Through counter-intelligence, it should be possible
To pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them
- FBI COINTELPRO memo on black militancy cited in RATM, "Wake Up"

"Prevent the rise of a "messiah" who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement."
- same memo

If you ever had a Rage Against The Machine phase, you may have wondered how much of Zack's rapped denunciation of the establishment's murderousness was true. This book gives a good insight into what Hoover's FBI, the Chicago police and city judiciary were capable of in the 1960s: committing, abetting and covering up the murder of a Black Panther leader. It's a very impressive story of a young lawyer just out of law school going through one hell of a struggle all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court to get some measure of justice: pushing through obstruction of document discovery, imprisonment for contempt, official deceptiveness, and more.

Black Power was an evident temptation in the late 1960s for civil rights activists disillusioned by the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. and by the way he had lost establishment support when he turned his attention to poverty and war. But any establishment that took decades to side with the basic civil rights of African Americans, and was moved to action only when their TVs showed peaceful protestors being attacked in the streets, was hardly likely to permit the rise of an organised black movement for armed self-defence and political and economic self-determination such as the Black Panthers. The agenda of raising African Americans to equal citizenship, control over resources and personal opportunity still to this day awaits an effective strategy for overcoming or defeating the fear and hostility that such a radical cause evokes. ( )

An important account for all who are entering or continuing the fight. The devastation that we have allowed to happen is unfathomable. This book gave me the clearest view I have ever had of the treasure that our government stole from us and the fight that it will require to even begin our March toward justice for all. What could we have accomplished if we could have kept the murdered black leaders? Who would Fred Hampton be... especially if he had been able to grow with guidance from his elders?

He deserved the chance to become utterly plain. We owe that loss to the world. ( )

Wow. Author/attorney Jeffrey Haas sets the stage for a December 1969 predawn raid by the Chicago police on a Black Panther apartment, where an eloquent and popular rising black leader named Fred Hampton was killed. Supposedly acting on a tip from an informant that illegal weapons were there, the police burst into the apartment, firing 90 shots in total to the Panthers one. The book reviews in tremendous detail how the courts and police tried to cover up the fact that Hampton has likely been drugged, set-up by an FBI informant, and then murdered in cold blood: shot twice point blank in the head. Haas and his small law firm of young idealists took on the legal and law enforcement systems, and despite many setbacks, persevered, eventually ending up with an appeals judge, who believed in fairness. Highly recommended for people interested in racial justice, the Black Panther Party, and learning more about the history of government-sanctioned racism in the United States.

My only complaint is that we did not really get a real sense for Fred Hampton himself, whose life ended at age 21, who might have become as important a leader for social change though non-violence and community organizing as Martin Luther King. Growing up in the Chicago suburb of Maywood, Hampton joined the NAACP, building a youth council of 500 members (in a town of 27,000) and worked to build a recreational center/pool and better education for the local black community. Hampton was then drawn to the Black Panthers and its ten-point program, emphasizing education, health, welfare, and self-determination.
( )

There just seems to be so much history that we are not taught and things that we really do not need to know we do learn. I had never heard of this person and that is a darn shame. Mr. Haas has opened my eyes, or shall I say continued to open about the racism, hypocrisy and what black and brown people go thru. It does center the victims of the police raid on the Panthers, the Black Panther program, Hampton's leadership and the major political events.

rcvd an ARC at no cost to author...(netgalley)voluntarily reviewed with my own thoughts and opinions ( )

Fred Hampton’s story should be more widely told, not just because he is a compelling leader in his own right, but also because it is astounding how the US government straight up assassinated its own citizens on its own soil with near impunity. This history is important and truly, deeply infuriating (I wanted to yeet Judge Perry and the obstructionist cop legal team into moving traffic for the vast majority of this book). However, I didn’t love Haas’s writing style or the annoyingly irrelevant insertions of his own life’s details (his need to do yoga in between trials or love life added nothing to the narrative). It's also difficult to write about multi-year legal proceedings in an engaging way. ( )