[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 205 (Friday, December 4, 2020)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1087-E1088]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





              HONORING THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF FRED HAMPTON



 =========================== NOTE =========================== 

  
  December 4, 2020, on page E1087, the following appeared: 
HONORING THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF FRED HAMPTOM
  
  The online version has been corrected to read: HONORING THE LIFE 
AND LEGACY OF FRED HAMPTON


 ========================= END NOTE ========================= 


                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BOBBY L. RUSH

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, December 4, 2020

  Mr. RUSH. Madam Speaker, you can kill the revolutionary, but you 
cannot kill the revolution. These were the words my late comrade and 
best friend Fred Hampton, the Chairman and co-founder of the Illinois 
Chapter of the Black Panther Party spoke and lived by. In a year that 
has seen too many Black lives unjustly taken, Chairman Fred's words, 
life, and legacy remain just as vital to our understanding of justice 
today as they were on the date of his assassination on December 4, 
1969.
  Chairman Fred was both a visionary and a revolutionary, who fought 
for a more just world for everyone. I had the distinct privilege of 
recruiting and working alongside Fred during our righteous struggle for 
the liberation and emancipation of the people who had been ignored by 
those in power for far too long. We encouraged community development 
and empowerment through programs that included community health clinics 
and an expansive free breakfast for children program, finally 
delivering critical social services to long underserved communities. We 
also helped broker a peace agreement between Chicago's street gangs, 
reducing violence in the city's most marginalized neighborhoods.
  Furthermore, the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party joined 
forces with the Latino Young Lords organization, and the Young 
Patriots, an organization of poor whites living in Chicago's Uptown 
community. Together, we formed the original Rainbow Coalition to fight 
all economic oppression. This watershed organization assembled a 
working-class coalition to fight for our shared interests, despite the 
fact that we were working in one of the most segregated cities in the 
United States. We banded together to fight many of the issues that 
still plague us to this very day, including police brutality, 
substandard housing, mediocre education, and low-quality health care.
  In the early hours of December 4th, 51 years ago, the Chicago Police 
Department with the cooperation, coordination, and support of the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cook County State's Attorney 
entered an apartment on West Monroe Street that seven members of the 
Black Panther Party were staying in, with the premeditated aim of 
murdering Fred Hampton. The police immediately opened fire, killing 
Fred as he lay in his bed alongside his pregnant girlfriend, Akua 
Njeri. Our fellow Black Panther Party Member Mark Clark was also killed 
in the raid. There but for the grace of God, on that dreadful night, go 
I. In fact, my apartment was raided during the early hours the very 
next morning, December 5, 1969.
  Madam Speaker, through meticulous work we were able to prove that the 
official narrative of that night, that Hampton and Clark were killed in 
a vicious firelight, was entirely a falsehood. The police and State's 
Attorney claimed that they engaged in a fierce battle with the 
Panthers, but investigators were able to determine that the police 
fired 99 bullets while the Panthers only fired one.
  A civil lawsuit would further reveal that the FBI's Counter-
Intelligence Program, or COINTELPRO, helped plan the murder of Fred 
Hampton. William O'Neil, an FBI informant within the Party, provided 
floor plans of the apartment to the FBI, who provided them to the 
State's Attorney and Chicago Police Department. An autopsy found a 
massive dose of the barbiturate Seconal in Chairman Fred's bloodstream, 
powerful enough to sedate an elephant. J. Edgar Hoover's FBI viewed the 
Black Panther Party movement Fred and I helped start to liberate our 
brothers and sisters who were suffering from divestment, lack of health 
care, and police brutality--as the number one threat to the national 
security of America.
  This country's government planned the assassination--the political 
assassination--of one of our nation's brightest young leaders. To my 
recollection, the murder of Fred Hampton is the only time federal law 
enforcement conspired to carry out the political assassination of an 
American citizen on United States soil, a truly shameful moment in the 
history of our country. This was a systemic campaign to violently 
disrupt a movement seeking justice and freedom for the most 
marginalized among us. This should remind all of us that Black lives 
have never been fully valued by many of those in this country's power 
structures. Too often, justice is not sought for the families of those 
whose lives are senselessly taken by the state
  Madam Speaker, when the South Side of Chicago's very own Ida B. Wells 
published her seminal investigative journalism on lynching in America, 
she found that many lynchings occurred because the victims posed a 
threat to the white supremacist status quo. One of her best friends was 
killed for merely operating a successful grocery store that competed 
with neighboring white businesses. While the killings Ida B. Wells 
examined were not political assassinations like the murder of Fred 
Hampton, they share a common thread. Both challenged the white 
supremacist status quo in their communities.
  Fred Hampton profoundly challenged this status quo by fiercely 
advocating for economic and social dignity for all people, and by 
providing long overdue social services to the most neglected 
communities in Chicago. Fred Hampton's challenge to the status quo 
proposed nothing less than a demand for full civil rights and economic 
opportunity for all those whose talents, dreams, and goals had long 
been stifled. This was a scary proposition to those like State's 
Attorney Hanrahan and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who would stop at 
nothing to maintain the unjust status quo that prevailed in Chicago and 
throughout the United States in December of 1969. Fred Hampton gave his 
life to help create a more fundamentally fair and equal nation for 
every American, consistent with our nation's founding principles
  Sadly, Madam Speaker, too often it appears that for Black Americans 
merely existing can be seen as a challenge to the white, racist power 
structure. And sadly, as Ida B. Wells found in 1892, the consequences 
can be just as gruesome. Ahmaud Arbery was 25 years old when he was 
gunned down for merely jogging in what his killers deemed to be the 
wrong neighborhood. Despite this incident taking place in February of 
this year, and a video being available, neither of the men now charged 
with the murder of Ahmaud Arbery were arrested until May. If not for a 
report by The New York Times that helped lead to the Georgia Bureau of 
Iinvestigation's intervention in the matter, Mr. Arbery's killers may 
never have faced justice.
  Ahmaud Arbery's death was a lynching, which occurred because two 
white men felt uncomfortable with his jogging though their 
neighborhood. One of the most recent in far too long a line of lynch 
mob killings of Black people in the United States.
  Madam Speaker, Congress must act promptly to ensure that no one who 
participates in such acts of terror and hatred can escape justice. As 
introduced, my bill, the Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act, would designate 
lynching as federal hate crime. This would apply whether or not those 
committing the offense were acting under the color of law. By 
designating lynching as a federal hate crime, the United States 
Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation would be 
compelled to investigate a case like Ahmaud Arbery's.
  The Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act honors the legacy of Emmett Till, 
who was brutally murdered in Money, Mississippi, in 1955. His death 
helped spark this country's civil rights movement, but his murderers 
never faced justice, as they were acquitted at a sham trial in 
Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. Passing the Emmett Till Anti-lynching 
Act would ensure that the full force of the United States Federal 
Government is always brought to prosecute those who commit the 
monstrous act of lynching.
  We have the opportunity to finally, after 120 years and 200 attempts 
since Congressman George Henry White of North Carolina introduced the 
first anti-lynching legislation, make lynching a federal crime. In 
fact, Ida B. Wells herself advocated for the administration of 
President William McKinley to push for anti-lynching reforms all the 
way back in 1898. Passage of the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act into law 
would demonstrate that this country understands the heinous legacy of 
lynching and begin the process of finally closing this shameful chapter 
of our history.
  Madam Speaker, let us never forget the courage, conviction, and 
compassion of Fred Hampton. Despite this government assassinating him 
at only 21 years of age, Chairman Fred's work and legacy are 
everlasting. Let

[[Page E1088]]

our work in Congress be guided by his legacy of pursuing freedom and 
justice for all people. That work can begin by sending the Emmet Till 
Anti-lynching Act to the President's desk, an act that would require 
action by our colleagues in the Senate. That would be a clear 
demonstration that Congress has begun to value the Black lives, 
including Fred Hampton's, Emmett Till's, Ahmaud Arbery's, and the 
countless others whose lives have been systemically devalued for far 
too long.

                          ____________________