By shelz.

It was a small gesture; a reminder to anyone who found themselves on Monroe Street.  Two maybe three blocks would be renamed in honor of the man who was murdered there years before.  A very small gesture, true.  A sign posted above the existing street marking.  No addresses would need to be changed, no curbs would be re-stenciled.  Just a little brown sign that would read “Chairman Fred Hampton Way.” It would offer a little respect for the slain activist.  It could even possibly facilitate a healing process that had been interrupted time and time again by a contemptuous and deceitful legal process.  The Mayor, the fraternal order of police and many of Chicago’s Alderman said, “No.”

Fred Hampton was a provocateur, some said.  He preached violence against peace officers.  But what they failed to mention is that during Hampton’s time, on Monroe street, there weren’t too many officers bringing peace to the hood.  They were agents of a Nixon regime that followed blindly behind J. Edgar Hoover; men who asserted their standing as lawmen through intolerance and hostility.  These same men murdered Fred Hampton.

He was a precocious child, a good student and an organizational wiz.  His start in the civil rights world was in the NAACP, but the Black Panther Party’s movement was more his speed.  Angry and youthful, with wild ideas of rebellion and potty mouths full of Marxist ramblings, the Panthers were self-proclaimed bad motherfuckers who believed in fighting fire with gasoline.  That was the glamorous side.

The trenches involved feeding hungry stomachs, educating empty minds and developing self-esteem in a group so long oppressed they were displaying traits of Stockholm Syndrome.  Fred walked the tightrope, calling for revolution in his fiery speeches at night while planning breakfast for poverty stricken children the next morning.  He brokered one of the first gang treaties in the nation, worked with doctors to bring health care to those who couldn’t afford it through normal channels and he oversaw neighborhood watch associations that were taught to be as mindful of the police as they were of the criminals. Unfortunately, on Monroe Street they could be one and the same.

Freeing the oppressed was a threat to Hoover’s America and Fred Hampton was too magnetic to be ignored.  People listened.  They were moved.  They followed his lead.  So under the cover of darkness and in a hail of almost 100 bullets the Chairman was silenced.  The cops said they were looking for guns in the early morning hours of December 4, 1969, but they found Fred asleep next to his pregnant girlfriend.  They shot him twice in the head. His death was then ruled justifiable by a grand jury who admitted almost everyone involved in the botched raid on Hampton’s home lied to them.  Case closed. Fred Hampton was 21 years old.

Sadly, Hampton’s legacy isn’t readily noticeable.  Chicago is a town in turmoil where the disenfranchised still don’t feel welcome.  There are still hungry stomachs, empty minds and racist rogues hiding amid the peace officers, just like everywhere else.  Back in the late 60’s Hampton offered Chicago and the world a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel. He gave them something to cling to while the ill winds whipped through.  He offered a voice to those who had, until then, been voiceless.

I’m not quite sure what happened with those little brown signs that Bobby Rush, Congressman and former Panther was fighting so valiantly for.  I read somewhere that during the annual Fred Hampton Street party, they “hijack” the Monroe Street sign and replace it with one that reads “Chairman Fred Hampton Way.” So it’s safe to assume that the fraternal order of police won their battle.  After all these years, Monroe Street still isn’t ready to heal.  It would have been such a small gesture for an amazingly grand young man.

R.I.P. Chairman Fred

Sincerely,

shelz.

[pro-player width=’450′ height=’323′ type=’video’]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHzSdniqi4g[/pro-player]

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