The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“HONORING THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF FRED HAMPTON” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E1087-E1088 on Dec. 4, 2020.
The Department is one of the oldest in the US, focused primarily on law enforcement and the federal prison system. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, detailed wasteful expenses such as $16 muffins at conferences and board meetings.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
HONORING THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF FRED HAMPTON
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December 4, 2020, on page E1087, the following appeared: HONORING THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF FRED HAMPTOM
The online version has been corrected to read: HONORING THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF FRED HAMPTON
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HON. BOBBY L. RUSH
of illinois
in the house of representatives
Friday, December 4, 2020
Mr. RUSH. Madam Speaker, you can kill the revolutionary, but you cannot kill the revolution. These were the words my late comrade and best friend Fred Hampton, the Chairman and co-founder of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party spoke and lived by. In a year that has seen too many Black lives unjustly taken, Chairman Fred's words, life, and legacy remain just as vital to our understanding of justice today as they were on the date of his assassination on December 4, 1969.
Chairman Fred was both a visionary and a revolutionary, who fought for a more just world for everyone. I had the distinct privilege of recruiting and working alongside Fred during our righteous struggle for the liberation and emancipation of the people who had been ignored by those in power for far too long. We encouraged community development and empowerment through programs that included community health clinics and an expansive free breakfast for children program, finally delivering critical social services to long underserved communities. We also helped broker a peace agreement between Chicago's street gangs, reducing violence in the city's most marginalized neighborhoods.
Furthermore, the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party joined forces with the Latino Young Lords organization, and the Young Patriots, an organization of poor whites living in Chicago's Uptown community. Together, we formed the original Rainbow Coalition to fight all economic oppression. This watershed organization assembled a working-class coalition to fight for our shared interests, despite the fact that we were working in one of the most segregated cities in the United States. We banded together to fight many of the issues that still plague us to this very day, including police brutality, substandard housing, mediocre education, and low-quality health care.
In the early hours of December 4th, 51 years ago, the Chicago Police Department with the cooperation, coordination, and support of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cook County State's Attorney entered an apartment on West Monroe Street that seven members of the Black Panther Party were staying in, with the premeditated aim of murdering Fred Hampton. The police immediately opened fire, killing Fred as he lay in his bed alongside his pregnant girlfriend, Akua Njeri. Our fellow Black Panther Party Member Mark Clark was also killed in the raid. There but for the grace of God, on that dreadful night, go I. In fact, my apartment was raided during the early hours the very next morning, December 5, 1969.
Madam Speaker, through meticulous work we were able to prove that the official narrative of that night, that Hampton and Clark were killed in a vicious firelight, was entirely a falsehood. The police and State's Attorney claimed that they engaged in a fierce battle with the Panthers, but investigators were able to determine that the police fired 99 bullets while the Panthers only fired one.
A civil lawsuit would further reveal that the FBI's Counter-
Intelligence Program, or COINTELPRO, helped plan the murder of Fred Hampton. William O'Neil, an FBI informant within the Party, provided floor plans of the apartment to the FBI, who provided them to the State's Attorney and Chicago Police Department. An autopsy found a massive dose of the barbiturate Seconal in Chairman Fred's bloodstream, powerful enough to sedate an elephant. J. Edgar Hoover's FBI viewed the Black Panther Party movement Fred and I helped start to liberate our brothers and sisters who were suffering from divestment, lack of health care, and police brutality--as the number one threat to the national security of America.
This country's government planned the assassination--the political assassination--of one of our nation's brightest young leaders. To my recollection, the murder of Fred Hampton is the only time federal law enforcement conspired to carry out the political assassination of an American citizen on United States soil, a truly shameful moment in the history of our country. This was a systemic campaign to violently disrupt a movement seeking justice and freedom for the most marginalized among us. This should remind all of us that Black lives have never been fully valued by many of those in this country's power structures. Too often, justice is not sought for the families of those whose lives are senselessly taken by the state
Madam Speaker, when the South Side of Chicago's very own Ida B. Wells published her seminal investigative journalism on lynching in America, she found that many lynchings occurred because the victims posed a threat to the white supremacist status quo. One of her best friends was killed for merely operating a successful grocery store that competed with neighboring white businesses. While the killings Ida B. Wells examined were not political assassinations like the murder of Fred Hampton, they share a common thread. Both challenged the white supremacist status quo in their communities.
Fred Hampton profoundly challenged this status quo by fiercely advocating for economic and social dignity for all people, and by providing long overdue social services to the most neglected communities in Chicago. Fred Hampton's challenge to the status quo proposed nothing less than a demand for full civil rights and economic opportunity for all those whose talents, dreams, and goals had long been stifled. This was a scary proposition to those like State's Attorney Hanrahan and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who would stop at nothing to maintain the unjust status quo that prevailed in Chicago and throughout the United States in December of 1969. Fred Hampton gave his life to help create a more fundamentally fair and equal nation for every American, consistent with our nation's founding principles
Sadly, Madam Speaker, too often it appears that for Black Americans merely existing can be seen as a challenge to the white, racist power structure. And sadly, as Ida B. Wells found in 1892, the consequences can be just as gruesome. Ahmaud Arbery was 25 years old when he was gunned down for merely jogging in what his killers deemed to be the wrong neighborhood. Despite this incident taking place in February of this year, and a video being available, neither of the men now charged with the murder of Ahmaud Arbery were arrested until May. If not for a report by The New York Times that helped lead to the Georgia Bureau of Iinvestigation's intervention in the matter, Mr. Arbery's killers may never have faced justice.
Ahmaud Arbery's death was a lynching, which occurred because two white men felt uncomfortable with his jogging though their neighborhood. One of the most recent in far too long a line of lynch mob killings of Black people in the United States.
Madam Speaker, Congress must act promptly to ensure that no one who participates in such acts of terror and hatred can escape justice. As introduced, my bill, the Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act, would designate lynching as federal hate crime. This would apply whether or not those committing the offense were acting under the color of law. By designating lynching as a federal hate crime, the United States Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation would be compelled to investigate a case like Ahmaud Arbery's.
The Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act honors the legacy of Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered in Money, Mississippi, in 1955. His death helped spark this country's civil rights movement, but his murderers never faced justice, as they were acquitted at a sham trial in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. Passing the Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act would ensure that the full force of the United States Federal Government is always brought to prosecute those who commit the monstrous act of lynching.
We have the opportunity to finally, after 120 years and 200 attempts since Congressman George Henry White of North Carolina introduced the first anti-lynching legislation, make lynching a federal crime. In fact, Ida B. Wells herself advocated for the administration of President William McKinley to push for anti-lynching reforms all the way back in 1898. Passage of the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act into law would demonstrate that this country understands the heinous legacy of lynching and begin the process of finally closing this shameful chapter of our history.
Madam Speaker, let us never forget the courage, conviction, and compassion of Fred Hampton. Despite this government assassinating him at only 21 years of age, Chairman Fred's work and legacy are everlasting. Let our work in Congress be guided by his legacy of pursuing freedom and justice for all people. That work can begin by sending the Emmet Till Anti-lynching Act to the President's desk, an act that would require action by our colleagues in the Senate. That would be a clear demonstration that Congress has begun to value the Black lives, including Fred Hampton's, Emmett Till's, Ahmaud Arbery's, and the countless others whose lives have been systemically devalued for far too long.
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