By Jeffrey
Haas
It’s around 7:00 a.m. on
December 4, 1969, and attorney Jeff Haas is in a police lockup in Chicago,
interviewing Fred Hampton’s fiancée. She is describing how the police pulled
her from the room as Fred lay unconscious on their bed. She heard one officer say,
“He’s still alive.” She then heard two shots. A second officer said, “He’s good
and dead now.” She looks at Jeff and asks, “What can you do?”
The
Assassination of Fred Hampton is Haas’s personal account of how he and
People’s Law Office partner Flint Taylor pursued Hampton’s assassins,
ultimately prevailing over unlimited government resources and FBI conspiracy.
Not only a story of justice delivered, the book puts Hampton in a new light as
a dynamic community leader and an inspiration in the fight against injustice.
Reviews:
"[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
"An extraordinary retelling of a shameful chapter in our history. . .
. [The book] reveals just how easily justice can be thwarted and
malicious aims diguised when powerful people conspire to violate the law
(commit murder) and manipulate procedural to avoid responsibility for their
crimes. . . . [A] cautionary tale, as well as a story of heroism."
—Michelle Alexander, author of The New
Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
“Required political
reading, especially for conservatives who are genuinely concerned about the
damage secret government can do.” --Chicago Daily
Observer
“A must-read.” —Len Weinglass, lawyer and civil rights activist
“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
“Part history, part
courtroom drama, part literary memoir, Haas evokes with
chilling precision a
bloody and desperate repressive state apparatus locked in
conflict with its
greatest fear, a charismatic young black man with revolution on
his mind.” —William Ayers, professor of education,
University of Illinois at Chicago
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