That the FBI supervised a nationwide effort to destroy the Black Panther Party is no longer seen as the paranoid rantings of leftists, but as a fact documented by the Staff Report of the Church committee. In attempting to resolve this issue, the raid on Chicago Panther headquarters must be put into context. The official explanation amounted to a cover-up, and a massive one. If the cops had, in fact, demanded a ceasefire on three occasions, they were talking only to themselves.
The grand jury indicated that, if the Panthers fired at all, it was one shot that Mark Clark fired–apparently after he had been shot in the heart. Ultimately, a federal grand jury determined that the police had fired between eighty-three and ninety shots–the Panthers a maximum of one. Although officers Groth and Davis both alleged that Brenda Harris fired a shotgun blast at the doorway as they approached, there was absolutely no evidence of such a blast. The “bullet holes” in the Tribune photograph turned out to be nail heads.
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Another cop explained how he had fired through a door and then received return fire, presumably from Mark Clark.ĭespite the elaborate re-enactment for TV and the explanations given by the fourteen policemen, it soon became apparent that the official version was at variance with the facts. Two raiders demonstrated how as they approached the front room, they were greeted by a woman who fired a shotgun blast at them as they stood in the doorway. One cop said that as soon as he announced he was a police officer, occupants of the apartment responded with shotgun fire. Each officer acted out his part step by step for the TV cameras as if rehearsing a scene for a SWAT episode in slow motion. Hanrahan later had a full-scale model of the apartment constructed so that the participating policemen could re-enact the raid on WBBM-TV, the local CBS affiliate.
On December 11, the Chicago Tribune ran an account drawn from the policemen involved in the assault, and accompanied by a photograph of the apartment on which circles were drawn around what purported to be holes caused by bullets fired at the police. So does their refusal to cease firing at police officers when urged to do so several times. The immediate, violent and criminal reaction of the occupants in shooting at announced police officers emphasizes the extreme viciousness of the Black Panther Party.
It’s a miracle that not one policeman was killed.Īt a press conference that day, State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan issued a statement, saying in part: If 200 shots were exchanged, that was nothing…. The firing must have gone on ten or twelve minutes. There must have been six or seven of them firing. Daniel Groth, who led the fourteen police raiders, said: Within hours of the raid, the authorities offered their explanation of what had occurred. His death was a blow to this multiracial united front. After his nonviolent, integrationist activities aroused the hostility of Maywood authorities, Hampton moved to Chicago where he organized a local chapter of the Black Panther Party.Īs Panther chief in Chicago, Hampton built a reputation as a uniter, bringing together the “Rainbow Coalition” of Puerto Rican, white and black poor people, and engineering a tenuous peace among several warring ghetto gangs. As youth director of the Maywood NAACP, he had built an unusually strong 500-member youth group in a community of 27,000.
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