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GOOD AND DEAD 
Gary Johnson
04 Dec 2019
GOOD AND DEAD 
GOOD AND DEAD 

On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Killing of Fred Hampton by Chicago Police

Chicago
never an enlightened city
has declared itself a sanctuary city
to blunt federal 
predatory immigration policy 
and shrieks of a tweeter-in-chief 
inciting his base’s hatred 
of The Other

 Even with its new-found dignity 
a “reform” mayor 
Mexican Independence paraded down 26th
King Drive Bud Bilikin pageantry 
our immigrant city has yet to square 
a notorious racist past 

Chicago
never an enlightened city
where in a December 4, 1969 
predawn west side raid
at 2337 W. Monroe 
fourteen cops in cahoots 
with we now know the FBI
blasted their way Capone style
ninety-nine flying bullets 
into a Black Panther apartment 
to a single outgoing shot
killing party member Mark Clark 
(shot through his heart) and 
Illinois party chairman Fred Hampton 
(twice shot at close range in the head)

This in the middle of  
our military napalming Vietnamese 
Nixon’s law and order crackdown on cities 
J. Edgar Hoover declaring 
the Black Power movement 
America’s #1 public enemy 
FBI agents ordered to
“prevent the rise of a messiah 
who could unify or electrify 
the militant black nationalist movement” 

A community activist 
turned militant revolutionary 
born in the shadow 
of the Argo Corn Products plant 
off Archer Road in Summit, Illinois
(where his parents worked 
alongside Emmett Till’s father)
Fred Hampton solid-bodied
with a shy big-dimpled grin
was an orator par excellence 
and fearless
the king of signifying 
able to rouse feet-stomping crowds 
to join him with shouts of 
“I am a revolutionary!”

While west coast Panthers 
stormed the Sacramento state house 
toting guns in berets 
wraparound sunglasses 
leather jackets
demanding an end to 
police brutality
Fred was organizing a 
west suburban NAACP youth group
demanding black faculty
and administration hires 
at his Proviso East high school
marching for open housing
in Marquette Park 
with Dr. King 

Once inside the apartment 
operating from a floor plan 
hand drawn by an FBI informant 
(actually Hampton’s body guard) 
a cop emptied his machine gun 
along a hallway wall
into the bedroom 
where he knew Chairman Fred
(probably drugged)
slept

At that moment  
Fred’s fiancé Deborah Johnson 
pregnant with his child 
was straddling Fred’s back
the bed (she said) violently 
shaking from bullets 
whizzing through the thin 
wall into the mattress

Two cops stormed in 
flung her from the room 
then went back in 
where she heard 
the pop pop of a handgun
a woman scream
one cop saying 
“He’s good and dead now”

Filmmaker Mike Gray’s 
grisly documentary 
The Murder of Fred Hampton 
staggers the imagination
We Serve and Suspect
cops following orders
can and will 
barge into your house 
shoot to kill 
you dead in your bed 
brag about it
lie about it
argue its merits
period
full stop

Gray was tracking 
the 21 year old’s dynamism 
at party headquarters
a people’s court trying Fred
lively downtown speeches in Daley Plaza 
the People’s Church on Ashland 
free school kid breakfasts 
Panther run health clinics 
but needed an ending 
until he got the call
Fred is dead
come to 2337 W. Monroe
bring your camera

Its shocking 
black & white images 
show Fred’s shot-up 
blood-soaked mattress 
bullet holes in doors walls woodwork
bloody floors
lines of sober faced neighbors 
braving the cold
Panther tour guides pointing 
“This is where our chairman 
got his brains blown out”
stepping thru the trashed hellish site 
left open arrogantly 
abandoned by police
like the dangling 
burnt and mutilated 
black carcasses 
of long ago Southern lynchings

There’s a chilling 
black and white photo 
of a group of cops 
carrying out Fred Hampton in a body bag
smirks on their faces lit by the flash
leather jackets and pie hats 
fading into the predawn dark
proud as punch of their hunting booty 
a job well done

A “blatant act of legitimized murder” 
claimed white Maywood councilman Tom Streeter 
adding “and in the context of militant 
acts against militant blacks 
in recent months suggests 
a systemic act of repression”
as FBI COINTELPRO surveyed
Panthers were 
gunned down and jailed 
across the country

At the Fred Hampton Pool 
in Maywood west of the city 
there’s front lawn bust of Fred 
on a marble block
the significance 
of this water-filled hole 
in the ground memorial
cannot be overlooked
Fred’s push 
for a pool and rec center 
for Maywood’s black kids 
led to his arrest by Maywood police 
then making the FBI’s 
Key Agitator Index of activists 
the rest is history

While Panthers recognized 
their oppression 
in liberation struggles 
of colonized Third World 
peoples in China 
Cuba Vietnam 
Mozambique Guinea-Bissau 
Fred’s ultimate sin 
in the eyes of the police state 
was forging Chicago’s 
original Rainbow Coalition
Panthers aligning 
with poor white racist 
“dislocated hillbilly” 
Young Patriots in Uptown
with Cha Cha Jimenez’s Young Lords 
Puerto Rican street gang of Lincoln Park
Daley’s cops let off the leash 
to split riffraff heads
in the way of gentrification

Folks forget in the 1960s
blacks were under 
nationwide siege by police 
folks forget point # one
of the Panthers 10-point plan
“Freedom to determine 
the destiny of the black community” 
Panthers arming themselves 
with calls to “off the pigs” 
in essence to police the police
menaced only terrorist cops 
haunting black neighborhoods

Chicago’s heart beats 
blood power control
from the Haymarket riot (1887)
to cops ordered 
to shoot to kill or maim arsonists 
cripple looters in the King Riots (April 1968)
to the whole world’s watching 
Democratic Convention police riot (August 1968)
to Chairman Fred’s targeted murder a year later
to Laquan McDonald shot sixteen times (2014)
(the police killing video
suppressed for 13 months) 
the Panthers at least challenged 
as best they could 
what a recent report calls 
a culture of “excessive violence” 
within the Chicago Police Department
the beat goes on

Chicago
never an enlightened city 
with shoot ‘em up weekends 
school kids escorted down safe corridors 
crushing poverty 
Mag Mile mammon
Panthers a faded tattoo 
a bruise beneath the skin 
that never heals
a sanctuary city
in search of its humanity

So here’s to Fred Hampton
fifty years out
a true people’s radical
dared speak truth to power
seek justice and parity 
across racial class ethnic divides
paid the ultimate price

sources:  

The Murder of Fred Hampton (film documentary), The Film Group (Chicago) 1971, Mike Gray, producer

The Assassination of Fred Hampton, by Jeffery Haas, Chicago

Review Press, 2009

Hillbilly nationalists, urban race rebels, and black power : community organizing in radical times, by Amy Sonnie, Melville House, Brooklyn, 2011

Gary Johnson is an associate professor of writing at Columbia College Chicago.

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