American Pharaoh (87 page)

The Chicago 8 trial began in U.S. District Court in Chicago in September 1969. If Daley and Foran were hoping the proceedings
would settle the score with the anti-war demonstrators, they were about to be bitterly disappointed. The trial quickly devolved
into an absurdist piece of political theater. Chief defense counsel William Kunstler, who shared the Yippies’ iconoclastic
sensibility, moved for a mistrial because of the way in which the judge read the charges to the jury on the first day. “Your
Honor sounded like Orson Welles reciting the Declaration of Independence,” Kunstler protested. At various points in the trial,
the defendants placed a Vietcong flag over the defense table, read comic books, and showed up in court dressed in judicial
robes. When prosecutor Richard Schultz mentioned Abbie Hoffman in his opening statement, Hoffman blew the jurors a kiss.

To the defendants, the proceedings were a chance to put the system on trial. They were helped considerably by the presence
of Judge Julius Hoffman, the crusty seventy-four-year-old Eisenhower appointee who was presiding. Hoffman did not even try
to appear impartial in considering the arguments of Foran (whom he called “one of the finest prosecutors in the country”)
and Kunstler (the defendants’ “mouthpiece,” Hoffman called him). When the American Civil Liberties Union tried to file a friend-of-the-court
brief, a common occurrence in federal court, Hoffman snapped, “I’m not running a school for civil rights.” The trial reached
its nadir when the irascible Hoffman ordered the outspoken Seale to sit in the courtroom gagged and handcuffed to a metal
folding chair. The next day, demonstrators descended on the courthouse with “Free Bobby” signs. Seale was later unbound, but
he continued to act out, at one point calling Hoffman “a pig and a fascist and a racist.” Hoffman eventually sentenced Seale
to four years in jail for contempt of court, turning the Chicago 8 into the Chicago 7.

Outside the courtroom, hundreds of members of the radical Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society had descended
on Chicago to hold a “days of rage” protest in sympathy with the Chicago 8 defendants. Organized into what they called the
New Red Army, Weathermen wearing motorcycle helmets and armed with clubs attacked automobiles, beating up passengers seemingly
at random. They hurled rocks through the windows of stores, banks, and government buildings. (“The first rock of the revolution
went through a window of the Chicago Historical Society,” the
New York Times
observed wryly.) The radicals focused much of their wrath on the Gold Coast along the lakefront, walking down elegant streets
shouting “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh,” smashing the lobby windows of luxury apartment buildings, and in one case throwing a doorman
into a hedge. Chicago police faced off against the Weathermen, wielding clubs and tear gas. The clashes were reminiscent of
the convention week violence that was being recounted in federal court, but with a difference: few people believed that the
police were overre-acting in their response to the New Red Army. Over several days, more than 150 demonstrators were arrested,
and three were shot by police. Daley eventually asked Governor Richard Ogilvie to send in the National guard, and 2,600 guardsmen
were deployed to keep the peace.
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In between the outbursts, the prosecutors tried to make their case against the defendants. Several Chicago police officers
testified that they observed the defendants during convention week, including one who claimed to have seen Rubin flip a lit
cigarette at a policeman, and another who reported hearing Abbie Hoffman tell a group of demonstrators, “Tomorrow we’re going
to storm the Hilton.” But the defendants put on their own evidence that it was the Chicago police who had caused the violence.
Rennie Davis testified that he was struck 30 or 40 times near the Grant Park band shell by police yelling “Kill Davis, Kill
Davis.” After the beating, he said, “my tie was solid blood.” He needed thirteen stitches to close his scalp wounds.
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The most eagerly awaited moment of the trial came on January 6, 1970, a blustery below-freezing day, when Daley himself showed
up to testify. Many spectators had waited in line all night, camping out in sleeping bags, for a chance to see the defense
lawyers try to tear the mayor apart. “You could feel the excitement in the courtroom the way you sense and see bubbles before
water boils,” a journalist on the scene observed. Daley looked to be in good spirits when he arrived with his entourage, eager
to answer any questions the defense had for him. In his questioning, Kunstler tried to show that it was Daley who was the
center of a conspiracy surrounding the convention week clashes. Wasn’t William McFetridge, the superintendent of the Park
District who denied the permits, the same man who nominated him for mayor in 1954? Hoffman sustained the prosecution’s objection.
Wasn’t Judge Lynch, who denied permits to the protesters, Daley’s former law partner? Another objection was sustained. And
what, Kunstler asked, was Daley’s relationship to Foran, the U.S. attorney who had started out as land acquisition counsel
for urban renewal projects in the Chicago Corporation Counsel’s office? “I think he’s one of the greatest attorneys in the
United States,” Daley responded. Hoffman shielded Daley from most of the defense’s line of inquiry, sustaining all seventy
of the prosecution’s objections. But Daley helped himself by remaining uncharacteristically cool throughout it all, even when
Kunstler asked him, “Did you say to Senator Abraham Ribicoff, ‘Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch?’” In the end, Daley had little
of substance to add to the case. The defense wanted badly to show that he and his “corrupt” political machine had conspired
to crush the demonstrations, but Daley insisted under oath that he had never told anyone to deny permits to the protesters.
“I gave Mr. Stahl the same instructions I gave any other department, certainly, to meet with them, to try to cooperate with
them, and do everything they could to make sure that they would be given every courtesy and hospitality.” Daley also insisted
that he had not spoken with Judge Lynch about the permit litigation pending before him. To many observers, Daley’s testimony
was not credible, but by keeping his cool and sticking to his story, he came off well. At one point, Abbie Hoffman went up
to Daley and, gesturing to invisible shotguns on his waist, said, “Why don’t we just settle it right here? To hell with this
law stuff.” Daley simply laughed.
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When the trial finally ended, after four and one half months, the jury reached a compromise verdict. It found the defendants
not guilty of conspiracy, but five of them — Dellinger, Hoffman, Rubin, Davis, and Hayden — guilty of crossing state lines
with the intention of violating the statute. Each was given a five-year jail sentence and a $5,000 fine. Asked if he saw the
verdict as a vindication of his actions during the Democratic National Convention, Daley responded tersely: “I look no place
for vindication.” It was just as well, because in the end the trial gave him none. The Chicago 7’s convictions were all later
reversed on appeal, in a decision that took Judge Hoffman to task for his “antagonistic” attitude toward the defense. After
the trial was over, Hoffman cited the defendants for contempt during the trial and imposed hundreds of years of prison sentences
on them for the alleged contempt. These rulings were also set aside on appeal, in another decision sharply critical of Hoffman.
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In the spring of 1969, trouble was quietly brewing between blacks and the police on the West Side. City Hall’s attitude toward
the black neighborhoods changed after the April 1968 riots: Daley and his staff were now always wondering when the next blowup
would come. Much of their concern centered on the Black Panthers, who had founded an Illinois branch two months after King’s
assassination. At the center of the Chicago Black Panther movement was Fred Hampton. Hampton had become a local hero in 1967
when he led a protest in Maywood, a small suburb west of Chicago, against “whites only” swimming pools. Hampton had been president
of the Youth Council of the Maywood NAACP until he joined Bobby Rush and several others in founding the local Black Panther
group. Black leadership in Chicago, which had shifted from the accommodationist Dawson to the confrontational but peaceful
Raby, entered a new phase with Hampton. He ran afoul of the law shortly after the founding of the Panther chapter for being
part of a group of black youths who beat and robbed a Good Humor Ice Cream man, stealing his ice cream and distributing it
in the ghetto “Robin Hood” style. Hampton, who claimed he was nowhere near the playground in question, told reporters: “I
may be a pretty big mother, but I can’t eat no seven hundred and ten ice cream bars.” Though Hampton was convicted, he and
his supporters claimed it was a political frame-up.
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The two black groups City Hall feared the most — the Black Panthers and the Blackstone Rangers street gang — were themselves
bitter rivals. The Daley administration and the FBI watched their antagonism play out, hoping they would destroy each other
in a power struggle. Their enmity reached its high water mark when a Panther was shot by a Ranger on the South Side. Afterward,
Blackstone Rangers leader Jeff Fort met with Hampton, Rush, and other Panthers to talk about merging the two groups. The negotiations
foundered, but an informal truce was arranged. As they had in other parts of the country, Chicago’s Black Panthers had begun
to gain some credibility in the mainstream black community by establishing a health clinic and free breakfast program. As
the free-meal program expanded throughout the city, feeding hundreds of poor children, mainly through churches, the Chicago
police and the FBI grew more intent on quashing them.

At 4:45
A.M.
on the morning of December 4, 1969, the Chicago police led a pre-dawn raid on a first-floor apartment at 2337 West Monroe
Street in the West Side ghetto, the home of Black Panther Fred Hampton. The raiding party, fourteen heavily armed officers
under the direction of state’s attorney Edward Hanrahan’s office, had ostensibly come to serve a search warrant for a cache
of illegal weapons. But they arrived in the early hours of morning, when all the lights in the apartment were off, and within
moments gunfire broke out. After eight solid minutes of shooting, two of the nine people in the apartment were killed — Hampton
and fellow Panther Mark Clark — and another four had gunshot wounds. Two policemen were also injured, neither seriously. According
to the police, they arrived at the apartment, announced their intention to search the premises, and were met with gunshots.
“There must have been six or seven of them shooting,” one policeman said. “Our men had no choice but to return the fire.”
That afternoon, Hanrahan held a news conference at which he displayed eighteen shotguns, rifles, and pistols, and a thousand
rounds of ammunition that he said were confiscated from the apartment during the raid. He commended the officers for their
restraint and bravery under the circumstances.
²⁸

The Panthers immediately challenged Hanrahan’s account, and pronounced the raid a “planned murder.” The occupants of the apartment
who survived the attack insisted that no shots had come from inside, and that the police had fired without provocation. The
police blundered by failing to seal the apartment for the next thirteen days. This open access allowed Black Panther deputy
defense minister Bobby Rush to conduct a tour for reporters in which he pointed to evidence that he said confirmed the Panthers’
version of events. “A look at the holes in the walls would show anyone that all the shots were made by persons who entered
the apartment and then went from room to room firing in an attempt to kill everyone there,” he said.
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The Panthers were not alone in questioning the police account of the raid. While Hampton was eulogized before a crowd of more
than five thousand, the Illinois Civil Liberties Union, the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League, and three independent alderman
demanded an investigation. And columnist Mike Royko openly mocked Hanrahan’s assertion that the police had “miraculously”
avoided injury in the melee. “Indeed, it does appear that miracles occurred,” Royko wrote. “The Panthers’ bullets must have
dissolved in the air before they hit anybody or anything. Either that or the Panthers were shooting in the wrong direction
— namely, at themselves.” Hanrahan continued to insist that the police had done nothing wrong, and his office produced a twenty-eight-minute
reenactment of his version of the raid — in the tradition of Daley’s
What Trees Do They Plant?
— that ran on local television. But it was Hanrahan’s misfortune that the Nixon administration was now in charge of the U.S.
Justice Department, and it was eager to investigate big-city Democratic machines. On January 5, 1970, the Republican U.S.
attorney impaneled a grand jury to consider the Black Panther deaths. Rather than allow the Republicans to conduct the only
inquiry, Daley had Cook County Circuit Court judge Joseph Power, his onetime law partner, appoint Barnabas Sears, a former
president of the Chicago Bar Association, as a special prosecutor to conduct an independent investigation.
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