Monday, December 4, 2017

REMEMBERING FRED HAMPTON'S 1969 ASSASINATION

This is a sonnet I wrote that's part of an unpublished manuscript and I thought I'd post on this, the anniversary of Chicago Black Panther Fred Hampton's assassination on December 4th 1969. 


In early December Fred Hampton, a young
Chicago Black Panther leader I knew and
dug, was brutally slaughtered along with
Panther Mark Clark, when police raided
Hampton’s crib, after firing hundreds of
bullets into it, and into him, asleep in his
bed. It was the last straw. I’d objected to
Panthers calling police pigs, thinking of
cops in my clan who were decent, but this
time it seemed insulting to the actual pigs.
I wrote a poem called DON’T LOOK NOW
with the end couplet: like this short ugly
knife you are mine/Black Panther Fred
Hampton murdered in bed by pigs 1969.  


—(C) Michael Lally 2017

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