Current Read: The Assassination of Fred Hampton by Jeffrey Haas

 Even at my young age, I was aware of the community's indignation at the news that  Chicago's cops had murdered Fred Hampton. People weren't exactly shocked. Hadn't Martin Luther King Jr, been murdered a year earlier? Hadn't Malcolm X been murdered three years earlier? Anyone who openly championed self-empowerment of an oppressed population received a prison sentence or a bullet. Because Chicago Police Department had carried out the assassination, it was within the realm of possibility that the United States Government had a hand in the murder. At the same  time, the CPD went on a rampage, arresting those they believed associated with the Black Panther Party. I recall how a gnawing fear threaded its way through the community. If you openly supported the Black Panthers, then the cops painted a target on your back. 

Memories of that period convinced me to purchase a copy of Jeffrey Haas' "The Assassination of Fred Hampton." As a lawyer for the Hampton family, Haas challenged Ed Hanrahan (the State's Attorney who organized the murder), members of the CPD (who carried out the hit), and members of the FBI (who relayed the orders that the hit must take place). CPD had no intention of admitting they carried out an assassination. In his book, Haas relays his battle to win the case against homicidal law enforcement personnel supported by judges who seemed as hostile toward the lawyers who represented the BPP as they were hostile toward the BPP, and unethical lawyers who acted as though no behavior was too low in their defense of the cops.

Last Book Read: The Plot To Save South Africa by Justice Malala

Strip the United States to its rawest, most horrific form of  racism, and you'll have something that looks like apartheid-era South Africa. Spawns of the loathsome regime, two Afrikaners came up with the idea that if they killed the perceived leaders of the anti-apartheid movement, then South Africa would erupt in civil war. I'm baffled at how these descendants of  Dutch immigrants convinced themselves that the assassination of Chris Hani would work in their favor. It wouldn't be much of a spoiler if I revealed the murder of Chris Hani gained the two men nothing except prison time. And they were awarded prison time only because they lied during hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Perhaps had they told the truth, they would have slithered their way to freedom. Much to the Conservative Party's dismay, South Africa and her sons pounded the stakes into apartheid, a system created by a government that had counted  the US's president Ronald Reagan and Britain's Thatcher among its allies.

In The Plot To Save South Africa, journalist Justice Malala reports on the days in the wake of Hani's murder. Nelson Mandela, Cyril Ramaphosa, and other comrades of the ANC were not going to relinquish the goal of a fair election. Their steadiness survived the maneuvers of a organization and its blood-soaked, murderous secret police who were not going to give up grisly power readily. This book illustrates how the Afrikaners' "terrorists" liberated South Africa,