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tv   Book TV  CSPAN  January 2, 2010 12:00pm-2:15pm EST

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obviously very few people would, it has kind of a roaring initiative which i like. >> what are you reading right now, what books? >> i'm actually reading right now a book about the original family called mad world. is a biography of the family on which bright henry visited. so i seem to have a bit of obsession right now for war. >> tina brown, cofounder, editor, daily beast.com. >> thank you.
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>> i am a revolutionary. black people need some peace. black people need some peace. we're going to have to struggle. >> i'm saying something. >> you going to have to do more
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than talk. you're going to have to do more than listen. we've got to start getting out there with the people. >> it's sort of like a primary thing to me. i'm the first move. >> this is 2337 westwood road, described by police as a black panther party arms and entities. 14 states attorneys placemen led by sergeant daniel gro found that indeed it was a hole for weapons that after a gunbattle that caused jeffrey haas his life, as soon as sergeant and the officer who are leaving are men announced their office
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occupants of the apartment attack them with shotgun fire. >> sir, you say your men were fired upon. witnesses who have seen the apartment say there is no evidence of bullets from the direction where the panthers supposedly were to be. >> this blatant act of legitimatize murder strips all credibility from law enforcement. in the context of other acts against militant blacks in recent months, it suggests that official policy are systematically oppressed and. smack anyone who went to that apartment and examined the evidence that was remaining there, could come to only one conclusion. that is, that fred hampton, 21 years old and a member of a militant well-known militant group, was murdered in his bed, probably as he lay asleep.
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>> what happened in that apartment, you're going to be so whether or fred hampton was a victim of premeditated murder. >> thank you and welcome everyone. i'm very honored to be here. and i also want to recognize fred hampton's mother who is here tonight. [applause]
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>> and also, bill hampton, fred's brother and fred's sister. [applause] >> and in the book she is referred to as china doll. she is here tonight also. [applause] >> i want to thank northwestern and bernadine for bringing together such a prestigious and unaccomplished panel that i feel a little bit like now i could sit down and hear what they have
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to say. i'm really in all of the people who are here tonight and their accomplishments and their writing. and i want to thank bernadine for putting it together, and for being one of the inspirations for why i wrote this book. it was bernadine mentioned that fred hampton spoke at northwestern university law school almost exactly 40 years ago to today. and the person who introduced him was a lot young law student by the name of flint taylor, who is sitting in the front row. [applause] >> and apparently, i wasn't there, but fled with the introduction with dread, so when fred got up, he chided clinton said, well you better get it together. but he also knew that flint had helped him get out on appeal bond. and as you know, flint has gotten it together.
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i don't want to spend rest of that talk about his incompetence, but anyway, another person was very much touched and moved by fred hampton. if you had told me a few years ago that i would be standing here talking about a book that i had written, not to mention a personal narrative, i really wouldn't have believed you. i was a lawyer. i didn't even take lee love writing. somebody i saw from years ago breezily in seattle said but you didn't even like to write. and it's true, i must say, i let most of the brief writings got to my partners. but somehow, when i stopped doing the day-to-day work of civil rights law, fighting the government in court every day, i had enough time, a little time to reflect. and what i hit on was, i have a story to tell here, a story that really needs to be told. and i wanted to tell the story of fred hampton, because even though it was 35 years later, it
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was the story and a person who had most affected me in my life. we probably all have people when we look back or when they come into a tough situation and we say, what would so-and-so do tonight? what would this person do in this situation? one of those persons for me was donahue, ahead of the homeless coalition. the other person was fred haddad, who i knew 35 years ago. so i often think in tough situation, what would fred hampton do? and so i decided, this story needs to be killed because he affected me so much, maybe i can tell it in a way that will affect other people. and so, i had an advantage i guess over some people who write, and that as one of my writing teachers said you were lucky you had a front row seat on history. and i did have a front row seat on history and the fact that i got to meet fred hampton, the panthers, i lived through the '60s, and i was a lawyer for
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much of the movement. at another friend also said, you don't get any credit for living it. which means, you've got to write it and write it in a way that hopefully people like it and want to read about it. again, then nevertheless, i had such a wonderful story to tell, actually two or three stories to tell. the first story is the story of fred hampton, which many of us know much more about his death than about his life. and i had the pleasure of being with transfixing going down to gainesville and being with francis, his father who passed away a year ago, and getting a feel for the family and getting a feel for the cousins and the people who knew fred early on. and i heard stories about when he was 10 years old, fred organized a neighborhood kids and brought him over for breakfast on saturday morning because he knew some of them were hungry. and he cooked for all the neighborhood kids that he had his own breakfast for children program when he was 10 years old.
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when trantwo's young he also had a big head, and people used to call him peanut head. so fred decided he wasn't going to be called peanut head so he learned to be very good, and by the time he was 14 or 15, he was known as the king of the nine. nobody took on his mouth. and similarly, he had a list, and in or to overcome his list, he practiced oratory and he particularly modeled himself after preachers and he went to church to listen to preachers. and he also memorized all the speeches of dr. king and doctor max. so there was no accident, he took what was a deficit and overcame and became a powerful speaker. and he could speak to welfare mothers and he could speak to gain kid that he could speak to law students. when fred got older, he was in high school, he was a good football player. it was very likable.
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he was known for being very sociable guy, but he wasn't content just to be popular. fred, when he saw injustice, had to react to a. one of the first things he did come he noticed that black girls were not allowed -- to be considered homecoming wins so he led a walkout of the school over that. the next year he's leading a walkout because there's not enough -- no black administers and very few black teachers there. and his work is so compelling, the principal called him and when there was racial strife because he had so much respect for both the blacks and the white students. fred goes on there because he's such a good organizer, they recognize him and he becomes the chair of the suburban naacp representing the west suburbs of chicago, and he spoke up for workers rights and he spoke up for the rights of -- to have principles. one of the early issues he
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actually worked for was higher pay for police in maywood, and then eventually, for more control in the ability to discipline bullies who abuse people. so fred is always a community person. one of the things that he did early on, even though he was not a swimmer, there was no place for black kids in maywood to swim. the white kids could go to a veterans park in new by cyber. so fred organized the kids and actually led the march to the maywood city council. and there he impressed a number of people, including tom streeter who's on the city council, but he also had opposition of some people. and so when fred led a large crowd there, half of them got in. so fred argued to the city council, let's go to a different place or let people sit on the floor. the police instead when they saw a lot of people outside and couldn't get in, fired teargas and eminent people ran away, from that place, they broke
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windows and they were angry. the police came and arrested fred even though he was inside the village when all this happened. he was early on a scapegoat. when fred went from head of the naacp, he marched with dr. king on the west side. he also worked with the black power movement. he got together a very impressive library of black history books. and then when the panthers came together in 68 when it bobby rush came back from the west coast for a panther chapter, the first person he asked to join was fred hampton. so in november 1968, fred became the chairman of the illinois chapter of the black panther party, which immediately grew under his sort of electric energy. and fred and pressed people so much, that they did the work that he said, but not only the work he said that the work he
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did. he went to the practice for children program at six in number and. he fed the kids are getting just talk about it. and fred had the ability to inspire people. and i think his rhetoric certainly wasn't very strong. it was panther rhetoric that it was revolutionary rhetoric. and sometimes it was often paid rhetoric, which to the panthers met get police to abuse us out of the community. the police obviously didn't necessarily see it that way. but there was a conflict brewing, and a month before fred was killed there were two young black men killed in the housing project near him who were organizing to get a streetlight so that the kids could march to the clinic, or get to the clinic without getting run over as two of them had already been hurt. there was no recourse then, even now, against brutal police behavior. those police, even the one of the young man was shot in the back of the head, the police claimed that he pulled a gun on them to the other persons similarly was shot when the
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police claim he had a gun and a bystander said he didn't. this was the type of thing that fred hampton was dealing with on december 4. i went and i went to the office two days on december 2, i went to the office and i saw fred and heard fred. and he was like telling people, you've got to be at the breakfast for children program on time but you've got to get the service for the program. you've got to get to a petition signed for the community control of police. he got to come to political presentation. this young man just vibrated energy, and people around him were like heaven by his energy. and on december 4 of 1969, 2 days later, after i had just been with fred, my partner, skip and you saw in a movie, lift up the street, knocked on my door. and said the chairman is dead. and i said what do you mean, he said the chairman was shot this morning in a police raid.
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and i thought, this guy who i had just seen two days before, so vibrant, so like, he made us believe we could do anything and everything is dead? i just couldn't believe it. i went to the wood street station which is where the survivors were. and there i saw debra johnson, fred fiancé who had been lying in bed next to him. and deborah is eight and half months pregnant with fred, who turns out to be fred junior derek and she is sobbing and she tells me what happens. tells me about the police coming in firing. telling me about how we got a pregnant sister in here, tells me about lying there in bed trying to cover up because the bullets are coming into the room, getting on top of red. and then she says they pull her out of the room, and she hears
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these two police officers go into the room, one of them said, is he dead yet? another one said, she hears two shots and then she hears, he's good and dead now. and she looks at me and says, what can you do about it? and i couldn't bring fred back to life, and i did know what to do about it, but i couldn't forget her plea and i couldn't forget knowingness vibrant man, who had so affected me. in the days that followed, hanrahan goes on tv. do please give their version which is that they were open fire pump if they did know it was a panther apartment barrages of shots at them and then of course hanahan said then fred hadn't had a 45 and shot at the police coming in the back door. and a few days later he said here's my proof. here's the picture of the back door. and here are the two bullet holes come the from righthanders can. of course we now know those
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bullet holes were nailhead. the entire police story fell apart, that they were 99 shots, 90 to 99 shots fired by the police. and that, if not, what happened was there was one shot fired by mark clark who was dying. was hit in his shot went up in the air. and that was exposed to. hanrahan never backed off, never did anything but say these are honorable police. we should be praising them for what they did. well of course, it ended hanahan's political career. the black community didn't buy the fact that the show man was killed in his bed at 4:30 a.m. in a police raid. there was evidence that he was drugged, which explains why he never woke up. you would think once we exposed that, that would be the end of the story. brutal case of police murder. they went in there with their shotguns, a machine gun, a rifle and a handgun. but that's really almost the
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beginning of the story because as we pursue this lawsuit, and it was flint and me and the whole people's office and herbert read and help from the lawyers guild and help from the center for constitutional rights, it was not just a few of us that we got help from the whole progressive legal community. we pursue this. a couple of years later, a guy named william r. neill turned up as a witness in a federal case. and all new it turned out was fred hampton's personal bodyguard, and he was also head of security in the party. and i'll neill, we said i would've on you has anything to do with the raid. and would begin asking questions and taking deposition. and i know for people who were not lawyers, what such a big deal about documents? but we uncovered and the government kicked and screamed and hit and denied and lied and had a judge who covered up for them, and the book goes into the 18 months that it took.
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and the second month of the trial, $200 of files which were produced that had been hidden for the entire pretrial. but among these documents, we discovered i thank for that i just want to briefly mentioned that one was -- there was an fbi program which targeted the entire left but focus on the black movement, and in particular on the black panthers. one of the objectives was to prevent the rise who could unify and electrify the manager. we thought, gosh, doesn't fred hampton fit that discretion? wasn't he pulled people together? wasn't he bringing people together to support the community? all know, it had nothing to do with the. will build 100 times in court and a hundred times before the judge affirmed, but nevertheless, do we get a document that shows that under this program, they sent a letter to the head of the rangers say dear brother jeff, i'm a panda, i've been hanging around with fred hampton.
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just want you to don't they have a hit on the. i know what i would do if i was you. this was approved by the head of the fbi, marlon johnson, who later became the head of the chicago police were. they sent this letter and they specifically say it's expected this will get retaliatory action. and in fact, maybe he realized the language didn't set a black brother, but he didn't take retaliatory action. and in fact, what happened was not getting -- unable to get the blackstone rangers to do their bidding, they had o'neal go in and get a floor plan that showed everything, the entire layout of the apartment. including the bed where fred hampton slept. he marked on the diagram, that of hampton and clark when he sleepier. would do please come in the apartment, his bedroom is in the back. and when we look at the direction of the bullet holes, they converge where fred hampton's bed was. and it turns out that that
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floorplan was given and shown to the raiders that night. and afterwards, what did the fbi publicly, they said we don't know, we don't take position on this. internally, they get a bonus to william o'neil. $300 they say because his information was in valuable. so the fbi was taking credit for the raid. and one of the aged badly termed a success on the witness stand. so this is the first door you is fred. the third store is the fbi involved. we even had a recent doctor that showed when fred hampton was leading marches to the city council at maywood six months before there was a panther party, hoover was sending memos to the white house and cia, the department of the army, talking about this young leader in maywood leading this demonstration to maywood city council. this is before there was any revolutionary rhetoric that this is before there was a black panther party. this is the kind of people that
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-- this is what hoover had in mind, any black independent group was a threat to him. and interestingly enough, one of the advantage when we tried this case, there was a mood in the country of exposing the government, because of watergate. the church committee was doing that. the two people in the ford administration had for detail a bill that would have expanded to include intelligence were a fellow named donald rumsfeld, chief of staff, and his chief aide, named dick cheney. so the battle continues to expose government illegalities, atrocities. those people certainly had their day. pages are a day in jail, as was a day running the country. [applause] >> finally, i just want to say when i went over to the hamptons apartment years later, and asked them is there anything here of
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trantwo's that was personal to him that i could, might be useful in my book? bill went down into fred alderman came up with this book. it was a book that fred had and it was called deep in my heart that it was by william cussler. fred had wanted to be a lawyer. and fred believed in justice. he said, in 1969, i don't have time to be a lawyer. there's too much else going on. by fred had affected lawyers that he has been the inspiration for our office, people's law office, and some of the things we did. and i think what kept me going and it was an irony that here we were, pursuing who killed fred hampton, but it was fred hampton a life who kept us going, who inspired us when we said, maybe we should give up now, we've had enough. one of us would say what would fred had to do, and we kept going. and i think that's the lesson of fred hampton. and if we can pass that on to
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law students come to lawyers come to the public, then we have gotten the message of fred hampton across. and he hasn't died in day. thank you. [applause] >> this is not going to be a typical panel. i tell you all in advance, and warning the panel, that i'm planning to interrupt as distinguished as you are. [laughter] >> i'm going to do a really quick grounded him, not going to do formal introductions because there's so much to talk about. and so much to convey.
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but i would just briefly introduce you to professor adam green from the university of chicago. he has written an incredible book called telling the race, sort of black chicago from post, i don't know the official subtitle, from postwar chicago. fantastic book and flipped it is still with the people's law office, still fighting the fight there and one of the leaders of a covered the tortured cases, covering it up to today and fighting for people who have been on death row and unjustly imprisoned. these are told inadequate introduction but i'm just giving you a little heads up. martha, professor, historian at northwestern law school and author of standing site, which has -- northwestern -- i wish. at the history department in evanston this year american bar
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association fell and has written a wonderful book about new york's called to stand and fight. david stonewall, professor at -- assistant professor -- assistant professor? are you an associate professor? [laughter] >> at the university of illinois chicago in education, a teacher of the cicada freedom school and about to be author of 12 brilliant books. and were really happy you're here. just, you know. professor dorothy roberts from northwestern law school, also to distinguish two possible to introduce. and many of you know, i think, a journalist and chicago's longest thing was career, editor back in the day of mohammed speaks there currently a journalist.
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barber rants become a history at the university of illinois chicago, history department and african-american studies, everything? just about everything. chair and just about everything. doing just about anything. author of a wonderful book. next, a legend in chicago, longtime activists around labor rights. around human rights and civil rights, and longtime representative of the freedom movement of southern africa. somebody who represented the government of mozambique and south africa act in the apartheid and remains one of the amazing people speaking for internationalism. a relationship for the struggles there and struggles here. so each of you, as you can see,
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is capable of illuminating and complex three-hour lecture. [laughter] >> and life and death of fred hampton, and the story of the heroism of his family pic but assuming that our audience is with us for only a short period, i'm going to try to engage this brilliant panel in a conversation. this will require keeping it moving so i'm apologizing in advance for my plan to interrupt all of you. [laughter] >> and at the end of this, a civil rights lawyer that many of you know and i will take questions from the audience, and then we'll adjourn for more conversation. just book is in part the memory project, and remember to state violence against african-americans, a pain in resistance, and as shocking as somebody brutality. and the calculation. so we are today recovering and
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exercising the collective powers of memory. . . and it's did with me really throughout my life and those of you that now may well know that it means a great deal to me to say this. this was the first time that i
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really understood about the existence of racism in the united states, was getting news of the killing and the assassination in the murder of a fred hampton's -- fred hampton. it stayed with me throughout my life the image of seeing that on the television and trying to cope at that age and in my situation with what i had to catch up blethen order to process that. and i know exactly where i was that night even though i was very young. >> i was at home, i got a call from skip andrew like jeff did it appear that i came here to northwestern and it got one of the other law students that worked at the office out of class at lincoln holland and we headed down to the apartment and for the next 10 or 11 days we stayed there. pretty much around the clock, taking evidence standing in it fred hampton's a blood watching while the panthers brought to
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workers through the air every day showing the bloody mattress, this is where the chairman died. and there was one particular quote to which i thank you put in the book, jeff, that stuck with me beyond just the remarkable and just being there and seeing firsthand and documenting this murder. was this older black woman came through, looked at the polls and in the swiss cheese walls by the machine-gun bullets, shook her head and said, ain't nothing but a northern lynching. >> martha. >> i was five so i don't have a recollection of the assassination but i do recall being a teenager encountering slogans, you could kill a revolutionary but not the revolution, and had that for years before i knew who he was really. so his message influenced me greatly before i even really knew who he was.
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>> david. >> well, i wasn't even a thought. [laughter] i was born in 1972. but the first time i ever heard of a fred hampton was watching eyes on the prius. and i remember watching into on channel 11 with my parents. and my mom said the, man, i remember fred hampton, mark clark, bobby rush, started going down with all of these names and she said, you know what, i don't think they ever understood in terms of what they were really about because she always knew them as folks who were feeding other folks and that's how -- that was a recognition of the panther party and how she understood their work and that was the first time in eyes of the prize, called a nation of laws. and i watched it with my high school students to this day.
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>> jeff, i'm going to skip bit. [laughter] dorothy. >> well, i was 13 years old and when that fred hampton was assassinated and on the day of his assassination my family was living in africa so i wasn't aware of it then, but we had just moved there from chicago that fall. so during most of 1969i was living in hyde park in chicago and i was aware of fred hampton and his work as the black panther party. in fact, i subscribe to the black panthers newspaper and i remember my mother being very upset, not because i was interested in the black panthers but because the newspaper came to our house and she said to me, don't you know that the police are calling people who are on the list, and she made me and the subscription.
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but it made an impression on me that this be one -- the black panthers were doing work that the government wanted to stop and i was aware early on that that kind of work was a threat, seen as a threat to the fbi and the police. from what i was 13. >> salim. >> well, i was actually a member of the party in jersey city, new jersey. i had been in the military during the vietnam era and hadn't been -- and have been rudely educated and about what we were doing in southeast asia. and the military, there was a lot of opposition to the imperialists and policies of this country. and the panthers spoke to some of the passions that were being
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provoked in the military at that time. when i got out of the military and immediately joined the black panther party in 1969 so i was a member of the party in jersey and we heard many of us knew of fred hampton because he had canaccord a reputation as being very conscientious and aggressive and energetic leader so many of us had idolized him and look to him for future inspiration. and when he was murdered we all realized what was up. we knew then in that it was no joke. we knew in the beginning that it was no joke, but this simply put in exclamation point on that too. so that was where i was that at that time. brad was an inspiration, we knew that his death was something that would spur us to accomplishments. >> barbara. >> i was one year younger than
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dorothy. i was 12 years old and i was living in detroit. and nidal remember hearing about fred hampton at the time, but certainly did many years later. but interestingly 1969 was the year that i encountered the panther's. there was a panther chapter in detroit and chorus and the panthers had a breakfast program in the basement of my school. on the west side of detroit and was also the year that my eighth grade boy friend's brother, older brother was in the panther's. and he died tragically not at the hands of the police but as a result of a drug overdose actually. and i think that raised for me the other specter, the other killer in black communities at that time. i don't think that was accidental either, but that was my first encounter with the panthers, these amazingly beautiful smart to kind of men
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and women who were serving as breakfast every morning and talking to us about revolutionary ideas. i did not know at the time really what that was about but it was very appealing to me. >> prexy. >> i was asleep at my house 1514 and my father came in the room and said there had been a raid on the west side and it must be very bad because gloves davis was in on a. and people from the west side all due how brittle he was. and that was all he got his name and the fact. i was working at the st. mary's center for learning, it was a high school on the west side, damon and roosevelt. we had a lot of students in the school. i was the dean remembers the panther party. so by this time i'd add to school at 8:00 o'clock, lots of -- it was a women's former catholic school and lots were upset so i remember spending the
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morning working with the students, talking to them and taking some of them homa. taking some over to monroe street, building. by that time all so i was putting that together with what had happened to the soto brothers who my sister had worked with on the west side. so the pitcher was getting pretty clear what was going on. >> fred was 21 when he was assassinated, just 21. prexy, dorothy, flint, why was he so dangerous in the eyes of the fbi and the chicago police department? prexy back to you. >> very quickly, i was there at the people's church once when fred spoke and i have heard by that time a number of very great speakers, these brilliant
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revolutionaries and read this book and then at that people's church over on ashland that day and i remember very well he was introduced by japanese sister, and the two of them spoke. it was one of the most reverent in talks i have ever heard. total clarity about people coming together, black, white, brown, yellow -- uso clear about that. and i think that's one of the main clique -- reasons that they offered him because he was such a force for unification was young, clear brothers. >> martha. >> dorothy? >> sari. >> well, i had never heard him speak in person, but i think in addition to his charisma and his oratory skills, what impressed
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me about him or his principles and his commitments. is a willingness to sacrifice his life for what he believed in it, which was justice. and i think the fbi recognized early on that somebody who had that kind of commitment to justice at such an early age was destined to do great things, to bring people together, to be a leader of the movement. and they were willing to brutally destroy people like that and continue to do it in the way they torture and kill and walked out of hundreds of thousands of people in this country who potentially could be fred hampton today.
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[applause] >> yes, i did introduce him here at northwestern and, yes, i did stand a threat to. [laughter] but in my defense that was the first time i have spoken publicly. but more seriously, watching him walk into that room, i expected about 50 law students to be there and, in fact, the entire law school was their predominantly white, mostly conservative and mail. and he sat there and spoke to them and reach them in the same way he would rich people on the west side in the same way he reached people at the church when i was there and jeff was there as well i'm sure many others in the audience were there. so he could speak, he can organize, he could move people regardless of their race, regardless of their class and backgrounds, regardless of what kind of history they had a personal way. and and i think was something that the government's in their
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paranoia recognized. that the spoken word, the ability to organize was much more dangerous than the bands that they might have carried around. they were an armed propaganda units. they were armed but not dangerous in the sense that you think of armed and dangerous. they were on top for one reason and they were dangerous for an entirely different reason in the eyes of the government. >> in the winter of 1969, this is an impossible question but because of the number of young people in the audience and i think this is a story telling and, who was the black panther party? in 1969. >> well, for us you know, we were like children of mao,. malcolm x. and we had a tired of seeing some african-americans of being
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forced to endure to the kinds of brutality in the face of seven insurance and the civil rights movement, that whole and nonviolent movement. we were entirely with that movement. we didn't believe in non-violence. we didn't believe in this notion of some day we will all sunday over,. we wanted to overcome yesterday. so the black panthers were like a tonic to us. it was this group of people who said we will no longer except the kind of brutality that the police were inflicting on our communities without any redress, without any sense of accountability. no one would respond to our
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please and sp -- the black panther party came along and said, you can't do this anymore. simple as back. we will stop you from doing its. and that to us was like, you know -- is really unimaginable a the kind of effect that that had on young people during that time who were sold under assault from this notion of a racist oppression of. and so the panthers energized us like nothing else could. and in iraq is one of the problems i think eventually that occurred in was attracted so much attention, so much affection and so much attraction from young people who were elated by the civil rights oppression and that the panther
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party could not enhance that kind of aggression. >> barbara. >> i guess i would just build off of the salim, he had a more firsthand account, but certainly for me and many others the panthers were a symbol of resistance and standing at. but i think something that gets left out sometimes and as i read about fred hampton the man, the young man, i am reminded of the panthers that i knew in to try to. there is this notion of serving the people. so there was defiance against the police and i push back against a level of unapologetic and unabated police violence in the city. but there also was this sense of humility, this sense of humanism, and the same young man who were with black jackets and beret is standing tall against
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the police also serving eggs and pancakes in the free breakfast program. traditionally women's work. so i was impressed by the combination of service and struggle and for me that combination was powerful and dangerous because it can transform us as well as transform the enemy's of the people themselves. >> ralph, by 1969, the panthers were three years old. they had 30 chapters around the country, one in every major city. there were thousands of members and aimed their recruitment at urban youth but actually the membership was much more diverse. the popular images convey, they included women, artists, intellectuals, ex-convict, students, inmates, the panthers as has been said that i think there best known for both advocating armed self-defense and i committed to service programs. they had a dual image of being
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armed revolutionaries who were preparing the masses for a coming revolution in, but at the same time were very really committing to in themselves to a committee service and i think fred hampton really exemplifies this aspect of the panther party. being committed to serving the people through the practice programs and a whole host of other programs. it was striking how loyal the residents were to fred hampton today and then there were so interested in rehabilitating his reputation and finding justice and i think that that really speaks to how much they loved and admired and and how much they felt and what to reciprocate his devotion to them. >> david, you learned about the panthers before you learned about fred hampton. when did you learn about the panthers? >> the first day was of the 10-point plan when i was in with
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great. and i got the 10-point plan by way of a actually one of my classmates. and he broadband and was like, this is the holding, and we were looking added to and i looked at it but it was a 10-point plan by next to the plan was to the rules of the meetings of of the black panther party and i thought that was interesting because i felt it was written by somebody who was just a little bit older than me. the reason why i thought about that was one of the rule said you cannot, high or dropped to a meeting. [laughter] and when i looked at that i said, man, they were older than us because they tried to organize and make sure that if somebody wasn't in the meeting messing it up. i started to read some more, but eyes on the prize first came out in a trade but i first remember seeing the 10-point plan and
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with great. >> adam, you have written unbelievably movingly about the lynching of emmett till and the response of the black community in chicago. it isn't it astonishing that the handan family or neighbors, that there was a baby sitter for and its tail before he went to to mississippi. before he was beaten, tortured and drown in 1955 at the age of 15, when fred was six years old. can you offer us, i know you've written deeply about this but can you offer us a little free mark about the 14 year impact of the murder of emmett till? >> i can try. i think that -- i didn't know this i chile until i read japs
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book and it was one of the first things that comes up in the book and it was astounding i think both as a testament, documents if you will to the sense of cautiousness that young of bread must have had about what society was capable of, what happens when one is matched against structures of power. that must have been something that reminded the -- reminded everyone i imagine in the hampton family about what sorts of risks, what kinds of dangers, with profound injustice is existed out in the world. in the south but in a certain sense also everywhere. i think though the back to the thing that fact must have come off. the symmetry which is all full at one level to think about it and at the same time profoundly
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moving of having the exact same -- the word that farda used a moment ago was rehabilitation. the states for roche's desire to defame and this young man after they murdered him. the way in which people came together after that to claim him back and not only in the way that the panthers did with their jackets in their gowns and their berets and their pride, but every day ordinary people did in terms of saying, you will not take this young man away from us we will take him back. that was something that happened in 1955. very much in the same way in relation to how bradley took her son back and said, you will not speak of my son in a way that you have a. you will not make the brutalization of him and his
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body in last word about the meaning of his existence and thousands, 50 to 100,000 people assented and that in terms of going and viewing the body, visiting the church. maintaining the memory of emmett till. so there are some of things that could be said but i think this the thing that steps out the most powerfully, is the power of people to affirm life. even when those institutions that claim authority over them up will deal death. in both cases that's what comes up, and it is awesome to contemplate from where i am. [applause] >> it is an issue because recently when people try to name a street for a fred hampton away in chicago, they ultimately refuse to do but yet the people
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themselves and named it fred hampton that way and his son, fred hampton jr., and his fiancee when he was murdered they said, we don't care what they ealdorman do. we will name the street fred hampton away and that's what they do it. very similar. >> barbara, i want to ask you, you've written about the seven -- seven movement and a student nonviolent coordinating committee. can you draw us a few threads between that and the black panther party? >> someone already mentioned by 1969 there was a certain sector of the student nonviolent coordinating committee which is seen as a southern base student movement in the civil rights movement, a certain sector and really joined forces with the panthers. they have moved over to the
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panthers in another sector went in another direction and in some ways unraveling by this point. i guess what i'm struck by when i think the panthers and sncc is a false dichotomy is that sometimes we draw between the southern and northern movement. also the generational divide. i mean, we think the panthers as being militant number it's coming down, and the sncc, of course, our young people based in the south and we think of them as being in nonviolence wing. many sncc people will tell you that for them non-violence was a tactic, it wasn't a philosophy. and many when they went south for actually protected by older sharecroppers who were not passive at all to, in fact, had shotguns to protect themselves from the clan while they're nonviolent volunteers slept in their homes. so there was a tradition of self defense, its tradition of armed resistance in the south as well.
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the deacons were defense, robert williams and others represent that, the lancaster black panther party which is where the name connects in alabama. and so there were a lot of connections and when we began to look at the connections the binary of that sort of notion of militant use in the north and nonviolent popes in the south began to bring down. i also want to say about the use question and one thing that is often said about the panthers, the panthers -- the panther's capt. urgency of youth and that is certainly to but i think it's also important for us to remember that there are also radical elders and burgundy and mentioned ella baker. in a whole number of other people in the '60s who were at that time not young but certainly or radical. and there were reactionary young people. if so use is not the magic pill
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but rather the impetus was the ideas are there. >> martha, can you give us what is the main issue that sparked the beginning of the black student movement and colleges in '68 and '69? >> okay. i'm glad you asked that question because i think that's the black student movement of the late 1960's that swept campuses across the country from san francisco state to brooklyn college to cornell to howard really. nationwide, high-school as well, this is very much associated with the rise of affirmative action with the rise of black studies, hiring black faculty is and administrators, sweeping changes in american intellectual life and there are many causes of this and roots of it. about one cause that isn't often talked about is the panther's. i will remind you of one of the portion of one of their 10 points platforms, we want
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education for our people that exposes the true nature of american society. we want education that teaches archer history and our role in the present day society. and the black panther party actually was very influential, they have a lot of students in the party but i think their influence went beyond a recruit and to end their vision, their style and their tactics influenced really this whole generation of student activists who are very influential in the push for affirmative action, open admission and the african-american studies. just a couple of them as examples and sand and cisco state which was kind of ground zero for the whole black student movement in studies movement was the firing of george murray, that set off that four month strike that led to the first creation of a college of ethnic studies in san francisco. at brooklyn college the black
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panther party was influential in organizing the black student union and there. in fact, the leader of the black student union, one of them was meant to be arrested in the raid that produced panther 21 and seven should have been the panther 22. he was out of town that day. they got him on another predawn case the brooklyn college 19. again he was a young man and the cops came this window in the early morning, these kids were sent to rikers island for five days and there was trumped up charges. and, in fact, another target like the panthers, and other targets were black student unions across the country and very little is written about that. some of it was a result of the panther connection but not all of it. ..
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>> i can tell you one. that was a very important one. that was the vietnam one. and the relationship and clarity of resisting the vietnam war. the other one very briefly, i
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don't think a lot of people know how deep it really went. since i was involved in that, it was a very close relationship with the mozambique liberation front. the current president of mozambique talks to this day about meeting the leadership of the panther party over on the west side on madison avenue. he said to me not long ago, is there a monument on the west side of chicago? and i said there is no monument. i am just thinking one of the things we have got to do is put up a serious monument on the west side. [applause]
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>> i think the most prominent influence was the panther party really reached the notion that violence is a catalyst to revolution to assert your agency in the face of overwhelming oppression. this provided a way for the panthers to theorizes that. to a certain extent my own state -- the panthers -- his book was required reading for panthers. when you go to meetings we had to read certain portions of the red book, trying to acquaint us with international ideas and ideas of how socialism -- we shouldn't mince words about
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this. the panthers were strongly scientific socialists. that was a professed ideology. they required panther members to do some intellectual work in the community. intellectual abstractions would be grounded in community work. we were often given these international series, to apply their theories to our situation in this country. >> there was a scientific discussion about socialism. about the question of the relationship between politics and arms. i hasten to add the earlier point made that there are a number of very revolutionary
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older generation people around here. there is a group of ct a workers led by a man named stan willis. there was a group of afro-american patrolmen performed the afro-american patrolman lead. there was heavy dialogue that went on about these questions and political education. >> i will ask dorothy and barbara if you could talk for a moment about the role of any influence of family and placed in the story of fred hampton. in this narrative, francis hampton and the family looming
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very large and the same for mark clark's family, the location of maywood and francis in argo and louisiana, there are connections. that is the deep threat in telling the story. >> i don't have think i can do justice to the richness of the narrative. i learned a lot about the fred hampton family history in looking at the book. it is a bigger question about social change agents and radical forces and as a point i wanted to make since we started this conversation which is we are focusing on a single individual.
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the term science was used by the fbi in talking about the fear of the kind of leadership they thought fred hampton represented. but the real strength of an individual leader like fred hampton was the community that surrounds them which includes family. that many people who were able to make a powerful impact on social change and revolutionary movement in this country and around world come from a tradition of resistance and struggle and families that love them and expected them to love their people in the community in justice. part of the legacy of fred hampton is to understand he was larger than a single individual and there's a limitation in any political vision that invests in itself and there is always a family and community story and
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organizations story that makes those individuals strong. >> the way in which fred took qualities from his mother and his father and going back generations before that, it reminds us that people's struggle is not based on what is currently alive, but in generations and generations of ordinary people struggling with depression, and if fred got that, there is a line about his father's militancy and his mother's resistance and probably
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exact reference, qualities from his parents that made him who he was but that represented quality that people struggled against oppression. they had to have for centuries. it is more than just one person. it is the family and the people. power to the people. it is about the people's struggle. >> when you kill someone, you stop progress. i realize individual leaders develop community input but once those leaders are taken now what they represent is often
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diminished. they know what they are doing when they assassinate these folks. >> that is a theme that runs through this book and the story of his life and murder, his statement that you can kill the freedom fighter but you can't kill the freedom fight. the question of whether or not it is possible to stop a movement by killing not just one but they killed many and locked up many people. we don't even know about all the people they killed and locked up. i agree but we also have to believe, the inspiration that there will be more young people
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like him to pick up struggle. [talking over each other] >> one of the things i love the most, i got this when i got older, listening to fred hampton say i am high on the people, i am high on the people. he didn't want drugs in the meeting but he was fine with being high on the people. that had to come from a place of love. i think a lot of things did get killed in terms of life and organization but that love only gets killed if people don't continue to refer to it. you could say that in certain ways it was obstructed and blocked but the story of how black people thought about each other in chicago and how they thought about allies was different and there was an
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ability to think about love and being high on people and that is important in terms of the rise -- >> i am going to keep us for one minute. i want to ask several of you in the aftermath of the assassination, the investigation and cover up, the state attorney and chicago police on tv to show how under siege they were from bullets coming from inside the apartment and the initiative in making tours of the apartment and public tours so that we lined up in december and went through the crib in the funeral itself. i want to ask about the instance
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and tenacious community struggle that he immediately responded to the notion of the naacp report that came out, the patrolman association, they want you to talk about that. and i would like salim muwakkil to talk about the struggle in the media of what happened. how that went down in the media. if you could talk for a minute about the role -- we have state attorney leading the race and i remind you the state attorney's office last week tried to subpoena north western journalism. we are in a similar thing today. maybe you could talk about how immediately the story was a struggle between the state and
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various powers at the end on the ground. >> one of the aspects of that struggle led to the mobilization of the black community all over chicago and all kinds of forces mobilized on that and responded and it marked the death knell of -- political figure in the city of chicago. he couldn't distribute newspapers. it also marked the point that really starts the beginning of the coalition building that ultimately would lead to the election of harold washington in the city of chicago. any number of relationships were
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forged in that period. jeff was very good in bringing some of that out. i think of a group like rising up angry, white resistance group on the north side. young lords. the appellation people's movement. all of the forces that started working together that had not been working together before. my final point is a sad point. i don't think i have seen since that time effort at the point of unity and pride and strength that there was. the vicious role of drugs and drug distribution starts to tear
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apart the bonds, party it created and bringing together -- it was a moment of tremendous unity in that moment of sorrow. there was a tremendous unity. >> in a moment about the murder. >> a solid ally at the time at that point additional that represented a major breach. this culminated -- a very adversarial, the black unity --
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the unity was often -- the mainstream was passing by the black community as the media mainstream and black people understood this in ways they haven't before. he is in prison and one of his acolytes was recently murdered in detroit. the same kinds of justifications and rationalization the government used to kill fred is being used in this case. the media is always on point -- as a paramount position. it is up to us to reconstruct that and understand what this is all about. that is a great message. >> one of the things --
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[applause] -- followed the police line and state line in this that some sort of competitor -- al gordon didn't. coming out of people -- the trial and so on were published and it became an interesting debate and dialogue. they played a critical role. quickly. a word about the role of the state attorney and the legal apparatus. i am not quite getting to the trial thing. how could you have the state
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attorney doing the re-enactment and having a table of weapons as they often do showing that it was justified to kill? >> that shows that it was a political struggle and what we have 40 years later is the continuing struggle, political and historic, that we can leave to the media to write that history and we have to fight to expose the truth and shape and teach about what people's history is. we are here, 40 years later still riding and fighting for the people's interpretation of the murder and that is an ongoing struggle not only with regard to fred hampton and the panthers but all of the other struggles like police torture and other related police brutality and violence. [applause]
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>> i heard the trial was close to home. >> kind of go in order here. i would like to ask the lawyers to comment about the culture of law as a site of struggle. i found it is like a legal thriller. it is like john grisham, the baby lawyers up against the state, and state-funded prosecutors and fbi and judges stonewalling judicial corruption and flying. i want to point to the people who are interested in this, one of the most remarkable decisions from a federal judge is hampton
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-- to remember 600. that is the culmination of this struggle. maybe you would comment on this kind of place that followed the community. >> this whole notion of looking at big boys against the big system, this is often the way young folks feel when they are not being heard. myself as teaching, i teach at a high-school. when my students talk about study struggles and they talk about their own struggles they often talk about not being heard. what are the ways in which we as myself being 37 and my high-school being born between
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the years of 93, and 94. this notion of how can we be supportive of them and looking at this role of the state, what does the state do in the present day? one example i always think about is the notion of extreme rendition. extreme rendition is nothing -- in chicago. if we need to be clear about that -- [applause] -- operating the same process. you see some young bloods on the corner, drop them off someplace different. we had this conversation post 9/11. so much has changed! not too much has changed. this notion -- how many have you heard -- if you are from chicago you know about the clit.
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this notion about understanding that and being clear about how we position against these behemoths but at the same time the power -- i always like to dig up two people in my high-school wife, a woman who i cannot find by the name of courtney smith, my high-school classmates gave me the book drive me to die. it was that whole peace around feeling empowered. once i felt empowered they couldn't do anything. is much bigger than that. it pushed me around understanding the capacity of organizing things like the police or our teachers.
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i have to be clear. i want education system -- this whole notion of the educational system and being clear about the educational system, how do we push forward understanding that these things exist? [applause] >> i will be really brief. that just sank in. there is a profoundly inspiring quality to fred hampton's life. there is an extraordinarily disenchanting sense of encountering what the state is capable of in terms of brutalizing its citizens. the only think i can say -- i am
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not a legal specialist, i am not someone who knows this technically, when you step back and think about the case, particularly the fbi does something we know about and we go too often in terms of thinking about this case, is the more extreme thing, the unit that assassinated fred hampton, special prosecution unit. if you step back and you don't swallow the mythmaking or syrup that is said to you in the country in terms of identifying with power and authority, what that was was the death squad. just like el salvador, just like south africa, just like vietnam, just like anywhere. to know that people at that level of authority and power in
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this country could send a death squad out specifically to engage in target assassination tells us something about what we are up against in terms of what lengths the state will go to to preserve its power and authority. we just have to name that. we can never forget it and we have to teach it to the young. that is what we need to understand in terms of struggling in this country. [applause] >> i will do three more questions. the first, i will ask barbara ransby -- brenda harris, one of the survivors of the raid says in the book we didn't have
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enough classes in black history or clear idea of the role of women and when asked about her gunshot injury she i will never play the violin again. you have told the story about deborah johnson, woke up to the hail of bullets and tried to cover with her own, i wonder if you can talk about the gender here. the role of the mothers and also the legal team, the panthers, the survivors. this is another program i understand. i think it is important to touch on it and it is all there in our
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history. >> we should ask the women on the panel. i would be interested -- >> might be the most insightful. >> i would hope my brothers will be insightful on this question as well. i do think -- i alluded to this earlier, there is a very masculine image of the panthers. we forget erica huggins and cathleen cleaver and elaine brown, in a different kind of prison, in exile in cuba. there has been a campaign in chicago and elsewhere to bring attention to it. the panthers is a complicated organization with smart young people and grappled with the issue. some people on the west coast,
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phyllis jackson talked about child care and communal living but also not always ideal or romanticized but there were attempts to grapple with traditional gender roles and in grappling with the notion of what it means to be a full human being which means not only defeating racism but also defeating sexism and patriarchy and homophobia and all these other things. for the panthers in chicago, critically important. the issues of gender and the ways -- profound way as the panthers also challenged restricted notions of black
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masculinity which when we think of the plight of young black men and boys today is a major challenge to get to what it means to be a black man in this country and part of it was defending the community against the police. part of a was about serving and humility. those of the gender politics. we talk about this question. >> i want to say one thing. when talking about the role --
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ordnance base -- [inaudible] -- there is a male way of doing things and a female way. male and female leadership. >> thank you. [applause] >> i think you are right. you use to issue periodic cyclicals so to speak. one of those was about the kind of chauvinism that was characteristic of what we used to call a cultural nationals, revolutionary nationalist and cultural nationalists. the excessive chauvinism was an attempt by the panthers to speak
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to that. >> there were examples in the book where fred stood up against chauvinism. the example of one of the first act of resistance to advocate against the exclusion of black women from home coming when he was a very young teenager and another example in the book where the west side panthers wanted the women in the chicago office to serve the brothers that were coming and they said no. women in chicago don't play that role. in any organization that has men and women, there will be
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struggled in gender because gender is deeply rooted in our society and society is around the world. there are examples where the panthers were ahead of most organizations in terms of gender in the sense that the issues that they took up were issues that had been considered women's issues. when i teach a course on child welfare at the law school i get 99% women in my class but the panthers have a breakfast program. they also have a health program which is generally considered something that only women are interested in. what inspires me and what i give
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a lot of respect to is the philosophy of the health program that saw our health as connected to social justice. people were connected to the reproductive justice philosophy, women of color. there were struggles around gender. there was chauvinism and sexism. there was an attempt to grapple with it and there was also examples where the panthers had a philosophy more associated with women's philosophy, that they transcended some of those issues to have programs that address social justice for everybody. >> two quick points. the first is to reiterate what has already been said. when you look at the social
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movements of the 60s and 70s they are characterized by a kind of swagger. you can find lots of examples of this in other organizations but at the same time there are lots of women in the organization who overtime begin to push back against that culture and after the result -- a lot of male leaders are incarcerated or executed, you really see women functioning not only as the backbone of the organization, the rank-and-file where they get characterized, women assuming leadership and rebuilding the black panther party and putting a decisive new imprint on it. an imprint that is contested. i take the point there's still a male style of leadership. we do see two seeds of early feminism emerging in the 70s in
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a lot of these organizations. secondly, one can see and we see this in the book. the whole process of lawyering we see patriarchy all over the place and that replicated even in left-wing lawyering. also what can't give us where we can see openings to push back to widen the field of players is with movement lawyering. what they used to call in the 30s mass action court tactics does open up for women whether they are mothers or community members to insert themselves in the legal process. in movement lawyering in abolishing the death penalty or torture, it goes beyond the lawyers and judges and involves the community. that can push back against those
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patriarchal gender dynamics that normally operate. >> i will now be miserable about the fact that we are not going to talk about wonderful questions about the relationship -- and just talk about george jackson and going to his burial and meeting georgia jackson and the connection to the industrial complex and that note of prison, 71 bars of ice-cream which he always denied. and dennis cunningham, the slender resources, pontiac seville that we were involved in. missing the police torture cases in that next generation heritage
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and the rise of african-american elected officials. let me end here when i asked all of you to do your own thing about these questions. at the end of jeff's book he asks siberia hampton about the effect of the legal struggle and what it has achieved. she says they got away with murder. so i am asking each of you to reflect our lasting legacies. lasting -- can i start with you? >> true love of people is revolutionary and you have to stand up and be prepared to pay
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the ultimate cost. [applause] >> at the risk of disagreeing with mrs. hampton which i was warned not to do, we are still fighting a battle of whether they got away with murder. what we are doing and what we are going to continue to do to fight for the correct people's interpretation of history, we can't let them get away with murder. i trust all of you being here tonight, at this late date they are not going to get away with murder. [applause] >> the book shows us the awesome
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power of the state and in our mass incarceration, we have to remember these legal questions are political questions. we need to see that in a much broader light than the criminal justice system. one lesson i learned from his life and vision is to make connections whether it is bringing together people of color struggles, black americans with their world struggles, it is like really engaging in mass community education and getting people to see that they have a lot in common and appreciate what their self-interest is to operate politically according to findings solidarity with other groups. >> in terms of the book, think about patrick cunningham who was
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a long time teacher, he teaches his students, he has three things on the board. knowledge of self, solidarity and political clarity. that is how he runs his class. everything is centered around those three things. i also think about a quote from james baldwin in response to the persecution of angela davis. it speaks to the assassination of chairman fred. they will come at night. i talk about working with my students, when i looked in my high-school space i understand at every given moment anyone of us could not be there. all of the stuff we have done to this point will be used to push
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us forward. >> thank you for bringing us together here. do you have a last word? >> i don't know. there are many legacies. just to learned who fred hampton was and what our potential is to touched and moved and inspire other people. if we take on that energy that is certainly one of the legacies. the other is they struggle against government abuse, government misconduct. the supreme executive, taking away our rights, the struggle of our lives. we must continue it and fight to persevere. that struggle is what defines many of our lives particularly as lawyers. that is the struggle we should be part of and we need to educate and we need the
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community behind us. that made the difference here. we had a receptive audience in the black community. we were able to prevail not only because of our recollection of fred but we had a community supporting us that spread the word watching that house lined up along will block. all of us are part of the legacy of the life and death of fred hamilton. >> one of the legacies is understanding the many ways in which racism and white supremacy is maintained in the united states. it is through institutions like the present system and the education system and the health system and every system, but it also happens because of state
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violence, extremely brutal state violence. death squads and tortured and locking up people. on the other hand, understanding the blanks at which the state will go to kill people and lock people up and degrade people, lets you know that there must be a great potential for social change. that is what the government and other people in power are afraid of. so the legacy for me is his murder shows the power that was snuffed out and we still have if we were willing to come together to be like fred, which is his
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willingness to say i am going to stand up for justice no matter what it takes. if people have that willingness and reach that point, that moment where we do the honorable thing, i can't accept this. we can still do remarkable things. it will take struggle but it can happen. [applause] >> i think it shows we have to intervene into conventional wisdom. the narrative of fred hampton was exhibited during the debate in city council about whether to name a street after him. the public seems to think that the police were the good guys in
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this hollow they were the assassins. it demonstrates how important is for us to have an intervention into the narrative. have some media intervention. we have to make more aggressive attempts to shape the national narrative in ways that reflect -- >> probably a lot of lessons. i think more about what i have learned about fred hampton's life more than the circumstances of his death. it seems to me one of the differences between 1969, and 2009, young people, young black people from poor communities in this city and elsewhere have a
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reason to be angry. have a reason to be angry in 1969, have an enormous reason to be angry today. we have a prison system that has an insatiable hunger for black bodies and brown bodies, we have a school system that is increasingly looking like a military operation. kids do not have jobs. they are lousy jobs. we have the same kinds of state violence that other people talk about. there is a reason to have a righteous rage but the difference it seems to me and we will see this -- that rage is not directed. that anger turned in on ourselves because there is not the kind of political analysis that fred hampton had because fred hampton was angry too. it is a righteous rage and not the kind of rage to consume him which is what made him
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dangerous. he identified some of the sources of the problems people were facing and channeled his anger and the anger of other young people toward opposing that power and that oppression. the legacy is to really learn from his life and to learned the lesson that we don't need to suppress our acre and our rage but we need to channel it and understand political formations are going to deliver us to act collectively in the interest of creating a better society. and there are many organizations today of young people and older people that are making a difference, faces that are recognized in this audience and most of the people on this panel are still fighting the good fight. i am a historian, we study the past for a living but it is also important to not simply look at
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1969 but the challenges that face us today and looked hopefully at the things that are going on today. the struggles against the war, the movement imagining change that some of us have been involved in in chicago. the freedom school, all the work that has been done by others around the torture cases. all of this is sobering but also cause for optimism about the struggle ahead. [applause] >> i don't really see any reason to say anything. i think my colleagues have said it all. i do want to say one thing. there is an expression that says
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tell no lies, claim no easy victories. the little that i know about fred i don't think he would tell lies about the work that is ahead. he would not claim easy victories. there's another expression they used to they in angola and mozambique. they used to say -- [speaking foreign language -- -- the struggle continues to pursue victory is certain. they don't say it that way anymore. victory is a continuous process as hard as hell. i am delighted over here.
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[applause] >> yes, mr hampton? [applause] >> beautiful crowd. thank you a lot. i have got something to tell you. i want you to know i am fred's mother. there are going to name a street
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after the child that got killed, i want to see them and i want to talk to them tonight. i want to let you know that i don't approve of it. i would never approve of it. who would want to walk down the street and see the street that he was killed on? you don't have anything from me. i want to let you know i do not approve of it. i will never approve of it. i don't care who they are. i thank you a lot. [applause] >> do you want to say a last
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word? >> thank you very much. this audience is so beautiful. we can't ask you to stay for questions even though i want the audience to participate. sam willis who many of you know and is a longtime civil-rights lawyer, freedom strugglers and community organizer and has been instrumental in pursuing the torture cases for decades and will not let go of that struggle any more than the struggle about the truth of the murder of greg hampton. we will let sam have the last word. [applause] >> thank you very much. this is a wonderful panel. if [applause]
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>> i would be remiss if i didn't at least tell you about my recollections very briefly of chairman fred. i met fred before many of you. i met fred in 1967. i was at crane college. many of you know about the struggle. it was a student movement that developed in chicago before the florida panther party came to chicago. we organize students all over the city. crane was considered the most militant and active student in the city. we had organized an african-american history club. i was the chairman of that club. the students around me formed leadership at the school and we decided that i should run for
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student senate to take over the school. so we did. we had a vigorous campaign and my vice-president -- this would be the connection. henry english. will look after was there. rosewall's and bob clay who died several years ago took over the african american history clubs. we controlled both. the whole point -- salim hit it right on the head. a message we got from malcolm. that was simply that we need to take control of our community and we need to take control of our history. we need to demand that the school began to teach african-american history and one
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of our demands at that time, in 1967, students should be involved in everything at the school and we learned when we were building the new school, we should name the school and we had a big debate about that. they wanted to name that at a certain point booker t. washington. we didn't find that acceptable. it has to be named malcolm x. we fought them around that issue. it is named malcolm x now. [applause] the interesting thing i will share with you, my comrades -- essentially ended up as a lawyer. in 1967, there were new forces on the block. bobby rush and fred hampton.
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we were trying to imagine what was going on. we were not that concerned because at that point we were pretty strong on campus and we were very cordial in march of '68, we organized a demonstration that involved teachers and students and protests of students that had gone murdered at orangeburg, south carolina. this preceded can stay. national guard killed a bunch of young black students on campus. and of course dr. king was killed in april and we had this mass of memorial, probably -- i left in june. i was finishing at the same time we were organizing -- i was a bus driver at the time and we
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organized the largest tract in the history of the city in 68. at the big rally which involved many people that had been involved with us at the time, some of you remember the name of rogers. they were all there. fred and i spoke on the same panel. i considered league a student. it was clear that fred was emerging. it was clear to me. i don't remember precisely, i don't usually talk about this. we learned you should be about trying to shake it too much. one of the things i was articulating and i had heard at that time, it was about undying
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love for black people. my team was undying love for black people. chairman fred came behind me and it wasn't his seem but he made comments ontheme but he made comments on my speech. remember -- if they are not for us they are against us. that is -- he was very popular. things were going to change. i left in june to the university of chicago and i joined the student movement there. i was hearing from my, reads -- comrades, rufus walls, what i was hearing was the party was
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growing. the people who had followed me were joining the party in english. and others. that was the connection. we were building the movement. in 69, i heard the news and it wasn't my dorm, it was my girlfriend's dorm where i spend most of my time and i heard the news and it was hard to describe the feeling, the hurt, the eighth year, the concern because it was clear to me even before the revelations, that the government was coming down because we always joked about we are on the phone and said i you
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on the phone too? talking to the government because we knew -- at least we thought they were following us out of town. there was a level of paranoia that goes with the movement. now we know they were following us. and so we were always talking like that. we knew something was happening. we were concerned with other panther party movers. ..
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she was controlling and sending buses to the prison and coordinating family work. the party continued. and i think the party work continues with many of us. a lot of the prep school for the party represented. it was a very strong movement of revolutionaries and the government came down on them. and we have to understand that our commitment have to go beyond the fear of the government. we know that they are always targeting a period we know that they would demonize s. at that doesn't stop our movement. and i think that's exemplified here with the people at this table. some of them have been around a long time. engaged in the struggle. and many of them had a word in. and young people -- there's a
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lot of hope, there is a lot of the world changing. i think the one thing we learned is that our struggle was not just a local struggle. we learned on those days that the government was, you know, in africa. killed tree slow-moving. they killed malcolm. we were totally convinced that they killed margin and others. so i think those are some of the lessons of flow. we are more aware of what the government will do in this country, but we also are more able to fight the government because we know them very well. we are not confused by them. so, i said as bernadine said, we're very grateful that you came out. we are hoping that you will continue whatever struggles that you are involved in and continue them in the spirit of friend.
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continue them knowing that they can kill the revolutionary, but they cannot kill the revolution. thank you very much. [applause] >> there some refreshments to appear. thank you also very much. and jeff will be signing books. you can talk to him and to the panel. sound [applause]
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richard wolffe has a book called "renegade: the making of a president." you want to tell us about your book following the president connected us in a campaign? >> i was one of the few there from the very beginning to the very end. the book came about at the candidate suggestion. he thought it would be a great idea for me to read about. i thought it would be a stupid idea until i figured out there was something about a story that was worth telling and the way that they are something obscured
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and may be hidden and reserved about him. and that's how i approach the book, not the story of the campaign, but the story of him as a played out to the campaign. the mac had he read his book prior? >> yeah, i read both of them. by the way, his first book is a lot better than the second. dreams of my father is an extraordinary piece of literature and in the way a tough standard to kind of live up to when you're looking at this story. but you can't let a politician write their own story. and that's how i approached this one. it was one view of someone who moved on to a bigger stage and there were many other aspects of him that weren't featured in his book at all. >> i talk too much early reservations about writing this book. what were your preconceptions about the candidates. >> by the time we talked about this book i covering him for a year so i moved from preconception to go conception. and i do think there was this
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contradiction on the two two contradictions anyway. one that someone so public could be unknown and secondly that someone who had these unconventional renegade qualities, that's the name of the book, "renegade" which is a secret service code name. someone who could be unconventional could also be cautious and risk-averse in taking the gamble is that he took. so, there's a tension there and each with a conventional and the other conventional to the risks and the caution. >> it was a long campaign. how did it change the president? >> look, he was a terrible candidate in 2007. i mean, he was bad at debates. he hated being in the public eye. he made lots of mistakes all the way through. he learned that the wind and it was fascinating to watch that process a someone who adapted to events. you know, the one thing you get
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that i think is beneficial as a journalist or writer covering these long, long campaign is to see whether they learned, whether these candidates adopt to events, either for them or the current affairs. and that's the only sort of road test of them. because you can never replicate what happens in the white house, but you can see, are they adaptable? do they know something more than their talking points? that's what i figured out to talk about. >> when they see the media who traveled with the candidates, oftentimes they'll see them on a plane, everyone together. it looked very collegial. is it? >> it's a mixture of collegiality and intense competition. remember, all the people on that plane are competing with each other. and they're all pretty much on top of the game. so you're locked in this one room, not just with the campaign and their staff, but with the
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people who are trying to beat you every day, often several times a day. so it's a strange mixture of, you know, i guess in silicon valley they call them for enemies. >> if you want to call watch the entire program. since that time and since the book has been published, have you seen the president change? has he? >> you know, he talked in the white house. they say he hasn't changed at all. that's the myth of every president. from what i've seen of him up close and at a distance, i just think it's inevitable that you change when your glass of water comes on a silver platter and people click your heels whenever you ask for something. there is a -- the presidency is a fabulously efficient machine that is built to serve the interest of one person.
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so, gather facts you just as it affects you if you walk into an arena and 16,000 people are screaming your name. it's subtle. it may not be dramatic. it doesn't affect you fundamentally, but subtly over time i think it does change your outlook, your ability to see your own self in the mirror. >> what does the president think of your book? >> you know, i haven't asked him up front, but i do know that he grabbed a copy from an aide on air force one. the aide was reading it out loud and enacting some dramatic rendition that involved the aid in the book. he leafed to release a few pages, but i still don't know what he thought about it. >> does your book of an index? >> it does. and i paid for it. >> the author is richard wolffe. the book is "renegade." thank you very much. >> my pleasure.
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>> i'm here with dolly nassar professor international studies and author of a new book on the forces of fortune. the right of any muslim middle class and what it will mean for our world. who are the new muslim middle class? >> welcome he said people to likelihood that connect the two private sector they are businessmen, their financiers, they're also professional, but they are people who are like
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middle class in asia, latin america, people we identify as part of the new globalization forces, new economic forces and we often don't see them in the middle class. we always think about extremist or the picture in government or fundamentalists. we don't think about a social classes in the most in the way they which they connect to economics and why do they matter in terms of all the things that we think about the muslim world eared >> you focus on iran in this book. how diverse are the social classes imuran? >> well again, when we think about you ran we don't realize it has a fairly vibrant middle class. there's a significant amount of privatization in the 1980's and 1990's. he produced the middle class whose type to economic activity in the air. even though most of iran's economy is dominated by the government, still there is a large part of the middle class that depends on private sector activity. it is that private sector in the middle class in iran that is responsible for a rainy and
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cinema for culture and activity and for demand for political freedom and reform. when we see iranians take to the streets demanding better results for elections or demanding political freedoms, these are people who also want integration into the world economy, better relations with the west. they want economic advancement and to weave in the back of of political change in iran is the middle-class. >> how large is this middle class? well, in some countries they are larger and some smaller. in countries like turkey thereabout maybe 20% to 30% of population. in pakistan or parts of the arab world 10% to 15% the population. typically they're not the largest force. of the ones that are come for most of the amount of economic dynamism and the sector of the economy that they are most active in which his private sector activity is the one that is ultimately going to pull the
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middle east and the world by its bootstraps. so it's not the issue of size, it issued the pivotal role that they will play. >> the west we look at the middle east and we think of religion. but in your book coming to talk about about capitalism and business. can you discuss the dichotomy between religion and capitalism in the middle east? >> well, religion and capitalism exists as they do in america. your businessmen and were churchgoing. it's the same in the muslim world as well. what makes the difference is capitalist muslims who are integrated in the global economy tend to favor interpretations of religion that supports their economic activities and serves their interest. in other words, they don't favor extremism because extremism is not good for business. it has extremism does not interfere with their integration into global economic. so when we like i countries like turkey like

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