Before his appalling murder on December 4th, 1969, Fred Hampton, head of the Chicago Panthers, formed an alliance with the Puerto Rican Young Lords and the Patriot Party (consisting of impoverished Chicago whites). Hampton announced this multiracial banding as “a Rainbow Coalition,” years before Jesse Jackson co-opted the term for his own political means. In December 1969, Jackson gave a eulogy at the funeral of the slain Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, in which he said, “when Fred was shot in Chicago, black people in particular, and decent people in general, bled everywhere.” During the funeral of Fred Hampton, assassinated by the police in December 1969 – the Supreme’s “Someday We’ll Be Together” blared outside on loudspeakers as mourners at the Rayner Funeral Home on Chicago’s South Side passed by his casket to pay their final respects.
– Pat Thomas is the author of the recently released work, Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975. The companion disc for the book has been named one of the ten best CDs of 2012 by Time magazine.
