Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Apartment

In April, 1963, Martin Luther King wrote in his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" that

One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

In January, 1966, Dr. King brought civil disobedience to Chicago to support "open housing" and the end of neighborhood segregation in the city. After years of marches through Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, the "Chicago Freedom" movement was the first major action of the civil rights movement in the north.

During the spring and summer of 1966, Dr. King lived three days a week in a slum apartment on this site, at 1550 S. Hamlin Ave. "You can't really get close to the poor without living and being here with them," he said.

Dr. King moved in on January 26, 1966, and began paying $90 per month in rent to the landlord, Alvin Shavin & Associates. The building was a three floor walk-up with six flats, and Dr. King and his wife, Coretta, lived on the third floor.

Aides to King had selected the apartment with the goal of obtaining a home in what they called a "typical ghetto apartment". The fact that the ultimate tenant would be the world-famous civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner was kept secret from the landlord, as well as from the press, in order to avoid either an attempt to keep King out of the building, or, contrarily, any attempt by the landlord to clean up the building in order to avoid embarrassment.

In fact, the landlord did clean up the apartment substantially before he moved in, though it remained very dreary. The Tribune described it:

From the green painted entranceway of Dr. King's new home, up the three flights of bare wood stairs, to the partment on the right side of the third floor landing, poverty is everywhere.

If Dr. King toured his new home yesterday he could hardly be impressed. Tho it was freshly painted, there seemed to have been little pains taken to make it comfortable. In the white painted living room, including the fake fireplace, there was only one sofa. A chair and small table were nearby. In the large bedroom, painted gray, there is a new Hollywood-type bed. An adjoining bedroom, also painted gray, has a similar bed as well as a folding bed which could be stored in a closet. The yellow-painted kitchen contained only a sink. There was no stove or refrigerator. The unwashed kitchen windows looked out over a row of roof tops, cluttered with debris. Next to the kitchen is a bathroom. The tiled floor is cracked and seemed to be symbolic of the apartment's roundown condition. Across from the washbowl is bathtub, dirty and stained with age.

Mrs. King, dressed in a Persian lamb coat with mink-trimmed collar, admited she had some trepidation about living in the apartment: "I hear the accommodations are
not the best."

(Pictured: Dr. Martin Luther King and wife (center window) waving from their apartment at 1550 S. Hamlin.)

Dr. King's purpose in Chicago was primarily to lead a movement for "open housing". Although a 1948 Supreme Court decision had ruled that neighborhood restrictive covenants were unenforceable, Chicago and many other cities remained de facto segregated through social stigma and intimidation. Blacks therefore faced serious difficulties in moving out of slum conditions like those in North Lawndale, where King's apartment lay.

Immediately after moving in, Dr. King announced a plan to lead rent strikes against "slumlords" like Shavin and Associates, "which have created infamous slum conditions directly responsible for the involuntary enslavement of millions of black men, women, and children. Our primary objective will be to bring about the unconditional surrender of forces dedicated to the creation and maintenance of slums." King planned to organize tenants into a "union" of sorts, and use collective bargaining to lower rents and force improvements in substandard housing. Returning to his theme of higher law, King told reporters, "It may be necessary to engage in acts of civil disobedience in order to call attention to specific problems. Often an individual has to break a particular law to obey a higher law, that of brotherhood and justice."

(Pictured: Dr. and Mrs. Martin Luther King, in their Chicago apartment)

It is unclear, however, how an attack on landlords in Black neighborhoods would solve the problem of discrimination in housing in white neighborhoods. If anything, the use of political force to reduce rents could have the primary effect of reducing the supply of cheap housing and minimizing the incentive of landlords to improve property in order to achieve higher rent.

King's initial tactics along these lines also backfired politically. His first target was a decaying brownstone at 1321 S. Homan, a few blocks from his own fetid apartment. On February 23, 1966, King and twenty members of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference announced they were taking over the building, which was in a serious state of delinquency with city codes, as a "trusteeship". Tenants, he announced, would pay their rents to the SCLC instead of to the landlord, and their rents would be used to improve the building.

Naturally, the landlord was none too happy about the scheme. It turned out that he was no slimu Leona Helmsley-type character, but instead an elderly, debilitated man, who himself had few means of support. When told about King's actions, the property owner, 81-year old John Bender, from his wheelchair, told reporters that the building was a "white elephant," and that he hadn't seen a cent from it in the years he owned it. In fact, he said, he had lost $25,000 in the investment, and he would be more than happy to give it to Dr. King or anyone else, provided they simply pay the $150 a month mortgage.

Public opinion swung towards Bender. King's actions were a violation of Bender's property rights, and were illegal -- at least depending on one's definition of law. "I won't say that it is illegal, but I would call it supra-legal. The moral question is far more important than the legal one," said King.

But the courts didn't agree. In April, 1966, Chancery court issued an injunction against the SCLC and handed the property back to Bender, who promptly died within the month. The property fell into the hands of a court-appointed receiver, who did little about the code violations. The building still stands, more than 40 years later, as dilapidated as ever.

Open housing wasn't King's only goal during his time in Chicago. In a June rally at Soldier Field, King declared a number of others: school desegregation in Chicago, a city income tax, a $2/hr minimum wage, Black history courses in all public schools, and an expansion of the elevated trains to O'Hare airport and the Northwest side (in order to allow Blacks to reach these primarily-White neighborhoods). The Soldier Field rally was also notable for the appearance of a number of Chicago street gangs, including the Blackstone Rangers. The Rangers unfurled a huge banner that read "Black Power", the slogan of the more radical element in the civil rights movement, and one that King was uncomfortable with.

Dr. King's relationship with street gangs in Chicago was one of wary acceptance. After a perceived snub during the Soldier Field rally, the Conservative Vice Lords, who were also in attendance, stood up and walked out, and were followed by the Rangers and another major gang, the Gangster Disciples. King's apartment was just a block away from CVL, Inc. headquarters on 16th street, so it may have been a desire for peace that lead him to invite CVL leadership to a meeting a few weeks later at his apartment. He told them that SCLC needed help from gang members, needed them to be his "troops" on the ground, and street gang members were a part of King's efforts in Chicago throughout that summer, despite the discomfort they inspired in many SCLC members. King was probably right; if he were to lose the support of street gangs, who controlled the streets in many Black neighborhoods, he would likely lose the support of Blacks in the city generally.

While King's "trusteeship" takeovers of slum dwellings were generally unproductive, his marches against discriminatory real estate agents were far more successful. In July and August, 1966, the SCLC led marches through all-White neighborhoods on the Southwest side, including Gage Park, Bogan, and Evergreen Park. These events invariably turned violent. In one August march, crowds of white residents blocked the marchers path along Kedzie Ave., between 63rd and Marquette Rd. Dr. King arrived on the scene and, as he got out of his car, was pelted on the back of the neck with a rock. Falling to the ground, he steadied himself, saying "I have to do this -- to expose myself -- to bring this hate into the open. I have seen many demonstrations in the south but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I've seen here today."

For its part, the Chicago Tribune was openly hostile to Dr. King and his efforts throughout his time in the city. In one particularly inflammatory editorial, the paper wrote

These "rights" leaders and the foggy clergymen who abet them on are not heroes. For all their pious protestations of nonviolence, they are working hand in glove with the criminal element to create confusion and turbulence and to compound the danger to Chicagoans. They can no longer even pretend to be ignorant of this link. Chicago has already paid too high a price for this deliberate campaign of sabotage. Causing violence to achieve political ends is criminal syndicalism, a statutory crime in many states. There are other laws, in addition, against inciting violence. If the marchers keep up their sabotage, it will be time to indict the whole lot of them.

Mayor Daley took a more nuanced approach. While publicly respecting Dr. King's efforts, he also worked to undermine them by emphasizing the city's own efforts to improve conditions in Black neighborhoods, implicitly implying King's work was unnecessary. Nevertheless, Daley too was troubled by the increasing violence associated with the marches on the Southwest side. When King announced the next target would be suburban Cicero, elements in various White Power groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, made it clear that they would confront and oppose any civil rights march in the city.

Daley and others pleaded with Dr. King to cancel the march in Cicero, to no avail. Finally, just a few days before the event, a compromise was achieved. Mayor Daley, the Chicago Real Estate Board, and a number of other city leaders signed a statement agreeing to the principles of open housing, and promising to end "steering" practices, by which Black residents were discouraged from purchasing property in white neighborhoods. In return, King postponed the march in Cicero indefinitely. (More radical elements were not dissuaded, however, and a smaller march did take place in Cicero in September, and in fact, it was marked by violence).

Having apparently brought the city on board with the principles of open housing, Dr. King declared victory in Chicago, and moved on to new challenges, leaving an affiliate, Jesse Jackson, to continue the SCLC's operations in the city under the banner of Operation Breadbasket.

When King was assassinated in April, 1968, riots erupted on the West and South sides of Chicago, with burning and looting throughout these neighborhoods. One of the buildings burned in the riots was the one where King had lived at 1550 S. Hamlin. The building survived, however, at least to some degree, and remained a burn-out for another decade. It was demolished in 1979.

The property remained an empty lot for the next thirty years. In spring, 2009, developers announced plans to build a $17 million complex called the "Dr. King Legacy Apartments," including commercial space and an "exhibition center". A sign was planted indicating the complex would break ground in fall, 2009. As of November, 2009, there is no sign of any construction, and the sign is gone.

Shoot It Out? The Death of Fred Hampton

Fred Hampton, Illinois Chairman of the Black Panther Party, was living with his girlfriend and other Panther friends in the first-floor apartment of this building at 2337 W. Monroe St. on December 4, 1969. At 4:30 a.m. that morning, 14 officers from the state’s attorney office served a warrant to search the premises for illegal weapons. A shoot-out followed, in which Hampton and Peoria Panther chapter leader Mark Clark were killed. But after the sound of gunfire died down, investigations into the incident would shake the foundations of law and order in Chicago, destroy the career of the city’s brightest rising political star, fill newspaper headlines for over a decade, and create a scandal that reached all the way to J. Edgar Hoover’s desk at the FBI.

Fred Hampton’s family came to Chicago after World War II from Haynesville, Louisiana, part of the great migration of southern Blacks into the industrial cities of the North during the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Initially settling in suburban Argo, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Hampton both found work at the famous Corn Products plant in that city. The Hamptons’ first child was a daughter, Delores, and shortly after arriving in the Chicago area, their first son, Fred, was born, in August, 1948. A few years later, Iberia Hampton would give birth to a third child, William. The family lived briefly in Blue Island, but then made their permanent home in Maywood, at the time a mixed-race working-class suburb with solid schools and easy access into Chicago.

Growing up in Maywood, Fred Hampton was a good student, and active in sports, playing on the baseball, football, basketball, and wrestling teams at Proviso East High School. It was while attending Proviso East in the mid-1960s that Hampton became deeply interested in the civil rights movement. He began spending his evenings listing to recordings of speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, over and over again, and in this way, developed rhetorical skill that would soon turn him into a political wunderkind. As one Maywood resident later noted, “He never really was a teenager in the normal sense of an adolescent. When other teens were talking about clothes, dating, and sports, he always would be talking about ‘the movement’.”

Hampton was also a natural leader, and began organizing Black students at Proviso East in marches and demonstrations against the school administration, agitating against discrimination and in favor of more resources for minority students. During this period, Hampton’s grades fell, but he nevertheless graduated in 1966. That summer, he found work supporting anti-discrimination efforts in housing markets in Chicago, led by Martin Luther King. Based on his work with the famed civil rights leader, he was appointed head of the youth council of the NAACP in Maywood, and became an active political agitator in that town.

During the late 1960s, Hampton attended Triton College, YMCA Central College, and Malcolm X College sporadically, but his heart was in political organizing, and through the influence of the burgeoning radical movement, as well as hard experiences, he drifted away from the moderate non-violence of Martin Luther King, and towards a more confrontational protest style, which both put him in trouble’s way, and made him a target for conservative elements in society and the police.

(Pictured: Fred Hampton)

In June, 1967, Hampton was arrested while leading 18 Maywood youths in a protest that turned violent. The group was criticizing the village’s administration for the dearth of public services available to Black residents, particularly a public pool. In those days of segregated pools, white Maywood residents could travel to nearby suburbs to swim, but Blacks were not allowed in pools in upscale suburbs like Oak Park and River Forest. Hampton was arrested again in September, 1967, for leading a protest at Proviso East High School in which a riot erupted and a policeman was attacked.

But Fred Hampton’s most infamous moment took place on July 10, 1968, when a white ice cream truck driver, Nelson T. Suitt, was trolling for customers through a Black section of Maywood, and was accosted by a gang of youths, asking for free product. “Don’t you know you are in a black power neighborhood?” they demanded. Just then, Fred Hampton drove by, and one of the boys told Suitt, “now you’re going to have to give us the ice cream – here comes our leader”.

According to police, the group then attacked and looted the truck, with Hampton personally climbing into the cab and beating Suitt. After his attackers departed, Suitt hailed down a passing police car, and, with the officer, identified Fred Hampton on the street. In his defense, Hampton claimed the truck was already looted when he arrived on the scene, and that the supposed battery on Suitt was a frame-up by the Maywood police, who disliked the protests he led against Maywood village administration.

Shortly after this incident, Hampton joined the Black Panther Party, apparently immediately becoming leader of the Illinois chapter. The BPP was founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, and was notoriously violent, and particularly antagonistic towards police. In one case, a Panther chapter supplied children with coloring books that pictured police being shot and stabbed by Blacks, and included the statement “The only good pig is a dead pig.” By 1968, the BPP had chapters throughout the country and boasted 3,000 – 5,000 members nationally; violent clashes with police were reported in many cities.

Because of the Party’s violent and confrontational nature, being associated with the BPP was no small matter – it was a choice that put one outside the realm of polite society, to say the least. A friend to tried to convince Hampton not to join, arguing that his membership in the BPP would keep him from his potential as a great political leader. The friend said, “We talked about this in depth many times and he used to tell me he was involved in the liberation of people. He used to say he didn’t want to live a long time, but that he wanted to do something while he was alive.” Hampton’s response was prophetic.

As a BPP member, Hampton increased the pressure on the Maywood village government, leading increasingly violent clashes between Black protestors and police. In July, 1968, he led a troop of 150 young men in an assault on Maywood city hall during a city board meeting. When refused entry to the meeting, the group began pelting the building with rocks, breaking out windows and shouting angry slogans. The mayor and other city officials escaped down the back fire escape while the rioters moved down the street, breaking windows and starting fires in stores and homes.

Throughout 1968 and 1969, Hampton led the BPP’s movement in Chicago to recruit college and high school students to the party. He gave speeches at Roosevelt University, DePaul, and several city colleges, advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government, and quoting at length from the Communist Manifesto, and from the works of Mao Tse-Tung. In part for the purpose of improving their public image, the Chicago chapter of the BPP started a “breakfast for children” program, which provided food for Black youth in three locations throughout the city, although critics claimed the program was poorly managed, and that “donations” of food and money were primarily obtained through extortion. A Tribune investigation also revealed evidence that money donated for the program was improperly channeled to pay for BPP members’ car payments and clothes. The BPP also attempted to open a free health clinic in the primarily-Black neighborhood of North Lawndale, although these plans never came to fruition due to opposition from a rival Black youth organization, the Conservative Vice Lords street gang, which controlled that neighborhood.

Through his work in the BPP, and through the nationwide notoriety of the BPP, Fred Hampton was increasingly seen as a political figure, and a threat to the Chicago police and elected officials. In April of 1969, a jury convicted Hampton of robbery in the ice cream truck case, and given Hampton’s growing political status, the newly-elected state’s attorney, Edward V. Hanrahan, took special interest in the verdict, pushing for immediate sentencing. The judge in the case demurred, and put off the next phase of the trial until May, when Hampton was sentenced to serve 2-5 years. Through appeals, however, he was allowed to remain free.

(Pictured: State's Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan)

Today, we typically associate gun rights with right-wing political organizations; however, historically, left-wing groups (see this post on gun advocacy by 19th century labor agitators) opposed to the government were among the most ardent supporters of the right to bear arms. The Panthers strongly advocated arming Black citizens as a defense against government tyranny, and a deterrent to perceived police racism. One year, the Party sold Christmas cards which showed Black children aiming rifles at Santa Claus, and asking their parents for guns and explosives for Christmas, in lieu of toys. Fred Hampton’s Chicago BPP chapter advocated similarly, and stockpiles of weapons were kept at Panther headquarters. However, they had an additional reason to arm themselves: a perceived threat from other Black organizations in Chicago.

I have already mentioned the rivalrous relationship between the BPP and the west side Vice Lords, largely based on competition for leadership status among Chicago Blacks. Hampton’s relationship with another prominent street gang, the Black P. Stone Nation (formerly known as the Blackstone Rangers), was no less strained. A Panther member described a bizarre meeting between Hampton and the BPSN in 1969:

[Jeff] Fort [leader of the BPSN], carrying only a lighted candle, met the small band of Panthers at the door and led them into a gymnasium, where a spotlight was turned out. “All around the room all I could see was the silhouette of Blackstone Rangers,” O’Neal recalled. “It looks to be maybe 500 of them. Hard-core crazies, man. They had a medicine man who was doing this dance. And then Jeff Fort said something like “There ain’t going to be no panthers in this city, there’s just going to be Stones.”

Hampton talked his way out of the meeting, but on the drive home, told his compatriots that they needed guns – lots of them. The BPP made it known that they would buy guns, and soon, they were flooded with firearms, including many stolen and illegal weapons, which they stockpiled at Panther headquarters and in the homes of BPP leadership throughout the city.

Hampton’s rhetoric towards the police was often severe. One of his favorite quotes, which he repeated frequently, was “when you kill all the pigs [police], you get complete satisfaction.” Nevertheless, Hampton did not directly advocate violence – at least not yet. During riots in Chicago in October, 1969, instigated by the Weathermen, Hampton announced himself against an immediate overthrow of the government, saying “We don’t support people who are anarchistic, chauvinistic, masochistic, and Custeristic – people leading people into confrontations they are unprepared for. Revolution and uprising is an art, and we’ve got to move from that premise. If you persist in these spontaneous acts, we are going to have to look on you as pigs or pig agents.”

Nevertheless, the Panthers’ violent rhetoric (and, in many cases, actual violence) against police and the government, and their stance towards firearms, quickly caught the wary eye of FBI agents in Washington. J. Edgar Hoover started a confidential operation known internally as “COINTELPRO – Black Extremists” which both sought intelligence on Black organizations such as the Panthers, and purposed to infiltrate, harass, and discredit the leaders of those organizations. In one memo, Hoover wrote that the purpose of the program was to “prevent the rise of a ‘messiah’ who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement.” In another memo, he referred to one of COINTELPRO’s explicit purposes, to “neutralize the Black Panther Party and destroy what it stands for.”

One of the FBI’s means for destroying the Panthers was to stir up animosity and violence between them and other Black organizations. In this post, I described an anonymous letter sent to Jeff Fort, BPSN leader, implying that the Panthers were planning to assassinate him, and suggesting he take violent action. Another program infiltrated the Chicago BPP chapter with an FBI informant, William O’Neal, a former low-level street criminal, who began passing information about Fred Hampton’s weapons acquisitions back to FBI agents in 1968 (O’Neal is the source of the quote above regarding the meeting with Fort and the BPSN). He also provided the feds with a floor plan of Hampton’s apartment in 2337 W. Monroe St., and tipped off agents about times Hampton spent there.

Hampton had established the BPP headquarters at 2350 W. Madison St., just a block away from the apartment, probably because he had family that lived in the neighborhood. The area was almost entirely populated by Blacks, and the Panthers felt safe there. The apartment itself was nothing to write home about, with five small rooms, including two bedrooms and one bathroom. It was run down and dirty, drafty and cold, and was in serious need of paint. In December, 1969, Fred Hampton was living in the apartment with his girlfriend, 18-year old Deborah Johnson, who had recently discovered she was pregnant with his child.

Besides becoming a father, Hampton was also active in pulling together a BPP movement which nationally was splintering between more and less radical factions, and had suffered from internecine fighting between the leadership (possibly facilitated by FBI efforts). The Party, which had once boasted 5,000 members, probably had no more than 1,000 nationwide by late 1969. Hampton had recently returned from a visit to Panther headquarters in Oakland, where he had conferred with other Party leaders about the future of the movement.

Upon his return to Chicago, he invited the only two members of the Peoria BPP up to Chicago to discuss plans for the Party in Illinois, and they stayed with him in the apartment on Monroe St. The leader of the Peoria chapter was Mark Clark, and his only acolyte was Tony Harris. Harris was arrested in Chicago after a gun battle with police on December 2, leaving Clark alone to lead the Panthers in Peoria. Unlike Hampton, who was a political leader who sometimes became involved in street crime, Mark Clark was a street criminal who became involved in politics. He never graduated high school, and had little sense of the future. He had repeatedly told his sister he would never live to see 1970.

(Pictured: Mark Clark)

On the evening of December 3, 1969, Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, FBI informant William O’Neal, and several other BPP members ate a simple dinner of spaghetti, hot dogs, and Kool-Aid at the apartment on Madison St. The group stayed up late, talking, playing games, and cleaning a shotgun, one of the 19 firearms that Hampton kept at the apartment for protection. Slowly, the party ended with some members, including O’Neal, departing for their homes, and nine others falling asleep either in one of the two bedrooms or on mattresses in the living room. Hampton and his girlfriend Deborah Johnson eventually retired to the back (south) bedroom. The last lights finally went out around 4:00 a.m., just half an hour before all hell was to break loose.

As noted above, FBI agents had received a floor plan of the apartment from O’Neal, and were informed of the weapons and ammunition Hampton stored there. They first approached the Chicago police about performing a weapons raid on the apartment in October or November, 1969, but were turned down twice. Next, they turned to the State’s Attorney’s office, led by the recently-elected Edward V. Hanrahan. Hanrahan was a rising star in the Democratic Party in Illinois, a machine politician who was widely considered the heir-apparent for the elderly Mayor Richard J. Daley. Hanrahan had taken a popular stand in favor of law and order, and was Daley’s chief instigator of a “War on Gangs,” in which the state vigorously prosecuted gang members who committed crimes.

Hanrahan saw the BPP as a criminal organization, and a threat to law enforcement, neither of which were entirely untrue. Just two weeks earlier, two Chicago police officers had been killed in a shootout with BPP members at an abandoned hotel on Calumet Ave., at 58th Street. When presented with the FBI’s information, he saw an opportunity to start ridding the Party of its weapons, and possibly to take down its leadership.

A warrant to search Hampton’s apartment for weapons was drawn up and signed, and a team of 14 Chicago police officers who were working as investigators for the State’s Attorney office, was asked to develop a raid strategy. It would be a dangerous assignment, and the possibility of violence couldn’t be ignored. The raid was originally scheduled for 8:00 p.m. on the evening of December 3rd, but the police feared that the streets would be busy at that hour, and bystanders could be hurt or try to interfere in the raid. It was decided to serve the warrant at 4:30 a.m. on the morning of December 4th instead.

The 14 raiders were led by Sgt. Daniel Groth, and included five Black officers, among them James “Gloves” Davis, a west-side officer who had long been a bugbear for the Vice Lords and other street gangs. The raiders surrounded the building, with eight officers manning the back door and windows, and six at the front. Sgt. Groth knocked on the front door. Inside, a voice asked “Who’s there?” and Groth replied “This is the police, I have a warrant to search.”

One of the men in the apartment, Louis Truelock, ran to the back bedroom and began trying to wake Fred Hampton. “Chairman, chairman, wake up. The pigs are back” (other accounts indicate it was Vietnam veteran and BPP member Harold Bell who attempted to wake Hampton). In the living room, Peoria chapter president Mark Clark sat in a chair facing the door, holding the shotgun the group had cleaned earlier that night. Sgt. Groth again pounded on the door, this time with the butt of his gun. “Open up, police!”

(Pictured: Floor plan of Hampton's apartment, where the raid took place)

When the door didn’t open, Groth ordered Officer Davis to break it in. Davis hit the door with his shoulder, opening up into an ante room, and falling onto a mattress spread across the living room floor. At just that moment, Mark Clark raised his twelve-gauge shotgun and fired once through the door at police. Sgt. Groth smashed through the door into the living room and, in the faint glow of a space heater, saw a woman, later identified as Brenda Harris, across the room, who appeared to be loading a gun and preparing to shoot. Sgt. Groth fired at her as Officer Davis arose from the mattress and spied Clark sitting on his chair with the shotgun. Davis fired three times at Clark, likely killing him at that point.

The other officers, hearing the gunfire, followed into the darkness and began a wild search through the apartment for the others. Without the aid of light or much space in an apartment that now held nine Black Panthers and 14 police officers, panicked officers mistook the sound of other officers’ guns for return fire from the Panthers, leading to more confused shooting. The raiders began piling up the apartment-dwellers in the kitchen as the found them.

Sgt. Groth later claimed that, at five different points during the raid, he called for his men to cease firing, and shouted for the Panthers to surrender. Each time, he claimed, a voice yelled “Shoot it out!”, and the gunfire continued. At one point, Louis Truelock and Deborah Johnson walked out of the rear bedroom with their hands up, and surrendered to police. After collecting them in the kitchen with the others, besides Clark, who was dead, the raiders went into the back bedroom, where they found Fred Hampton sprawled face-down on the bed, killed by two bullets which had passed through the thin walls of the apartment, and which were later determined to have been fired from Officer Davis’ service weapon. The raiders claimed that, on the floor by Hampton’s right hand was a .45 caliber automatic weapon, and by his left hand, a shotgun. When the gunfire finally ended, Hampton and Clark were dead, and four other Panthers and one police officer were shot and wounded. All seven surviving apartment-dwellers were arrested on charges of attempted murder.

The vast majority of Chicagoans viewed Fred Hampton as a violent militant and agitator, and saw the Panthers’ attacks on the raiders as murderous and, therefore, the raiders’ return fire as justifiable homicide. However, from the start, there were many unanswered questions. Why did the police serve a warrant at 4:30 in the morning? And after Clark shot through the door, why didn’t they employ tear gas or simply surround the apartment, instead of venturing inside for a gunfight? Who fired first, and who fired most?

Several Black leaders were quick to condemn the raid, and rumors flew that Hampton was intentionally murdered by police. That day, at the concurrent trial of the “Chicago Seven” associated with the previous year’s Democratic National Convention riots, defense attorney William Kunstler asked the court for an adjournment for mourning, “because of the murder of Fred Hampton by police in Chicago early today.” A spokesman for the NAACP branded the killings as “modern-day lynchings”. Operation Breadbasket leader Jesse Jackson told reporters he was “personally grieved” by Hampton’s death, saying “he was a personal friend of mine,” and that he would demand a detailed investigation into the incident.

At high schools throughout the city and suburbs, Black students walked out and congregated at the Civic Center downtown for a massive protest. At Hampton’s former high school in Maywood, Proviso East, classes were cancelled until January in order to avoid violence. The mayors of Maywood and Gary, Indiana, and the president of Malcolm X College all lauded Hampton’s work and insinuated that his death was no accident. Panther “Defense Minister” and post-Hampton leader Bobby “Che” Rush announced “inside information” he claimed to have received that the raiding party included known KKK members, and that Hampton was drugged and then killed in his sleep.

State’s Attorney Hanrahan repeatedly told reporters that the officers had acted in a completely professional manner, serving a legitimate warrant, and defending themselves when fired upon. The first of many investigations of the incident was by the Chicago police internal investigation division (IID). The officers involved in the raid were acting at the behest of the State’s Attorney office, but IID performed an investigation anyway, quickly clearing the officers of any wrongdoing.

The next investigation was at the behest of the Cook county coroner’s office. At the conclusion of a twelve-day inquest on January 21, 1970, a fury of three Blacks and three whites unanimously vindicated the raiders’ story. A chemist for the coroner’s office reported no evidence of drugs or alcohol in Hampton’s body. Ballistics crime lab expert John Sadunas examined the shell casings found at the crime scene, and determined that three shots were fired at police, including two from Brenda Harris’ weapon.

(Pictured: Coroner's jury investigates the crime scene)

It appeared that the case was over. The grand jury found that Fred Hampton was not murdered, and that the State’s Attorney’s raiding party had acted in strict accordance with police principles, attempting repeatedly to stop the shooting, but each time being rebuffed with “Shoot it out!” But, in fact, the saga of Fred Hampton was only beginning, and the incident would be repeatedly replayed in court for the next ten years.

One limitation of the coroners’ investigation was that the police had failed to properly seal the crime scene after the incident. Before the crime lab experts showed up on the scene, police had already removed all the weapons from the house and loaded them into a police vehicle. An attorney for the BPP got to the apartment early and removed the part of the door in which Clark’s shotgun shell had passed, taking it with him and making it available to the inquest only under court order. The BPP had allowed curiosity-seekers to tour the apartment and touch objects and furniture, and possibly take with them some of the shell casings. State’s Attorney Hanrahan put daily pressure on the coroner to finish the inquest, meaning that the crime lab was unable to fully examine the ballistics and fingerprint evidence that remained.

For all of these reasons, and under intense pressure from the NAACP and other groups, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a probe into the incident, under the auspices of determining whether Hampton’s civil rights had been violated by the raiders. The jury methodically took statements from each of the raiders, examined the evidence, even exhumed Hampton’s body, which had been buried at the family’s native home in Haynesville, Louisiana.

The federal grand jury report, numbering 243 pages, was released in May, 1970, and its findings were damning. With additional time to investigate the evidence, crime lab expert Sadunas changed his testimony from that given at the coroner’s inquest: All but one of the roughly 100 shell casings found at the scene came from police weapons. Only Mark Clark’s weapon was fired among those belonging to the BPP. The violence at the scene was almost entirely due to police heavy-handedness. The post-incident crime scene investigation was completely inadequate and suggested an attempt to cover up evidence of police misconduct. State’s Attorney Hanrahan’s statements to the press and the coroner’s inquiry were disingenuous and misleading, and his efforts had materially obstructed the coroner's inquest.

The federal grand jury concluded that the original IID investigation was a complete sham, with each officer being asked questions which had been previously written up and given to them, along with a set of answers. The seven surviving apartment-dwellers refused to testify to the federal grand jury, and on that basis, the jury returned no indictments, but their report was unequivocal: “Physical evidence, standing alone and unexplained, is sufficient to establish probable cause to charge the officers with a willful violation of these survivors’ civil rights.”

With no evidence that anyone in the apartment except Clark had fired against police, Hanrahan was forced to immediately drop all charges against the seven survivors of the raid. The heads of the IID and the police crime lab, plus the deputy police superintendant, were all demoted, and the State’s Attorney police force was disbanded.

The injustice of the raid and the unnecessary violence, however, meant that the grand jury’s report did little to satisfy Hanrahan’s detractors. On the anniversary of Hampton’s death, December 4, 1970, protests throughout the city turned violent. El train conductors refused to make stops at the 63rd and Dan Ryan station, due to the presence of an angry mob on the platform. Continued political pressure finally led to the empaneling of a third grand jury in a special Cook county session, for another investigation of the incident.

After much legal wrangling, the special grand jury indicted eight of the police raiders, including Sgt. Groth and Officer Davis, crime lab expert John Sadunas, and State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan, along with several other members of his office. The Chicago Bar Association, the Better Government Association, and the Chicago Crime Commission all advised Hanrahan to step down. Even fellow Democrats, including Sen. Adlai Stevenson, refused to support Hanrahan. He was political kryptonite.

At Hanrahan’s 1972 trial, the apartment-dwellers finally gave their own version of the events that night. Before the federal grand jury’s report, it is unlikely that most Chicagoans would have given them any credence at all, but with the cloud of suspicion hanging over the State’s Attorney, their reports took on an air of possibility. Louis Truelock testified that he had shouted to the police “Stop shooting, stop shooting. We have a pregnant sister in here, a pregnant woman,” before he and Deborah Johnson surrendered from the back bedroom. He testified that one officer threw open her robe, saying “What do you know? We have a broad here.” Truelock testified that, after surrendering and being handcuffed in the kitchen, he heard officers say in another room, “he’s barely alive”, followed by more shooting, and then “he’s good and dead now”.

At the time of Hanrahan's trial, the role of the FBI and its informant William O’Neal was still unknown, although some suspected Truelock as a stool pidgeon, as he was by far the oldest of the apartment-dwellers, and he had a length rap sheet. At one point, defense attorney John Cohglan asked Truelock on the stand, using the slang of the day, “Did you drop the dime on the chairman’s crib?”

But the biggest bombshell in the case was the release of a set of statements purportedly made by the survivors to their attorneys shortly after the incident. In them, the Panthers claimed that at least five people in the apartment held guns, and at least four shots were made at police. These statements contradicted the ballistics evidence, and those whose names were on them disowned their validity.

In any case, the statements made their mark, and in October, 1972, after a 16 week trial, the Cook County Circuit Court acquitted the defendents. This ended the possibility of criminal culpability for Hanrahan and the raiders, but a civil suit for wrongful death was filed shortly after, seeking $48 million from Hanrahan, the city of Chicago, Cook County and the State of Illinois.

That trial, one of the longest in Illinois history, lasted 18 months, and at its conclusion in April, 1977, also acquitted Hanrahan. It was during this trial, however, that the FBI’s role in surveillance against the BPP, and in driving the raid on Hampton’s apartment, was revealed, leading to further embarrassment for the state.

On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals reinstated the claim in 1979, and yet another trial took place. This one finally settled in 1983 with a $1.85 million payoff to the families of Hampton and Clark, paid from the city of Chicago, Cook County, and the FBI. It was the largest settlement in a civil rights case up to that date.

What really happened in the early morning of December 4, 1969? After countless grand juries and trials, all of the details are still not known, will likely never be known. It seems plausible that the raiding party, or at least State’s Attorney Hanrahan, knew that Fred Hampton was in the apartment that day. It’s at least suspicious that the raiders chose to invade the apartment instead of waiting for back-up, having a stand-off, or employing tear gas. On the other hand, why would the raiders have spent so many shells, leaving evidence of incompetence all over the apartment, if their sole purpose was to murder Hampton? And if the entire incident was a frame-up, why wouldn’t the framers have fired more of the weapons found in the apartment to cover up their crime? Above all, who – if anyone — yelled “Shoot it out”?

The BPP was already in serious decline at the time of Hampton’s death. Bobby Rush continued leading the Illinois chapter for a few more years until it essentially disappeared, then moved into politics, winning a seat on city council in 1980, and then the U.S. House of Representatives in 1993, representing Illinois’ first district, which covers a significant swath of the South side. In 2000, Bobby Rush defeated little-known community organizer Barack Obama in his challenge for the seat, and Rush remains the only politician ever to defeat Obama in an election.

Edward Hanrahan was slated by the Democratic Party to run again for State’s Attorney in 1972, but after harsh public backlash, dropped him from the ticket. Hanrahan ran anyway, and lost. In 1974, he ran for the U.S. House in the Illinois 6th district in DuPage Country, but was defeated by Republican Henry Hyde, who held the seat until 2007. Hanrahan also lost in a mayoral contest against incumbent Democrat Richard J. Daley in 1975, and lost an aldermanic election in 1980 for the 36th ward. He continued in private legal practice until his death in June, 2009.

A month after Fred Hampton’s death in 1969, his wife, Deborah Johnson, gave birth to Fred Hampton, Jr. Later, she took on an Afrocentric name, Akua Nkeri, and became involved in the Uhuru movement. Fred Hampton, Jr., continued in his father’s footsteps as a lightning rod for racial controversy. In 1993, he was sentenced to serve 18 years in prison for firebombing two Korean-owned South side businesses in the wake of the Rodney King verdict the previous year. Hampton, Jr., served nine years and was released in 2002.

The house at 2337 W. Monroe still stands, though it has been substantially renovated since 1969. Over the last ten years, the neighborhood in which it stands has gentrified, from what was once one of the toughest districts in the city to a racially-mixed area including white residents priced out of nearer areas like Wicker Park and Bucktown. In 2006, a motion in city council failed which would have placed one of the ubiquitous brown “honorary” street signs at the corner of Monroe and Western Ave, indicating the block as “Honorary Chairman Fred Hampton St.” One wonders whether the residents of the building still receive a lot of curiosity-seekers; a sign next to the door reads “No Soliciting, No Loitering, No Trespassing – Violators Will Be Prosecuted”.

The Saga of Jesse Binga

The cinematic arc of Jesse Binga’s life story – his humble arrival in Chicago with $10 in his pocket, the genius and hard work that took him to the pinnacle of business and social success, and his courage in challenging and overcoming racially-motivated attacks, followed by a stunning bankruptcy, imprisonment, and a pitiful, penniless death – mirror in exaggerated terms the failed hopes of black Chicagoans in the first half of the 20th century. Most of the events in Binga’s life took place here at his home, 5922 South Parkway Blvd. (now 5922 S. Dr. Martin Luther King Dr.)

Jesse Binga was born at Detroit in 1865, one of ten children. His father was a barber, but his mother, Adelphia Powers Binga, was a serial entrepreneur, and became her son’s inspiration throughout his life. As a housing developer, she built “Binga row” houses in the city’s slums. She also operated a food shipment business – the first Great Lakes-caught whitefish ever tasted south of the Mason-Dixon line were transported there by the Bingas.

With ten children in the home, the family was never wealthy. Jesse Binga dropped out of high school and apprenticed to his father as a barber and also worked briefly for a Detroit attorney before setting out to seek his fortune. He worked off and on in barbershops throughout the Midwest, then headed to California, where he found employment as a Pullman porter. In 1893, Binga came to Chicago to attend the World’s Fair that took place that year, arriving with no more than $10 to his name. Remaining in the city after the Fair, Binga spent a few years working at odd jobs before starting a real estate business on south State St., near 33rd street in about 1896.

With his mother’s experience in real estate as an inspiration, Binga threw himself into the business, saying:

Well, I'm going to give it a fair test, and if integrity counts for anything, I'll win. I felt that only prejudice could beat me and I determined that if it did beat me I would go to South America and start life in one of those republics where a man's color is not his crime.

Jesse Binga’s audacious success and rapid climb into the highest echelons of Chicago society meant that he never saw the Andes mountains.

(Pictured: Jesse Binga)

At the turn of the century, only around 20,000 African-Americans called Chicago home, less than 2% of the city’s population. Most of these were concentrated in the so-called “Black Belt” district, which stretched a few blocks on either side of State street south from 22nd street down to 35th street. Chicago was not unusual in its racial homogeneity at the time; most African-Americans in the U.S. lived in southern states, several of which in fact had majority or near-majority black populations. Starting in the 1880s, and especially in the first decades of the 20th century, Jim Crow segregation in much of the South, plus racial persecution by the Ku Klux Klan and other white groups and poor agricultural employment opportunities sent millions of southern Blacks into northern cities, including Chicago. The widespread circulation of the Chicago Defender, the city’s chief African-American newspaper, made Chicago a particular magnet for those seeking jobs and inexpensive housing.

It was these new migrants who made up the core of Jesse Binga’s clientele. When he opened his real estate business in 1896, he paid $10 per month in office rent and bought a battered old desk for $1.50. He ordered 1,000 cards from a printer, but finding himself unable to pay the bill, convinced the printer to let him have 25 proofs as “samples,” which he used until he was able to pay in full. His first profitable project was renting an apartment in the same building where he had his office, then fixing it up and subletting it at a premium.

As black migrants flooded into Chicago, the borders of the Black Belt expanded into historically-white neighborhoods. White residents in these districts were eager to leave as blacks moved in, and Jesse Binga was the city’s major broker between white sellers and black buyers. Binga would buy or rent property from departing white residents, then fix up or subdivide these buildings into smaller apartments demanded by poor southern blacks arriving in the city. In this way, he was able to demand upwards of 50% premia over the purchase price of many properties. Binga placed the advertisement below in the Tribune in 1905:

By the middle of the 1900s decade, Binga was the city’s top black real estate broker, a position he continued to hold for the next twenty years. Explaining his rapid success to a reporter in later years, he emphasized his expertise in construction, and underestimation of his intelligence by business partners, as the twin bases for his success in real estate:

I could do the repair work myself. I could do everything from digging a posthole to topping a chimney. I knew. Many a night I've worked all night on boilers and plumbing, and wiping joints, and mending stairs, and hanging paper. I knew materials and I knew when work was right…

My greatest asset in business -- I won't say that it was altogether my integrity. It was partly the disposition of the average white man to underestimate my knowledge of real estate values. They wouldn't believe that a colored man could take almost any old building and whip it into shape.

Due to discrimination, as well as other factors, many blacks in Chicago faced difficulties in gaining access to adequate credit to finance houses and other large purchases. As with real estate, Jesse Binga realized he could turn racism into profit. Opening his own bank, he would serve customers other banks would not – and this lack of competition meant big revenues. When the white-owned McCarthy Bank at 35th and State failed in 1907, Binga purchased the building and chartered his Binga Bank, a private credit institution.

The bank was an immediate success, and such was Binga’s growing stature in the community that he decided to dabble in politics, running for County Commissioner in 1910. That run failed, and Binga largely turned away from politics for the rest of his life, finding business a much more profitable pursuit. Later, he would explain his disdain for political life: "the double crossing, the knife in the back one day and the handshake the next -- I never took to that. I vote but I don't know today what ward I live in."

(Pictured: political advertisement which appeared in the Chicago Defender in 1910)

In 1911, the Defender, referring to Binga as “Our Only Banker,” sang his encomium:

He was the pioneer in securing good houses and flats for the race and the beginning of his remarkable business along that line has been one of the main factors in the wonderful growth of the citizens of color in Chicago.

The next year, Binga married into the city’s wealthiest and most prominent African-American family, the Johnsons. His bride, Eudora Johnson, was a daughter of famed gambling king John “Mushmouth” Johnson, owner of the massive Emporium Saloon on "Satan’s Mile" (S. State St.) and the upscale Frontenac Club on W. 22nd (some sources claim Eudora was a sister, not a daughter of Mushmouth; as I’ve noted before, the relationships between various Johnson family members were complicated). Supposedly, Eudora inherited over $200,000 from her father, which added to the Binga Bank’s capitalization, making it not only the biggest bank in the Black Belt, but a serious competitor for the business of white depositors as well.

Some have even suggested that Binga married Eudora Johnson exclusively for her money (she was apparently not exactly the picture of pulchritude); more than likely, though, such rumors originated out of jealousy from rival businessmen and renters who resented their landlord. In any case, the Binga-Johnson wedding was the city’s most lavish that year, and, befitting Binga’s growing national stature, even Booker T. Washington sent a letter of congratulations to the newlyweds.

During the next fifteen years, Chicago’s black population, which had already been growing by leaps and bounds, quadrupled in size. Jesse Binga was one of the chief beneficiaries; both his real estate and banking businesses prospered tremendously. Between 1921 and 1924 alone, the bank’s deposits grew from $300,000 to over $1,100,000, and then to nearly $1,500,000 by 1929, a period when real estate values were stagnant and bank failures were not uncommon (through suspensions and closures, the number of banks in Illinois fell from 1,969 in 1920 to 1,806 in 1929).

Binga was Chicago’s leading black citizen, and among its leading citizens of any color. During this period, he opened a “business school” of sorts, the Associated Business Club, wherein black entrepreneurs heard lectures from the city’s top business owners, black and white. He also purchased the home pictured above, at 5922 South Parkway Blvd., in 1917, for the sum of $30,000 (the equivalent of around $500,000 today). The home, located in what was a strictly white neighborhood, overlooks Washington Park, a beautiful and grand park covering more than 70 city blocks.

Jesse Binga’s prominence as a black Chicagoan of means, his activities in “block-busting” – drawing black residents into previously white neighborhoods, and his own purchase of a large home in a white district, made him a target for animosity among whites. Starting during the Chicago Race Riots of 1919, his home on South Park Blvd. was bombed seven times over the next two years. His businesses also suffered repeated bombings. Each time dynamite exploded on his front porch, there would be offers to buy his home, but Binga refused, rebuilt, and remained on South Park Blvd. He placed a private security officer on 24-hour guard for months at a time, and even publicly offered a $1,000 reward for the conviction of the bombers, but none were ever caught. He told the Defender (partially in response to criticism from blacks that he had moved out of the Black Belt),

I am an American citizen, a Christian and a property owner. No man can make of me a traitor or a coward. No power on earth can change my faith in God. I will defend my home and personal liberty to the extent of my life….I have just as much right to enjoy my home at Washington Park as any one else to go there and play tennis or baseball or enjoy other advantages of the district. It is a personal privilege. I went there to live because I liked the house and I had a chance to buy it....I do not want to get away from anybody, but absolutely refuse to live in a neighborhood inhabited by the lower class of white trash.

Despite his dislike of politics, Binga consistently went on the record in favor of greater state regulation of private, unincorporated banks like his own. At first blush, it may seem unusual for a businessman to favor greater regulation of his own industry, since the costs of complying with regulations can be high. However, regulatory costs are largely fixed costs – that is, independent of the size of the business – which means only the largest and best-capitalized firms will be able to remain in business. In banking, for instance, most regulations require higher levels of capitalization and more layers of accounting. By 1920, the chief threat to the Binga Bank’s profitability wasn’t greater regulation; it was competing black bankers. State regulation was a way to cripple the competition, and in that year, Binga, along with other major Chicago bankers, succeeded in eliminating private banks. After 1920, all banks had to have state or federal charters, and no less than $100,000 in capital. The Binga Bank – renamed Binga State Bank – was the only Black Belt bank able to meet such requirements.

Binga also associated his bank with the Chicago Clearing House, an association of local banks that could – but were not obligated to – supply cash on demand to a member bank if that bank suffered a run on its deposits. In those days before federal deposit insurance (FDIC), although banks were generally more conservative as investors, they were at greater risk of devastating bank runs (see the more extensive discussion of banking before FDIC in this post), so Clearing House membership added a degree of assurance to depositors. And because a potential run could become quite expensive, only the city’s top banks were allowed to become Clearing House members.

In 1926, Binga purchased property at the center of the Black Belt, on the northwest corner of 35th and State, on which he built a new $120,000 structure to house the Binga State Bank. It was the most expensive single building in the district. Constructed of marble and bronze, the exterior reflected a rich Ionic architecture, and the interior featured walnut paneling and a massive steel vault. 50 bank employees, all African Americans, were skimmed from the top of the community’s talent pool, and featured college degrees from the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, and Oberlin College, among other institutions. Behind a massive glass and marble desk overlooking them all was Jesse Binga, the high-school drop-out and former barber and Pullman porter.

(Pictured: The Binga State Bank building at 35th and State streets)

In 1927, Binga purchased more property at 35th and State, and built an even grander structure, the Binga Arcade, a $500,000 5-story modern office building, which would house all of the Binga empire, as well as offices for other black-owned businesses. There was no building anything like it south of Van Buren St. in the Loop.

During this period, income among African Americans in Chicago was growing substantially, and Jesse Binga was a leading symbol of the community’s hopes. His success made him a celebrity. He wrote weekly columns on business and real estate for the Defender, and published a book entitled “Certain Saying of Jesse Binga,” which included such pearls of wisdom as

Nothing is so easy or so wasteful as the work of hating -- except hating work.

You can be a menial or a man of business. But to get out of the menial place requires the thrift that produces property. And property enlarges life. Work, then, not for gain alone but for the enlarged life that honest gains create.

Life is pretty much what you make it -- and making it big means using every day of it.

In 1929, at the height of his success, 64-year old Jesse Binga began soliciting funds for a second bank, this one with a federal, instead of a state, charter. It was to be his crowning achievement, his lasting legacy to Chicago before retirement. Binga purchased property on South Parkway Blvd., near 46th Pl., for the new bank building, and sold shares in the business to investors. He had little trouble finding eager subscribers to the new bank. What could go wrong, after all? There was no better bet in Chicago than Jesse Binga.

Unfortunately, no one, least of all Binga himself, foresaw the end of the prosperity of the 1920s. In late October, 1929, the great stock market crash eliminated millions of dollars of industrial value. At around the same time, Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff act, which limited imports and exports, destroying well-established businesses and isolating the U.S. from the world economy. Failing businesses had difficulty servicing their loans, and so undercapitalized banks began to fail throughout the country. At the same time, many depositors, fearing the insolvency of banks and needing additional cash to cover income lost in the broadening downturn, removed money from banks. Banks were caught in a vice.

In 1928, 18 Illinois banks had their operations suspended by the state; 1929 saw that number rise to 30, but these were not especially high numbers relative to the previous years of the 1920s. The middle of 1930, however, saw Chicago’s banking industry begin to crater, and the Binga State Bank was the “canary in the coal mine.” By July, the bank was facing serious shortages of capital and had suspended lending. Binga lent much of his own personal fortune in an attempt to keep the bank afloat, but to no avail. On July 31, 1930, Illinois bank auditors closed the Binga State Bank, alleging insolvency and accounting improprieties. As the shock of the event rippled through the city, thousands of worried depositors congregated at 35th and State, and two policemen had to maintain 24-hour watch to protect the building. A pall hung over the crowd, many of whose members had entrusted their life’s savings in the bank. Worse still was the crushed pride of seeing the African-American community’s leading citizen forced out of his commanding business position.

(Pictured: depositors milling around outside Binga State Bank on July 31, 1930)

Behind the scenes, auditors were also preparing a criminal case against Jesse Binga. In their audit of Binga State Bank, the funds that had been subscribed for the new national bank, announced in 1929, were found missing. Authorities gave the bank’s board of directors a few days to raise $400,000 needed to make the bank solvent, and the directors were amenable to the request – but only if the tarnished president, Jesse Binga, stepped down. Binga refused to do so, clinging to the bank he had built up from a single $10 bill, the bank he had poured his entire life savings into in an attempt to forestall its failure.

Next, the Chicago Clearing House, of which Binga State Bank was a member, met to decide whether to supply it with sufficient funds to re-open. Likely other banks in the association were suffering under similar distress, and so the Clearing House members were not keen on taking the risk to prop up Binga State Bank, especially if the rumors of embezzlement by Binga were true. Perhaps, too, racism played a role. Later, one member would describe a conclave of Clearing House members in which the meeting chairman said that Binga State Bank was “a little n----- bank that does not mean anything.” It was the first closure of a Clearing House member bank in twenty years.

In any case, by October, 1930, Binga State Bank had failed, and thousands of depositors’ savings were completely gone. December saw Binga forced into personal bankruptcy and hounded by creditors. Even his wife, Eudora, turned against him, filing suit in court, charging him with incompetency in managing the family’s financial affairs and asking that the court appoint a conservator to handle what little money was left.

The failure of the Binga Bank kicked off a massive string of bank failures in Chicago. From 30 Illinois bank suspensions in 1929, 1930 saw an uptick to 125. Another 238 banks suspended operations in 1931, then 209 more in 1932 and an additional 245 in 1933. The number of banks in the state fell by more than half in four years. If the state regulations of 1920 that shut down the private banking business were intended to protect depositors, they failed miserably. If Chicago Clearing House members thought allowing Binga State Bank to fail would not lead to further runs on banks in the city, they were completely wrong.

In April, 1931, a court handed down an indictment against Jesse Binga for embezzling $39,000 in pledges for the proposed national bank on South Park and 46th, which had never opened. Over 80 witnesses testified at trial against Binga, but Binga’s attorneys argued that a state law precluded capital funds for a national bank from being held in a state bank – thus explaining why Binga had held these funds in his own personal account, but not explaining where the funds had gone. The jury was hung, and the judge decreed a mistrial.

The state’s attorney immediately began preparing a second trial, which, after a long series of continuances, began in May, 1933. Two months before, in March, Eudora Binga died, likely from stress due to the stress of financial dissolution and personal antagonism with her husband.

At the second trial, the state added to its list of witness the #2 officer at the Binga State Bank, Mrs. Inez Cantey. When asked about the events precipitating the closure of the bank and the misappropriation of funds, she repeatedly admitted wrongdoing – “with the permission of Mr. Binga”.

With his chief lieutenant turned against him, Jesse Binga likely knew he was headed for a conviction. He took the stand in his defense, breaking down in tears as he exclaimed,

They're persecuting me. They have killed my wife and now they're trying to kill me. I've lost all I owned; now they're persecuting me. Stop this thing or I'll go mad!"

A few days later, the jury returned a verdict of guilty on all counts. In November, 1933, Binga was sentenced to serve 1 – 10 years in state prison. He managed to remain free while awaiting an appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court, but when that court denied the appeal, a 70-year old Jesse Binga entered Joliet prison in April, 1935. He was immediately transferred to the hospital ward for treatment of a heart condition, and most observers fully expected him to die in prison.

11 months later, at his first parole hearing, Chicago’s – and the nation’s – most famous attorney, Clarence Darrow, appeared on behalf of Jesse Binga. "I have known Binga for thirty years and he is a man of fine character. He lost a fortune trying to keep his bank open."

The appeal was denied, but his next parole hearing in February, 1938 was a success. At that hearing, prison officers were presented with a list of 10,000 signatures from Chicago residents, requesting the release of Binga. Many of the signatories were among those who lost money in the failed Binga State Bank.

After being released from prison, Binga moved back into his home on South Parkway Blvd. Completely broke and in poor health, he nevertheless managed to keep creditors from taking his home by working as a janitor at his church, St. Anselm’s on S. Michigan Ave., near 60th St.

In April, 1941, Jesse Binga received some belated relief in the form of a pardon from Illinois Governor Dwight Green. But it was too little to salvage much of his tarnished reputation. Soon after, Binga finally sold his home and moved in with a nephew, Albert Roberts (the Bingas had no children). Jesse Binga died in 1950.

The Binga State Bank, formerly the emerald of the Black Belt, remained closed until 1943, when it was reopened as the Phoenix National Bank under new ownership. Together with the Binga Arcade, the bank building was demolished in the 1970s, replaced by an Illinois Institute of Technology building.

Binga’s home on South Parkway Blvd., however, still stands (though apparently renovated extensively), though the street was renamed Martin Luther King Dr. in the late 1960s. In fact, it is even for sale. The formerly all-white neighborhood where Jesse Binga courageously stood against dynamite attacks in 1919-1921 is now almost entirely populated by black residents.

[Update: See the interesting additional information below in the comments from a Binga nephew]

Angelo Genna's Violent Life and Death

Angelo Genna was the toughest, meanest, and most violent of the Genna brothers. Hot-headed superstitious, and quick with a trigger, the Chicago police were so afraid of him, they refused to serve warrants for his arrest. But Angelo Genna got his on May 27, 1925, when he was driving south on Ogden Ave., at the intersection of Hudson Ave. and Menomenee St.

Angelo, who was born in Sicily, came to Chicago with six of his brothers about 1910. The family became involved in running "Black Hand" style extortion plots, in which prominent businessmen, especially Italians, were forced to pay ransom or be killed, and Angelo was the muscle that made certain the payments came in. His ability to make others do his bidding through force made him especially fit for politics, and Angelo and the other Gennas became street-level recruiters for Tony D'Andrea in his ongoing political battle with long-time incumbent 19th ward alderman John "Johnny De Pow" Powers. As discussed in greater detail in this post, the 19th was primarily an Irish neighborhood in the 1880s when Powers was elected, but by the 1910s, was occupied primarily by Italians (especially Sicilians).

While Powers was largely successful in maintaining his hold on power, Tony D'Andrea sought to use the demographic shift in the ward to build a winning coalition of Italian voters. In 1921, he very nearly defeated Powers, but lost by the slimmest of margins. The election was a bloody one, with bombs exploded at Powers' home and at a mass meeting of D'Andrea supporters. The Gennas, who supported D'Andrea, were upset by his loss. They blamed Powers for the election violence, but more so, they hated their fellow Italian countrymen who had voted for him.

A few weeks after the election, on May 6, 1921, one of Ald. Powers' precinct captains and a long-time municipal court bailiff, Paul Labriola, who was Sicilian, left his home on W. Congress St., and walked west towards Halsted St. Labriola had been receiving disturbing telephone and mail threats ever since the election, but considered it all part of electoral politics in Chicago. He had dined with the victorious Ald. Powers just a few days before, and looked forward to enjoying further political spoils.

Before Labriola had walked more than fifty feet from his home, he was greeted by two men coming around the corner. Labriola recognized the men and words were exchanged. Suddenly, three more men came up from behind Labriola, and pistol shots rang out as all five began firing heavy-caliber lead at him. As Labriola fell to the ground, one of the men stood above him and fired three more gratuitous bullets into the bailiff's body, then the assailants dropped their weapons and fled down an alley.

Initially, the police believed Sam "Samoots" Amatuna and Frank Gambina, two prominent D'Andrea supporters, were among the shooters. They could find no solid evidence against the two, however. But then they found an eyewitness who fingered Angelo Genna, the wild gunman of Taylor Street.

The police arrested Angelo, and brought him to trial in October of 1921. The prosecution brought their eyewitness, Peter Eliopulas, to the stand:

"He killed him; Genna killed him!," Eliopulas exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "I was standing near the corner of Halsted and Congress streets when I heard a shot. Running to Congress street, I saw Labriola lying on the ground. A man, Genna, was standing over him. He shot him three times as he lay on the ground."

Eliopulas, who was neither Sicilian nor involved in 19th ward politics, seemed a believable witness, and whispers went around that Genna would be spending the 1920s behind bars. Until, that is, a teenager named Nick Ginopvolous, took the stand for the defense. Ginopvulos explained to a patient jury that Alderman Powers had offered a $2,500 reward for information leading to the capture and conviction of Labriola's killer. Eliopulas had approached Ginopvulos, he claimed, and offered him a share of the reward if he could provide a second eyewitness account of Genna's presence at the murder scene.

The court was in an uproar. Was Eliopulas just an opportunist, or were the Gennas behind Ginopvulos' testimony? The prosecution tried to staunch the hemmorage in their case by bringing other witnesses to the stand who could testify that Angelo had been in the neighborhood that day, but the damage was done. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, and Angelo walked out of court a free man.

(Pictured: Angelo Genna, who stood 5'6" and 195 lbs.)

The death of Labriola, however, set off a blood vendetta between warring Italian political factions in the 19th, which eventually claimed 30 lives over the following three years. One of the earlier victims of this war of attrition was a close friend of the Genna family, Nicola Maggio. Again, Angelo Genna was very upset.

On March, 16, 1922, Paul Notte, a stockyards saloon-keeper who was believed to be close to Maggio's killer, left his home and began walking the half-block to his workplace. In front of his new bride, who was expecting, his wife, and his sister-in-law, Notte was approached by a short, stout man, and a few words were exchanged. Then the stranger drew his revolver and fired five shots and Notte, dropping him to the street before running off.

Notte was rushed to the hospital, where Chicago detective Edward Murphy questioned him.

"You know who shot me," croaked the dying Notte.

"No, I don't, Paul. Who was it?"

"The youngest one of those three brothers who run a poolroom in Taylor street."

"Genna?"

"I don't know the name."

Lieut. Murphy rushed to Angelo Genna's home on Blue Island Ave., and not finding him there, went to the Genna headquarters on Taylor street, where he found his suspect. Murphy arrested Angelo and brought him to Notte's bedside, where, in front of his family, doctors, and police, Notte identified Angelo Genna as his attacker. A few hours later, Notte was dead.

Angelo's brothers, Anthony and James, were also arrested, but only Notte's death-bed testimony was considered strong enough to prosecute, so again, Angelo Genna alone stood for trial on murder charges. This time, Genna's attorney cross-examined the attending physicians at the hospital where Notte had died. Were any drugs given to the patient before he died? Yes, of course. Could any of those drugs have clouded his judgment, or made it difficult for him to remember the facts of his case? I suppose, under the right circumstances.

With the dead man's testimony in question, prosecutors decided to nolle prosse the case. Again, Angelo Genna was a free man. After two murder indictments and no convictions, Angelo's legend grew in the Sicilian community. "Angelo the Immune" replaced "Bloody Angelo" as his street nickname. But Angelo's luck, in court and in life, would run out soon enough.

In August of 1922, two Genna family friends, Henry Penna and Philip Maltese stood accused in the sexual attack of a 15-year old girl, Genevieve Court. When it became clear that Court would testify against the two, they kidnapped her and took her to Milwaukee, where they raped her ("mistreated her," in the language of the newspapers of the day) and left her alone in a boarding house with no way to get home. Eventually, a search party conducted by Court's parents located her, and she returned to Chicago.

Again, she was more than willing to testify against her attackers in open court. In criminal court, she fingered Maltese and Penna as her attackers, and each was sentenced to one year in the state penitentiary, plus a $1,000 fine, a relatively minor punishment for a horrific crime. Maltese and Penna considered themselves lucky.

But then, the two were unexpectedly dragged into federal court to be charged with violations of the Mann Act, the 1910 "white slavery" law inspired by the Chicago case of Mona Marshall, which enforced heavy sentences on those convicted of transporting women across state lines for sexual purposes. If convicted, Maltese and Penna would face serious hard time in federal penitentiary.

Again, young Genevieve Court was willing to testify in court. Having done so already, Maltese and Penna realized she would certainly do so again. Two days before her date in court, Maltese, who was out on bail while awaiting the federal trial, and his close family friend, Angelo Genna, paid a visit to Miss Court, threatening her and her family with death if she should testify in the Mann Act case.

On the day of her hearing, Genevieve Court showed up before U.S. Commissioner Lews F. Mason, and walked to the stand. She opened her mouth, but then she looked out over the audience. In the first row, staring directly at her, was Angelo Genna. One look into his dark, terrifying eyes, and a wave of visible fear ripped through Miss Court. She began to sob. It was all a lie, she said: There was no attack, no rape, no kidnapping; Penna and Maltese were completely innocent.

A dumbstruck prosecutor quickly wised up to what had happened. After the hearing, he grilled Genevieve. Had anyone threatened her if she testified against her attackers in this case? With the redoubtable Genna out of sight, Genevieve's courage slowly returned. She admitted that Genna and Maltese had intimidated her.

When the prosecutor brought this fact to the attention of the judge in this case, he signed a federal arrest warrant for Angelo Genna's capture. First, he tasked the Chicago police with serving the warrant, but they knew how dangerous Angelo was, and they "didn't want to take any foolhardy chances" with a police invasion and manhunt in the 19th. With local police officers unable to serve the warrant, a team of U.S. deputy marshals was tasked with instructions to "go into the Nineteenth ward and bring him in."

Within a few days, they did, and in November of 1922, Angelo Genna suffered his first conviction in court, for intimidating a witness (the Mann Act case against Penna and Maltese was not prosecuted further, however). With the "Terror of the 19th Ward" soon to be behind bars, Chicago police chief Fitzmorris held a celebratory dinner, with the marshals who had served Genna's warrant as the guests of honor.

Angelo Genna, free on bail before sentencing, began an attempt to flee the country and return to Italy to avoid prison, but when word of his plans leaked, each witness in the trial was given a personal bodyguard until the sentencing hearing, and the federal judge in the case issued a writ of attachment for "Angelo Genna or his body." Again, a squad of fearless U.S. marshals, armed to the teeth, invaded the 19th ward and captured Genna. A few days later, "Angelo the Immune" was sentenced to one year plus one day at Leavenworth prison.

Prison appears to have slightly cooled the temper of the young Genna, and when he emerged from the penitentiary, he returned to Chicago in a mood to make money and mostly avoid trouble. Helping his brothers operate the massive dispersed Sicilian distilling network throughout Little Italy, which supplied the Torrio-Capone syndicate with a major share of the booze they retailed, Angelo Genna was able to move out of the poverty-stricken 19th ward and up to a cozy $400/month hotel condo overlooking the Lake at Belmont Ave.

In January, 1924, the young vice entrepreneur married into one of the city's wealthiest and most prominent Italian families when he wed Lucille Spignola, sister to Henry Spignola, a top attorney of the time, who was a long-time Genna family friend. The wedding was one of the largest in Chicago history, with 3,000 guests, and offered the biggest cake anyone could remember, tipping the scales at just over 1 ton.

(Pictured: Lucille Spignola, Mrs. Angelo Genna)

In May, 1925, Angelo Genna and his wife were making plans to move to ritzy new home in suburban Oak Park. Genna left his Belmont harbor home, drove south on Sheridan Rd. in his roadster coupe, and turned southwest on Ogden Ave., which at that time extended all the way to Lincoln Park.

As he approached Hudson Ave., a large black touring car carrying four "characteristically 'unknown' assailants," as the Tribune described them, sped up next to Genna's car. The passengers fired a dozen shotgun bullets into Angelo Genna's car, causing him to lose control and crash into a lamppost. As his attackers gunned the engine and escaped, Angelo began to lose consciousness.

Rushed to the hospital, the life was draining out of Angelo's eyes. Police Sgt. Roy Hessler came to his deathbed.

"You're going to die, Angelo. Tell us who bumped you off," he pleaded noirishly.

But Angelo just shrugged his shoulders, and closed his eyes. In his last moments, he continued to adhere to the gangsters' code of silence, the same one that had shielded him from prison throughout his life. The Tribune noted,

...the folks who seem to be in the know about Taylor and Halsted streets, reiterate, quite simply, the formula that has worked in so many of the recent murders since the days of bootlegging.

"You'll know who murdered Angelo when the next big guy in the neighborhood is murdered."

But the next "big guys" murdered were all of Angelo's family members. Brother Mike was killed in a shootout with police just three weeks later. A month after that, brother Tony was gunned down on a West side street corner. Brother-in-law Henry Spignoli was killed the following year, and the Genna reign of terror was over as the remaining brothers wisely fled back to Sicily.

Who was killing the Gennas? The most likely theory is that Angelo Genna's death was one of vengeance for the death of Dion O'Banion in November, 1924. Angelo was considered one of the prime suspects in that case, in which the Northside mobster and bootlegger O'Banion, who had famously feuded with the Gennas, was gunned down inside his N. State Street flower shop and headquarters. In this theory, the shooters in the touring car were O'Banion's followers, most likely including Vincent "Schemer" Drucci, Frank Gusenberg, George "Bugs" Moran, and Earl "Hymie" Weiss.

A more speculative theory, but one that has a certain ring of believability to it, was that Johnny Torrio and Al Capone, putatively partners in crime with the Gennas, were afraid of their growing power, and wanted their own man, Tony Lombardo, to hold political control over the city's Sicilian population and their basement stills. Consistent with this theory, Lombardo appears to have taken over the presidency of the main Sicilian political organization, the Unione Siciliana, in 1925 after the death of its previous president, Angelo Genna. Also, the car used in the attack turned out to have been stolen from a resident at 5742 W. 22nd Street in Cicero, just a few blocks from Ralph Capone's Cotton Club, in the town where Al Capone was practically mayor.

Nevertheless, Angelo Genna's funeral, like his wedding, was one of the grandest in Chicago history. Refused a church burial by Roman Catholic Cardinal Mundelein, he was buried at Mt. Carmel cemetary in Hillside in a vault said to cost $10,000, encased in a $6,000 casket which weighed 1,200 lbs and nearly broke through the back porch of the funeral parlor. The flowers for the funeral were believed to have cost upwards of $75,000, including a grand 8-foot tall piece, heavy on lilies, sent by Al Capone, and a huge vase full of pink and white carnations, courtesy of Johnny Torrio, who was incarcerated in Lake County at the time (this proves little regarding the two's potential culpability, since it was common for gangsters to send flowers to the funerals of both their friends and their enemies). At the funeral, which was attended by thosands, a quartet of police officers from the Gennas' local Maxwell Street station frisked everyone for weapons before they could near the gravesite.

(Pictured: Angelo Genna's 1,200 lb. casket at his funeral)

The Tribune, for its part, used the opportunity of Angelo Genna's death to opine on the inferior traditions and weak-mindedness of southern Europeans, in relation to northern Europeans and "native" Americans (probably not a reference to Navajos).

The funeral of Angelo Genna provides an interesting commentary on our city. This crude yet costly glorification of a man of blood is a straight transplantation from Sicily or Sardinia, where to a simple folk the bandit leader is the prince of heroes. The American of native or northern European tradition must observe such a pageant with a new realization of the gulf which lies betwen his mind and moral system and those of Genna's colony.

That is, in fact, what the gathering at Genna's obsequies represents, not America but a foreign colony imported virtually intact and representing a stage of old world history centuries gone save among the mountain peoples of southern and eastern Europe. Considered as a graphic illustration in the argument for our new immigration policy, the Genna funeral is admirable.

For some reason, the Trib editors seemed to have forgotten the equally-if-not-more-ostentatious funeral thrown for mobster Dion O'Banion, an Irishman, just a few months before Angelo Genna's.

Ogden Ave., where Angelo Genna was driving when he was killed, has been completely vacated on the north side. At the corner of Hudson and Menomenee, where Ogden would have cut through, the diagonal sidewalk through the park (pictured below), harkens back to the road that was once there. For more on the history of Ogden Ave., see here.

At the corner where the most violent of the "Terrible" Gennas was shot, today stands a beautiful and peaceful Buddhist temple.