Black Panthers Under the Gun - I
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4, IS THE 55th ANNIVERSARY of a police raid in Chicago that resulted in the killing of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, two skillful and charismatic leaders of the Black Panther Party. The 1969 raid was one of many law-enforcement actions at the time that contributed to an eclipse of the Panthers’ influence and effectiveness. (See December 8, below.)
Thanks to government documents that have been uncovered by years of litigation, there is no doubt the raid was the fruit of a conspiracy between the Chicago police and the FBI. The documents stop short of proving the conspiracy included a plan to murder Hampton and Clark, but circumstantial evidence and the behavior of the police during the raid strongly indicate that the killing of Hampton, who was unarmed and asleep, was the raid’s prime objective.
It took the survivors of the raid and the families of the dead men 13 years, but when their federal lawsuit forced Chicago and the federal government to settle the case for more than six hundred thousand dollars, the families’ lawyer told the media that the government’s refusal to admit guilt was a sham. He said "The settlement is an admission of the conspiracy that existed between the FBI and [Cook County State Attorney Edward] Hanrahan's men to murder Fred Hampton."
Such a statement in contradiction of the settlement agreement’s terms gave the Chicago police and the FBI an opening to refuse to pay the amount agreed to – but Chicago and the FBI decided to cut their losses and allow the conspiracy narrative’s worst interpretation to stand. For an excellent 11-minute Democracy Now! 4-year-old broadcast about the FBI’s role in the killing of Hampton and Clark, click here: https://youtu.be/vewm6-FEIQs?si=8PD6aL13NtGKSSyC
Teddy Roosevelt Gives U.S. Imperialism the Nod
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, IS THE 120th ANNIVERSARY of one of U.S. imperialism’s red letter days, when in 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt articulated his so-called corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Not only, wrote Roosevelt, would the U.S. continue its long-standing policy of barring any outside interference within the Western Hemisphere, but the U.S. would go one step farther and reserve the right to intervene at will in the internal affairs of each and every country in the Caribbean as well as North, Central, and South America.
The Roosevelt administration and those that followed were not, of course, kidding. Over the following two decades alone, the U.S. military imposed the will of the United States on Columbia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt_Corollary
Racist Terror in Vicksburg
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, IS THE 150th ANNIVERSARY of the beginning of a 2-month-long episode of white racist terror in and around Vicksburg, Mississippi, during which at least 300 African-Americans were murdered and uncounted more permanently driven out of the area. The so-called Vicksburg massacre of 1874 was a foundational event in the white supremecist domination of the state after the Civil War. https://eji.org/reports/reconstruction-in-america-overview/
Black Panthers Under the Gun - II
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1969 – four days after Chicago police killed Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark – a similarly violent attack on the Panthers took place in Los Angeles. Nearly two hundred members of the LAPD made a frontal assault on the Black Panthers’ L.A. headquarters, leading to a 4-hour gun battle in which six Panthers were wounded and 13 arrested. When the arrested Panthers were later tried for, among other things, assault with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to murder police, they were acquitted of almost all the charges because the jury agreed with the defendants’ argument that they had acted in self-defense. https://witnessla.com/41st-and-central-1969-the-black-panther-shootout-the-birth-of-swat/
Coltrane Lays Down a Masterpiece
MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, IS THE 60th ANNIVERSARY of the 1964 recording of the John Coltrane’s masterpiece A Love Supreme with Coltrane (tenor sax), McCoy Tyner (piano), Jimmy Garrison (bass) and Elvin Jones (percussion). You can listen to it here: https://youtu.be/ll3CMgiUPuU?si=QKbjslo1q-KUpfqa
A Rocky Start for Gay Rights
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, IS THE 100th ANNIVERSARY of the founding of the Society for Human Rights, which is thought to be the first gay rights organization in the U.S. In 1924 the Chicago-based Society published the gay-interest newsletter, Friendship and Freedom.
Less than a year after the Society was established, three of its founders were simultaneously, but separately, arrested by Chicago police. After prolonged proceedings, the charges against them were dismissed, but by that time the Society for Human Rights had permanently disbanded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Human_Rights
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