[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 189 (Tuesday, December 6, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H8792-H8793]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1830
                         HONORING FRED HAMPTON

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. 
Rush) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. RUSH. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, Louie Gohmert, for his 
friendship over the past years that we have served together in this 
Chamber.
  I certainly thank him for his support of the Emmett Till Antilynching 
Act that was signed into law by President Biden a few months ago. I 
thank Representative Gohmert for his support and for his steadfastness 
on that bill.
  Mr. Speaker, it is for the final time that I stand in this well on 
this floor to commemorate the memory and the legacy of Fred Hampton, my 
friend and comrade in the Black Panther Party.
  This last Sunday marked 53 years since Chairman Fred was assassinated 
by a racist, corrupt Chicago Police Department, which, as a part of the 
FBI's COINTELPRO program, the FBI's national counterintelligence 
program, without legal authority and in stark violation of the U.S. 
Constitution, surveilled, harassed, harmed, arrested, and assassinated 
innocent, ordinary American citizens.
  My friend, Fred Hampton, was a brilliant young man that I recruited 
to join the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party, which I, along 
with Mr. Bob Brown, organized in 1968.
  Fred and I fought together side by side against police brutality and 
police murder in Chicago specifically, but across our great Nation in 
general.
  We set up free community health clinics, free breakfast for children 
programs, and a free busing to prison program to allow families to 
visit their loved ones who were in prison.
  Mr. Speaker, we initiated free sickle cell anemia testing programs to 
educate this Nation and to tell Black people about this dreaded but 
often and largely ignored disease.
  Mr. Speaker, thanks to his charismatic leadership, Fred Hampton was 
so powerful and so inspirational throughout the city of Chicago and the 
Nation at large, his charisma, his influence extended even to other 
countries.
  Chairman Fred was a charismatic, courageous, exceptional, and highly 
committed leader, who, at the age of 21, was assassinated while he 
slept under the influence of the drug Seconal that was put in his 
favorite drink at that time, which was Kool-Aid. His Kool-Aid was laced 
with Seconal.
  Why? Because Fred Hampton used every fiber of his talent, his immense 
talent, without hesitancy, to fight for poor people: poor Whites, poor 
Blacks, poor Asians, poor Hispanic people, poor people across the 
board.
  His oratory skills exceeded almost every significant leader of his 
time. Indeed, Mr. Speaker, he was able to move the masses not simply 
and only because of his oratory but also because of his example.
  To see Fred, to hear Fred, was to know Fred, to be inspired by Fred.
  Mr. Speaker, Chicago, my home city, the city I love, was and still is 
one of the most segregated cities in America, but Chairman Fred 
understood how to connect across racial and geographic boundaries. He 
knew how to connect with aspirations and deep-seated desires of people 
across racial and geographic lines. He knew how to create alliances and 
coalitions based around common needs and common desires.
  He created the original Rainbow Coalition in Chicago. This coalition 
was a partnership with the Young Lords, a Hispanic organization, and 
the Young Patriots, which was an organization of poor Appalachian 
Whites from the Uptown community in Chicago.
  Mr. Speaker, this amazing, creative, never-seen-before coalition of 
poor people was comprised of working-class people in our city suffering 
with the same issues that we all were suffering with. Those issues were 
police brutality, substandard housing, mediocre education, low-quality 
healthcare, and low-quality food that was being sold in stores in our 
neighborhoods.
  Mr. Speaker, these were the programs that Fred Hampton championed. 
This was the kind of individual that Fred Hampton was.
  I stand here today, Mr. Speaker, and say that rather than be saluted 
for these and similar efforts, the Black Panther Party members, and 
particularly Chairman Fred, were seen as a threat to those in power.
  J. Edgar Hoover said that the Black Panther Party was this Nation's 
number one threat. Why? We were feeding hungry children. We were 
providing free healthcare to young children, to poor people who needed 
it. We were taking loved ones to prison to see their loved ones who 
were incarcerated. We were speaking truth to power.
  Is this the reason why Fred Hampton was assassinated? Is this the 
very reason why the Black Panther Party was being viewed by J. Edgar 
Hoover and the FBI as the number one threat to this Nation? It just 
doesn't make sense.
  Mr. Speaker, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI started a file on Fred and put him 
on their Agitator Index, listing him as a key militant leader.
  They even went so far as to hire a fellow by the name of William 
O'Neal, a streetwise Black criminal and operative, as an FBI informant 
who was assigned to infiltrate the Black Panther Party and report back 
to them about our every move, our every activity.

                              {time}  1845

  And then, Mr. Speaker, on December 4, 1969, at about 4 a.m. in the 
morning, the Chicago Police Department, working in conjunction with the 
FBI and the Cook County State's Attorney, Edward V. Hanrahan, 
surreptitiously entered an apartment at 2337 West Monroe where Fred 
Hampton lived, and where other Black Panther Party members were 
staying. They came with the premeditated plan to murder Fred Hampton, 
to murder me and any other party members that they found in that 
apartment.
  They came armed with machine guns, high-powered pistols, and every 
other type of weapon, intent on killing everyone in that apartment. 
They came under the guise of executing a search warrant for weapons, 
but had every intention of murdering Fred Hampton, and others in that 
apartment. They killed Fred.
  Mr. Speaker, let me make it real clear. Throughout American history, 
there has not been anyone other than

[[Page H8793]]

Fred Hampton that was assassinated under the authority of the U.S. 
Government--not one. Fred Hampton was the only politically assassinated 
American citizen that was assassinated on the shores of our Nation. 
Fred Hampton.
  They came for me, but they missed me, Mr. Speaker. Early the 
following morning at about 5 a.m. on December 5, they came, the Chicago 
Police Department tried to kill me again. They came to my apartment 
with a search warrant for weapons and they shot my door down, but I was 
not in that apartment. I moved my family out of that apartment, just 
hours before they came, on the preceding day.
  Mr. Speaker, they tried to justify the murders of Fred Hampton and 
Mark Clark by saying that it was a shoot-out, placing the blame on Fred 
and other members of the Black Panther Party. Later, it became crystal 
clear that this was a clear politically motivated assassination.
  The grand jury evidence showed that the police had fired 99 times--99 
shots fired into that apartment. And they also said that there were 
only two shots that were possibly fired by the Panthers in that 
apartment.
  Mr. Speaker, let me remind you that this was during the 1960s, a time 
of deep and necessary awakening in our Nation, a time of political 
protest, a time of cultural confrontation. A time of change in our 
Nation. It was a time when poor, oppressed people took a necessary step 
forward to end the systemic oppression that they were faced with.
  African Americans, women, disabled individuals, Mexican-American 
farmworkers, Native Americans, anti-war protestors, environmentalists, 
and other activists organized to fight during this time against 
injustice and for equality and for equity.
  Most of us view this time, some half-century later, as a turning 
point in American history. A time when the oppressed populations in our 
Nation finally had an opportunity to speak up and create positive 
change for themselves and by themselves.
  However, Mr. Speaker, J. Edgar Hoover, didn't like what he saw. He 
didn't like what was going on in our Nation.
  J. Edgar Hoover determined that anyone who had the audacity to stand 
up and challenge the oppressive status quo, that they were a threat.
  To whom? We were American citizens. We loved our Nation. We were a 
threat to him and his consorts--him and those who wanted to oppress, 
for racial and other reasons, poor people.
  Mr. Speaker, in 1956, J. Edgar Hoover created and designed a program 
within the Federal Bureau of Investigation called COINTELPRO. 
COINTELPRO was an acronym for the Counterintelligence Program of the 
FBI.
  This program was a calculated, strategic effort to discredit, 
dismantle, neutralize all the efforts for societal reform, for our 
right to constitutionally redress our grievances and lift the 
oppression, subjugation, discrimination, and biases that we were forced 
to live under.
  This COINTEL Program illegally, outside of the law, spied on and 
harassed American citizens. They went so far as to tap phone lines, 
plant false and damaging stories in the national and local press, 
falsely imprison people, charging people, and even assassinating 
American citizens, activists.
  J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI famously targeted Dr. Martin Luther King, 
Jr., and his family. Hoover sought to discredit Dr. King and to 
undermine his civil rights work by painting him as a Communist.
  After Dr. King made his iconic ``I Have a Dream'' speech, and the 
inspiration that it created for people from all backgrounds across the 
Nation, then J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI came to view Dr. King as a 
dangerous person. They began a massive surveillance campaign against 
Dr. King. They tried to prove that Dr. King was a Communist. They 
failed to produce one scintilla of evidence on this, but they still 
habitually harassed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
  In 1964, the FBI sent what is known as the ``suicide letter,'' that 
was their quote. The letter urged Dr. King to commit suicide by calling 
him a fraud and citing alleged extramarital affairs. This dastardly, 
low-life letter was sent to Dr. King's home where it was opened by his 
wife, Coretta.
  This was a calculated, sinister, and deeply personal attempt by the 
FBI designed to bring shame and harm to Dr. King and his family. This 
was outside of everything that this Nation stands for--outside of the 
law.
  Mr. Speaker, they were using taxpayer dollars in order to do these 
and other dastardly things, using this COINTEL Program as their 
vehicle.
  They didn't stop with Dr. King. Some of the other well-known targets 
for this COINTEL Program included Aretha Franklin, Malcolm X, Muhammad 
Ali, Billie Holiday, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Fonda, Jean Seberg, John 
Lennon, Yoko Ono, even the 1960s pop band, The Monkees. They were also 
victims of COINTEL.

                              {time}  1900

  J. Edgar Hoover had already started spying on people like Charlie 
Chaplin and Ernest Hemingway well before this COINTELPRO program was 
finalized and set up and operationalized.
  This COINTELPRO program targeted everyday people, not just 
luminaries, but everyday, ordinary American citizens, anyone that had 
the audacity to voice a disagreement against discrimination.
  They even targeted housewives, the housewives who attended the 
chapter meetings for the National Organization for Women.
  Mr. Speaker, I have introduced the COINTELPRO Full Disclosure Act, 
H.R. 2998, and I ask that the Members of this Congress sign on to this 
bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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