The Assassination of Fred Hampton

August 31, 2009
On December 4, 1969, Fred Hampton, the 21-year-old chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party, was shot dead in his bed during a police raid. Hass and his law partner, Flint Taylor of the perpetually underfunded People's Law Office, spent the next decade fighting a well-financed opposition team and a hostile judge to prove that Hampton had been shot not in self-defense, as the police advocates claimed, but as the result of an FBI assassination The dramatic David and Goliath struggle embodies many of the era's fiercest debates, but Haas lacks the skill to transmute his experience into compelling reading. The prose is studded with clichés, and nearly every physical description reads like a checklist: age, size, build, skin color and length of Afro. Hass strays from the narrative to relate irrelevant information about his personal life, as when he recollects that his third wife first captured his attention when she “propped her red, calf-length boots” on his desk. The book is most engaging when Hass offers a straightforward account of the legal process, a testament to the power of the story—not the author's proficiency.

October 15, 2009
An earnest attorney looks back at a notorious 1960s slaying.

Haas, a founder of the People's Law Office (PLO) in 1969, renders this disturbing eyewitness account in straightforward prose. It's a memoir of his experiences as well as the story of an incident still recalled in Chicago as a deplorable example of police brutality. Growing up Jewish in middle-class Atlanta, the author's early awareness of Jim Crow propelled him toward engagement in progressive politics. As a young lawyer in Chicago, he became fascinated with the youthful Fred Hampton, who combined a passion for the black militant cause with eloquence and cool-headedness. Haas volunteered the PLO's services to the Panthers shortly before the fateful events of Dec. 4, 1969. The entire city became mired in tension as word spread that officers working for State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan had riddled Hampton's apartment with bullets, killing two and wounding several Panthers. Hanrahan and the Chicago police were quickly put on the defensive, as the African-American community seethed over an evident cover-up:"It was clear to anyone viewing the ravaged apartment that Fred was shot to death on his bed." The raid accomplished the goals of Hanrahan and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, as the Panthers rapidly declined in membership and influence."No one could replace Fred's charisma, energy, or organizing ability," Haas writes. However, the murder destroyed the credibility of Chicago law enforcement and the Chicago Tribune, and ruptured the relationship between the black community and the Daley political machine. When charges against the Panthers were hastily dropped and a federal grand jury petered out, the PLO lawyers pursued a civil-rights suit, never dreaming that it would take 15 years to settle. Along the way, they unearthed proof that the FBI's COINTEL program had encouraged violence against the Panthers. Although the dramatic tension dissipates in the book's second half, which covers the suit in minute detail, Haas mostly avoids leftist melodrama and offers a diligent defense of the legal rights of political radicals.

A still-chilling tale of law-enforcement misconduct.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 15, 2009
In 1969, the Chicago police, on the instructions of an overzealous states attorney, raided a West Side apartment and killed Fred Hampton, the leader of the Chicago Black Panthers. Haas, a young attorney and a founder of Peoples Law Office, fought for years after Hamptons killing to bring the police and the states attorney to justice for what looked like a pre-dawn assassination of a man as he lay sleeping. Haas recounts the life of Fred Hampton, a community activist radicalized by the antiwar and Black Power movements, who gained a spot on the FBIs Key Agitator Index. Haas draws parallels with his own upbringing in Atlantas upper-middle-class Jewish community, witnessing discrimination but doing nothing to challenge it until he came to Chicago. Haas chronicles the events leading to Hamptons assassination and the aftermath, the years of investigation, and the discovery of a connection between the Chicago police action and the FBI investigation of black leaders. Photographs and partial transcripts from the trial of the police and states attorney add to the immediacy of this riveting look at a turbulent time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)