Jeffrey Haas

Fred Hampton was a rising star among black activists in the late 1960s. He was handsome, charismatic and level-headed when tempers frayed, and he was intelligent enough to know how to put those gifts to work for his community. Despite his calm demeanor and gift for forging peace between Chicago's warring gangs, the police felt he was a threat. A squad of officers stormed Hampton's apartment late one night with guns blazing — claiming the residents opened fire on them as soon as they announced they were police. And yet later investigations determined that while the police fired 99 shots, only one bullet was fired by a building resident, and that was by an associate of Hampton's who'd been shot dead and reflexively squeezed the trigger. Jeffrey Haas was an attorney with the People's Law Office at the time. At the request of Hampton's fiancée, Haas and his partner spent years working to find proof that the police had killed a young black man in cold blood. Haas' book The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther recounts the decade-long struggle to unearth the truth from years of official cover-ups and evasions. He reads from and signs copies at 7 p.m. tonight at Left Bank Books (399 North Euclid Avenue; www.left-bank.com). Admission is free, and only books purchased from Left Bank will be signed.