Wholesome Rage: Fred Hampton

In 1969, a young black man was assassinated by the FBI for the crime of providing breakfast to poor inner-city children. This is that story.

Also, the second time I get to use that cover image. Reduce, reuse and recycle your content, folks.

This week's Patreon article, about to go live, is about how social technologies failed to keep up with engineering in the 19th century to make warfare... pretty anachronistic at times. It's honestly just a fun jaunt of my favourite facts about a time period I've studied all over, and was great fun to write. Week after that I'm planning on doing my first video article so... Yeah, I'm scared too.

Comments

[Vaguely Demented]

Hoover was a dangerous combo of an end justifies the means mentality mixed with disturbing levels of paranoia. Hadn’t heard of this event before, not surprised it wasn’t included in history classes.

[iisaw]

The police in the press conference the next morning would say they had been attacked by the group, who had been “violent” and “extremely vicious”, that it was self defense.

This is why police shout, "Stop resisting arrest!" while they are beating the carp out of someone; simply being disrespectful of an officer isn't quite enough to justify grievous bodily harm.

BTW, I'd just like to point out that the million plus settlement came out of the pockets of the taxpayers, and all civil suits against police misconduct follow the same template. The police budget doesn't even take a hit. It's usually community programs that are underfunded to compensate for a big settlement.

[RoruArcher]

That is intensely fucked up. I already had basically negative faith in public institutions of justice, but that is just so completely, unspeakably horrible...

[horizon]

There are times when your blog title is terribly, awesomely appropriate. :(

[Blue_Paladin42]

J Edgar Hoover was a colossal piece of shit.

[Georg]

4877553 Discounting corruption, the most dangerous change in arrest policy (in my opinion, of course) is the widespread use of "Show me your hands!" instead of the former "Police! Freeze!" Think about it. There is no standardization of the command, and it *orders* the arrestee to move his hands from where they were (most likely down) to the view of the arresting officer. So three or so police officers all shouting commands at the already befuddled person (who most likely has just been woken up at 3AM, their favorite time to break in doors and arrest people) practically guarantees the person will do something stupid, and thus get shot.

The FBI director has enormous power. Even after JEH passed away, the officers who climbed to power in his shadow expected to keep right on climbing up the ladder into the big office where they could emulate the man who brought them in. Thank God for Patrick Gray, who Nixon appointed to the office above all the career power brokers. He was slammed from all sides for his actions during the Watergate investigation, right down to having his direct subordinate who *expected* the job, leaking every detail of the criminal investigation to Woodward and Bernstein, which crippled his ability to prosecute the people it exposed. The curse of the "Too powerful to resist, too corrupting to keep" office continues to today, where James Comey... I'll stop there. Suffice it to say, he deserved firing. The only human being in DC who thought James Comey should keep his job in Jan 2016 was James Comey.

[MrNumbers]

4877691

The timing of this article is impeccable. It just makes the news coming out of Ferguson that much more ominous

[Darkstarling]

Your blog title is apropriate. Apparently it’s even contagious.

[AppleTank]

4877729
History repeats once more.