The Illinois Prairie Path begins on First Avenue in Maywood, Illinois, a little north of Madison Street. It is a 61 mile bike and hiking path that that branches off in several directions when it reaches the Fox River. Despite its bucolic sounding name, the scenery surrounding the first few miles of the Path is blue collar suburban rather than the swaying grasses one associates with the word prairie.

But if there is no prairie to be found near the Path when it begins in Maywood IL, there is history . On Oak Street near the Path is the Fred Hampton Family Aquatic Center. On hot summer days, it is filled with noisy frolicking kids escaping the blazing sun of the American Midwest. 

I’ve ridden past it on my bike a number of times and I always think of Fred, although I never met him or even saw him when he was alive. He would have approved of naming a swimming pool after him. When he was youth organizer for the West Suburban NAACP in the 1960’s, he mobilized hundreds of young people to fight for better recreational facilities for the largely Black town of Maywood.

On December 4, 1969, Fred Hampton was assassinated by the Chicago police as he lay in a bed on the city’s Westside. He had left the NAACP by then and had become the head of the Illinois Black Panther Party. Drugged by an undercover informant without his knowledge, Fred never had a chance when the police raided his Chicago apartment that night. Also killed in the raid was Panther Mark Clark. Several other Panthers survived the raid, including Deborah Johnson who is 8 months pregnant with Fred’s child.

I was living in Langley Park, Maryland then and was struggling through my first year of teaching in the DC Public Schools as a member of the Urban Teacher Corps while trying to adjust to my new married life.

The previous year, I had been emotionally overwhelmed by the death of Martin Luther King to the point where I actually quit my volunteer work for the Poor Peoples’ Campaign. King had hoped to build a powerful multi-racial coalition to challenge economic exploitation and war with the use of creative non-violence. That dream died with him.

Although committed to the philosophy of armed self-defense rather than Gandhian non-violence, the Black Panther Party shared King’s vision of a multi-racial coalition to fight injustice. One of the most promising of these multi-racial campaigns was the one led by Fred Hampton in Chicago. In May 1969, he announced the foundation of a Rainbow Coalition that would unite young Chicagoans across racial lines in what was then the most segregated city in the North.

Sometime on December 5th, I learned of Fred Hampton’s death. My wife Marie and I were devastated. Fred’s prowess as an organizer was well known nationally. I had retreated from the struggle after the death of King. This time would be different. Marie and I talked it over and we decided something we had to do something.

We had heard that Dick Ochs was involved in trying to organize a Rainbow Coalition with the DC Black Panther Party. Dick had been a leader of the University of Maryland SDS and an inspiration to both of us. We called Dick and he told us we could meet with him at the DC Panther headquarters on 18th Street. That began what became for us, “The Year of the Panther”.

To be continued...