edison trucks.

                              {time}  1500

  They came into that community with machine guns, with a definite 
purpose of killing Fred Hampton and anybody else who was in that 
apartment.
  They came using public utility trucks, not marked police cars, but 
trucks that would not look out of place at that hour in the morning.
  They knocked on the door when they got to that apartment. Half the 
police officers went to the front door. Half went to the rear door.
  They knocked on the door, and Mark Clark, who was in the apartment, 
asked, ``Who is it?'' at 4:30 in the morning. He got a response from 
one of the police officers, who answered by saying, ``Tommy.'' When he 
said, ``Tommy,'' he came in shooting.
  When they heard the first round of gunfire at the front door, the 
other half of the raiding team, the assassination team, came in through 
the rear door, shooting also.
  There were 12 people in that apartment, including the pregnant wife 
of Fred Hampton, who was asleep in the bed with him. He had been 
drugged. She didn't know that he was drugged.
  He came home late that evening, had a meal. Fred loved Kool-Aid. His 
Kool-Aid was laced with the aforementioned Seconal.
  They came in shooting from the front of that apartment and the back, 
the rear of that apartment.
  Someone, a Panther on the inside by the name of Louis Truelock, 
shouted out: Stop shooting. Stop shooting. There is a pregnant woman in 
here.
  The shooting stopped. A patrolman by the name of Daniel Groth went 
into that apartment where Fred had been shot, blood all over the 
mattress. They heard two other shots of gunfire from a handgun. Groth 
came out and said: ``He is good and dead now.''
  This was a political hit by the FBI, by the Chicago Police 
Department, by the Cook County State's attorney.
  Why did they kill Fred? Why was this 21-year-old young man such a 
threat that the law enforcement agencies of this entire Nation would 
conspire to murder him and drug him? Because Fred Hampton was a young 
man who had remarkable, extraordinary gifts.
  He was a charismatic individual. He could speak and was considered a 
great orator for his time and for his age. He could move masses through 
his charisma and through the strength of his conviction and ideas and 
through his courage.
  Fred Hampton, at age 21, was a leader of men and women. Adults 
followed him. But more than anything else, Fred Hampton was a man who 
everybody knew said what he meant and meant what he said.
  There was a conspiracy, an assassination, a political assassination 
because the FBI, Edward Hanrahan, the Cook County State's Attorney's 
Office, and the Chicago Police Department knew that Fred had been 
convicted of armed robbery. They said he had held up a Good Humor ice 
cream truck and took $71 of ice cream on a hot August day and had given 
the ice cream sandwiches, ice cream bars, and Dreamsicles away to the 
children in the community because it was so hot.
  That is what he was convicted of. He was sentenced to 5 years in 
prison for stealing, according to them, $71 worth of ice cream.
  He had been out on appeal, and his appeal had been denied. The FBI, 
State's attorneys, Edward Hanrahan, and the Chicago Police Department 
knew that on December 13, some 9 days later, Fred was going to report 
back to the Illinois Department of Corrections to finish off his 
sentence. They knew that Fred would not be on the streets.
  Why did they kill him? Because of his courage, his charisma, his 
commitment. Fred was committed, not just to Black people, and he was 
committed to Black people, but to all poor people.
  Fred used to say that you cannot kill racism with racism. You kill 
racism with racial solidarity.
  Madam Speaker, on this day, the 50th anniversary of the murder of 
Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, I remember so well so many things that 
Fred said, and one thing that he said really stands out to me on this 
very day. He used to say: ``You can kill a revolutionary, but you can't 
kill a revolution.''
  Madam Speaker, that ought to mean something to this body because no 
matter where we are today, this body, this United States of America, 
was founded on the premise of a revolution.
  Fred was right. Revolution continues even to this day. Fred's blood 
still is producing fruit. Congressman Davis mentioned it. Look at the 
people who were inspired by Fred and his ultimate sacrifice:
  Harold Washington, elected the first African American mayor of the 
city of Chicago, in direct response to the murder of Fred Hampton and 
Mark Clark and the wounding of seven other Panthers;
  Carol Moseley Braun, the first female African American U.S. Senator 
in the history of this Nation;

  And the mayors from Baltimore to Seattle to New York and other places 
inspired by Harold Washington's election, which was inspired and which 
was founded on the blood of Fred Hampton.
  All these things would not have existed had Fred not given his life 
for the cause of freedom, justice, and equality.
  Yes, Madam Speaker, even the 44th President of the United States, 
Barack Obama, Fred Hampton's life was given so that Barack Obama could 
come from Chicago, from the State of Illinois, and become a U.S. 
Senator and then the President of the United States.
  Even now, young protest groups, Black Lives Matter and others, were 
founded on the premise of and came into existence because of the blood 
of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.
  Madam Speaker, I am here today because he was my friend. He was my 
colleague. I remember December the 4th, 1969. I couldn't sleep last 
night because my mind kept going back to 1969, the calls that I got, 
waiting in the basement of an apartment, listening to news radio, 
trying to figure out what really was going on, what was happening.
  I identified Fred's body in the morgue that very morning, later that 
morning. I remember going to the morgue and identifying Fred's body. I 
identified his body.
  They came to my apartment the very next morning. I was supposed to 
have been in the same apartment with Fred on December 4. The very next 
morning, at 5 a.m., they came to my apartment looking for me. I had 
gone underground.
  If I hadn't been in that apartment with my wife and my children, if 
we hadn't been in that apartment, I wouldn't be here today, speaking in 
the well of this Congress.
  ``You can kill a revolutionary, but you can't kill a revolution.''
  Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I thank Representative 
Rush so much.
  Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have left.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Ms. LEE of California. Madam Speaker, first, I would like to thank 
Congressman Bobby Rush for leading this effort in the memory of the 
late beloved Fred Hampton.
  Madam Speaker, fifty years ago, the people of Illinois and the world 
lost a devoted public servant with the untimely brutal murder of Fred 
Hampton. A man whose reputation followed him. I knew of Fred Hampton 
during my time as a community worker with the Black Panther Party in 
Oakland, California. Fred's fight for freedom and justice were known 
throughout the country including in my district. Fred took the Black 
Panther's Party motto to heart--he fought to end widespread poverty, 
increase economic and educational opportunities, and ensure peace and 
justice for all.
  Promoting the idea of ``All Power to the People'', and unwilling to 
wait for the political leaders of the time to address the needs of the 
African American community, the Panthers--and Fred--took action 
themselves to force change and bring about liberation from all forms of 
human exploitation and oppression.
  Above all, Fred was deeply dedicated to the Black Panther Party's 
Free Breakfast Program, which gave thousands of children the necessary 
nutrition to focus and excel before their school day. He understood the 
importance of meeting the needs in the community while fighting for a 
fair chance to overcome structural and oppressive barriers.
  Years ago, I was lucky enough to also work on the Party's Free 
Breakfast Program in Oakland, California. And as many of my colleagues 
know, it was the success of the program that pressed the Federal 
government to

[[Page H9251]]

increase funding for free breakfast for public school children.
  Madam Speaker, above all--Fred was a leader and worked to form a, a 
more peaceful world. His unparalleled leadership as former Chair of the 
Illinois Black Panther Party and as a warrior for peace and justice 
will always be his legacy.
  The legacy of Fred Hampton shall never die, and may he continue to 
rest in peace.

                          ____________________