Thread by @RepBobbyRush

52 years ago today, the American government carried out a planned political assassination of one of our nation's brightest young leaders.

Fred Hampton was my best friend and comrade, the Chairman of the Illinois Chapter of the #BlackPantherParty. 🧵

I recruited and worked alongside Chairman Fred in the Illinois Black Panther Party, where we fought for the liberation of people across Chicago who had long been ignored by those in power.

We set up community health clinics and a free breakfast program for children. We helped broker a peace agreement between Chicago's street gangs.

And we formed the original Rainbow Coalition with the Young Patriots and Latino Young Lords to fight against economic oppression.

In the early hours of December 4, 1969, the Chicago Police Department — working in conjunction with the @FBI and the Cook County State's Attorney — entered an apartment that 7 members of the Black Panther Party were staying in, with the premeditated aim of murdering Fred Hampton.

The police immediately opened fire, killing Fred as he lay in his bed next to his pregnant girlfriend. Our fellow Black Panther Party Member, Mark Clark, was also killed in the raid. My own apartment was raided the very next morning.

Hampton’s assassination was orchestrated and planned by J. Edgar Hoover’s @FBI as part of his nefarious counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO. Hoover called the Black Panther Party “the greatest threat to America’s national security.”

52 years later, the COINTELPRO files are still in the possession of the @FBI and DOJ and have never been made public.

I introduced legislation that would finally release and publicly disclose all files related to COINTELPRO. chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/202…

It is time the American people knew the full extent of COINTELPRO’s assault on civil liberties. It is time to shine a bright light on this dark chapter of our history. And it is time to strip Hoover’s name from the @FBI Headquarters — his name has no place on a federal building.