The Assasination of Fred Hampton: Two Great Educational Events February 18th

Fred Hampton came from Chicago's west side to become a nationally known civil rights figure by age 21, as a charismatic leader of the Black Panther Party (BPP), its Free Breakfast Program and People's Clinic. He negotiated an agreement between Chicago's most powerful street gangs, emphasizing that racial and ethnic conflict would only keep their members entrenched in poverty, and built an alliance with anti-war white student progressives. In 1969, the FBI was ordered to "eradicate [the BPP's] 'serve the people programs" and a few months after he founded the original "rainbow coalition," Fred Hampton was killed in his bed by Chicago police.

Civil rights attorney Jeffrey Haas was a co founder of the People's Law Office in Chicago which represented the BPP, SDS, the Young Lords and anti Vietnam war protestors since the 1960s. He was part of a team which successfully prosecuted the Cook County Sheriff's office for violating the rights of four men who wrongfully spent 18 years on death row, resulting in one of the largest civil rights settlements in U.S. history ($36 million). This and related work played a major role in convincing the governor to commute the sentences of everyone on Illinois' death row in 2003.

Also speaking will be Bill Hampton, Fred's older brother. Bill Hampton graduated from Roosevelt Univ. in Chicago in 1972, and is currently a director of the Midwest Voters Alliance and President of the Fred Hampton Scholarship Fund.

Haas' book exposes the murder of Fred Hampton in his bed, as part of the FBI's Cointelpro Program against the Black Liberation movement. This is the result of 13 years of litigation which has established the best documentation of a domestic U.S. Government assassination. For more information, see www.Hamptonbook.com and www.peopleslawoffice.com.

UW-MILWAUKEE: Thursday, February 18, 2010, 7pm
Wisconsin Room, UWM Union, 2200 E. Kenwood Blvd.
Free & open to the public

***There will also be a reception at 4:30pm at the Milw. NAACP office,
2745 N. Dr. Martin Luther King Drive