On December 4, 1969, at 6:00 am, Jeffrey Haas’s law partner, Skip Andrew, knocked on his door. When Jeff opened it, Skip announced that Fred Hampton, the dynamic young leader of the Black Panthers had been shot and killed in a police raid. Skip went to the apartment and began examining the bullet holes and collecting evidence. Haas went to the lockup to interview the raid’s survivors. From the bullet holes at the scene and the descriptions of the eye witnesses, it appeared that Fred Hampton was murdered in his bed.
The Assassination of Fred Hampton is Haas’s personal account of how he and People’s Law Office partners, including Flint Taylor, pursued Hampton’s assassins. They ultimately exposed the conspiracy between FBI agents carrying out FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s secret and deadly Counterintelligence Program and the Chicago Police that led to Hampton’s assassination. Not only is this a story of justice delivered, the book puts Hampton in a new light as a dynamic community leader and an inspirational speaker.
Black Panther leader Mark Clark was also killed in the 1969 police raid on the Hampton house.
Book Reviews
“At once journalist, lawyer and storyteller, Jeff Haas manages to sear into every page of this book a compassion seemingly forgotten, providing a riveting eyewitness account of the government assassination of Fred Hampton. This is mandatory reading for those who love and believe in freedom.”
—Elaine Brown, author and former chairman of the Black Panther Party
"[A] political cliff-hanger . . . The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police murdered a Black Panther is an exposé [that] should be read in schools across the country." —Huffington Post
“A riveting account of the assassination, the plot behind it, the attempted coverup, the denouement, and the lessons that we should draw from this shocking tale of government iniquity.”
—Noam Chomsky, author and political activist
”This book should be read, talked about, and broadcast far and wide, not only to help grasp the government sanctioned tactics of forty years ago, but for its ongoing relevance to seeing what ways ideology has corrupted American political institutions–and what we can do about it.”
—Kathleen Cleaver, Senior Lecturer Emory University School of Law, former Communications Secretary, Black Panther Party
“This book is more important NOW than it was THEN. . . A remarkable work.” —Studs Terkel
“This is an extremely important book--and a tale well told--for America to read if it wants to become what it says it has always been--the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
—Ramsey Clark, former United States Attorney General
“Required political reading, especially for conservatives who are genuinely concerned about the damage secret government can do.”
—Chicago Daily Observer
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