As the new film Judas and the Black Messiah has sparked renewed interest in the 1969 FBI/police murder of Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, here’s a 2013 interview with lawyer Flint Taylor, one of the lead attorneys in the Hampton case who continued to fight misconduct by Chicago police. Audio link below.Click here to listen to the archived interview. Here’s a 2021 article with new evidence of J. Edgar Hoover’s direct involvement in the FBI plot to assassinate Fred Hampton.
Here is the original show summary:
At 37:45, we are joined by G. Flint Taylor, a founder of the Peoples Law Office in Chicago. PBC first met Taylor in the 1970’s when he represented the survivors of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, who was assassinated in a police raid directed by the FBI. Taylor recently wrote this article for The Nation, which details his 10-year fight for people who were wrongly convicted based on false confessions delivered after torture under Chicago Police commander John Burge and his officers.
Four of the victims were on death row, and were pardoned by then-Gov. George Ryan. While Burge is in federal prison, Taylor is still trying to penetrate a massive cover-up; the most recent Mayor named Daley, Richard M., was the prosecutor in these wrongful convictions, and has been named a co-conspirator in a lawsuit brought by the exonerated men.
From that case, we broaden the discussion to include the return of Cointelpro, renamed “War on Terror” and the abuse of our rights by law enforcement–often including the tried-and-true tactic of inserting paid informers as provocateurs. Taylor offers interesting comments about our criminal justice system today.