Binham B’rassa (Balanta People) in America. Balanta Black Panther Stephen Hobbs and his nephew Joshua Roberts.
Amilcar Cabral and Balanta soldiers in the PAIGC, Guinea Bissau
Binham B’rassa (Balanta people) played a significant role in the global Black liberation struggle in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. While Balanta people formed The African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) and initiated an eleven-year armed struggle against the Portuguese, in the United States, Balanta people were also in the forefront of the liberation struggle in America.
Balanta woman Ella Baker was a chief strategist of the civil rights and human rights movement, helping Martin Luther King organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957 and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. Another Balanta family, the Blake family, was prominent in organizing the liberation movement in the 1960’s before and after the 1967 insurrection in Newark, NJ while also being prepared to confront inequality through a form of activism pioneered at Fisk University, in Nashville, TN.
One wing of the movement was composed of students in and out of SNCC who were more oriented to the ideas of Malcolm X and the self-defense philosophy of Robert Williams. Its center was the Afro-American Student Movement (ASM) at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. These students wanted to introduce into the southern Civil Rights movement an explicit self-defense component coupled with a politics of Black empowerment based on nationalist values. At the urging of leaders of the National Liberation Front (the immediate precursor of RAM) student nationalists convened the first Afro-American Student Conference on Black Nationalism at Fisk University from May 1 to 4, 1964. The conference stated that Black radicals were the vanguard of revolution in this country, supported Malcolm X’s efforts to take the case of Afro-Americans to the United Nations, called for a Black cultural revolution, and discussed Pan-Africanism. The conferences 13 Points for Implementation included several points that reflected the Basic Aims and Objectives of the OAAU. The other wing of the movement composed students like Balanta student Jeremiah Blake, who was prepared to go directly into and confront racism in the white American society.
Still other Balantas like Stephen Hobbs, became instrumental in the Black Panther Party. Adam Sanchez and Jesse Hagopian note that,
“The Panthers didn’t develop out of thin air but evolved from their relationships with other civil rights organizations, especially the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The name and symbol of the Panthers were adopted from the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), an independent political organization SNCC helped organize in Alabama, which was also called the “Black Panther Party.” Furthermore, SNCC allied with the Panthers in 1968 and although the alliance lasted only five months, it was a crucial time for the growth of the Panthers.”
According to Hobbs family genealogist Joshua Roberts:
“Born to SL. Hobbs and Bertha Hobbs, my Uncle Stephen was S.L’s first born son and the second child of Bertha. My uncle and his older brother Donald were born and raised on the west side of Chicago. He had four other siblings, his baby sister (my grandmother) being the closest. My uncle was said to be very grumpy but had a warm heart. A powerful man who never sugar-coated any information. Super smart and a master chess player, this is the story of the Balanta descendant and Black Panther Steven Hobbs.
My uncle was special and had the spirit of a thousand generations within him. A very boisterous, commanding, and authoritative man. While he was stubborn he had a he heart and was very protective of his family and especially the females. He was a father figure to many of his nephews and nieces. According to my father when he first met my uncle he thought that uncle Steven was their father until my mother and aunties made it obvious that he was there uncle.
During his teenage years uncle Stephen went to St. Mel High School. The school would eventually become Providence St. Mel today. The school merged eventually and he was able to unite with his sister. She said the girls had to go all the way to the top floor while the boys had it easier due to them being on the lower levels. During high school Stephen was on the basketball team at St. Mel and was said to be very talented but his high school career was cut short due to his revolutionary spirit. It is to be noted that his younger sister Lynette went to Providence which was an all girl school at the time. The two were extremely close during their childhood. Almost like best friends considering all things, telling her secrets that he wouldn't tell his other siblings.
During the mid 60s the America experienced one of the most powerful movements in its history. The civil rights movement seen many future black icons stepping up into leadership positions to combat social injustices against Black people. When Stephen was about 15 or 16 decided that he wanted to run away from home so he could support the movement. Uncle Steven ran away at broad day light and only told his sister Lynette. He told her not to tell their parents on what had transpired. My great grandfather S.L didn't realize what had happened until a few days later when he realized Steven was gone. When Stephen left home he joined the Chicago Chapter Black Panther Party where he was one of their first members as he ran away prior to the official found- ng of the Chicago Chapter in 1968.
Balanta Panther Stephen Hobbs
Fred Hampton and my uncle were good friends according to my grandmother. Hampton gave my late uncle his own office on Pulaski Rd between Van Buren and Jackson. The office was a complete wreck (debris and rubble, torn walls), however my uncle worked hard and eventually cleaned up the office very well and made it organized.
The Black Panther Party emerged on the city’s west side in the fall of 1968. As one of the 45 Black Panther chapters in the U.S, the IL chapter gained over 300 new members within 4 months.
View, from across the street, of the Black Panther Party's Illinois chapter headquarters (at 2350 West Madison Street) on the day after a police raid, Chicago, Illinois, July 30, 1969. (Photo by Chicago Sun-Times Collection/Chicago History Museum/Getty Images)
By the middle of 1969, the Chicago Panthers ideology roots helped them form alliances with the Latino and white Chicagoans called the rainbow coalition. This coalition targeted Chicago’s structural inequalities by placing programs like the free breakfast and free legal consultation for Chicago’s disadvantaged.
Rainbow Coalition Demonstration On W Armitage Elevated view of demonstrators, gathered in a vacant lot on West Armitage Avenue, during a Rainbow Coalition rally to protest a police killing, Chicago, Illinois, May 13, 1969. The coalition, which included members of the Black Panther Party, Young Patriots Organization, Cobra Stones, Students for a Democratic Society, and Young Lords Organization, among others, was protesting the murder of unarmed Young Lord Manuel Ramos. (Photo by Chicago Sun-Times Collection/Chicago History Museum/Getty Images)
Stephen was responsible for opening up the church and do the breakfast club. Grandma went sometimes to support her brother. She had to do it behind her mothers back (Bertha Hobbs). “I wasn’t an official member of the Party but I worked for the party-we sold papers (BPP) and served food”. She said the children looked so beat up and sad, realizing just how impactful the breakfast club was making on the black youth. She always went to help her brother before school.
COINTELPRO
The militant image of the Panthers eventually made conservative members leave due to the alienation and negative press. Richard J Daley was afraid of the panthers due to them having more influence than city hall. Eventually the Panthers got raided on 3 separate occasions. All in 1969, to look for illegal weapons.
My uncle was one of the militant members and was a hardcore Panther. He even traveled to Michigan and Ohio for a few Panther affairs and missions. However during the late 60s, my Uncle Stephen was back in the city doing the breakfast program. While he was heading to the church something happened…
Grandma who went to go help realized that the church doors were locked. “The day was cold, it was freezing outside”. There had been police scouts spying on my uncle for sometime now. The Chicago police kidnapped my uncle and planned to assassinate him out south. However the plan didn't fall through because the cop in the passenger seat wasn't ok with it and didn't feel com- mutable, which saved him. However while out south they took all his belongings and he had to walk home all the way to the west side from the south side.
The final raid crippled the organization when Fred Hampton was targeted.
Fred Hampton 1948-1969
Uncle Fred was a good friend of my late uncle Stephen. Fred is a year older than my uncle. Chairman of the BPP of Chicago, Hampton formed an alliance with the Young Patriots and Young Lords and several gangs in Chicago. Due to this influence the U.S government and FBI saw Hampton as the most dangerous of the Panthers and was a target along side Huey Newton and other Civil Rights leaders. (Martin Luther King and Malcolm were already assassinated by time Hampton rose to power.
J Edgar Hoover used COINTELPRO to disrupt Hampton’s movement and my uncle was a direct victim of that.
December 3rd-4th 1969
My uncle Stephen Hobbs and several other panthers were suppose to be body guards for Fred and his girl friend Akua Njeri who was pregnant with Fred’s son.
On the evening of December 3, Hampton taught a political education course at a local church, which was attended by most members. Afterward, as was typical, several Panthers went to his Monroe Street apartment to spend the night, including Hampton and Deborah Johnson, Blair Anderson, James Grady, Ronald "Doc" Satchell, Harold Bell, Verlina Brewer, Louis True- lock, Brenda Harris, and Mark Clark. There they were met by O'Neal, who had prepared a late dinner, which the group ate around midnight. O'Neal had slipped the barbiturate sleep agent secobarbitol into a drink that Hampton consumed during the dinner, in order to sedate Hampton so he would not awaken during the subsequent raid. O'Neal left at this point, and, at about 1:30 a.m., December 4, Hampton fell asleep mid-sentence talking to his mother on the telephone.
The day of the raid Fred decided to send my Uncle on a last minute assignment. Stephen was at Fred’s house as a form of protection several times in 1969. “China” a female Panther and also an ally of my uncle was at the house with Fred and Mark. My Uncle Stephen told me he wanted to go to the house that night to support his friend and help secure the house. Nevertheless with Hampton’s growing power and with him being in line to becoming the head man for the Central Committee and the national spokesman of the BBP, the United States government and Chicago police decided to raid Hampton’s home that same night my uncle wasn't at the house. There was a massive shootout at Hampton’s home and killed Fred Hampton at point blank and Mark Clark.
Everyone else was wounded including Akua.
At 4:00 a.m., the heavily armed police team arrived at the site, divided into two teams, eight for the front of the building and six for the rear. At 4:45 a.m., they stormed into the apartment. Mark Clark, sitting in the front room of the apartment with a shotgun in his lap, was on security duty. The police shot him in the chest, killing him instantly. An alternative account said that Clark answered the door and police immediately shot him. Either way, Clark's gun discharged once into the ceiling. This single round was fired when he suffered a reflexive death-convulsion after being shot. This was the only shot fired by the Panthers.
Hampton, drugged by barbiturates, was sleeping on a mattress in the bedroom with his fiancée, Deborah Johnson, who was nine months pregnant with their child. She was forcibly removed from the room by the police officers while Hampton still lay unconscious in bed. Then, the raiding team fired at the head of the south bedroom. Hampton was wounded in the shoulder by the shooting.
Fellow Black Panther Harold Bell said that he heard the following exchange: "That's Fred Hampton."
"Is he dead?... Bring him out."
"He's barely alive." "He'll make it."
The injured Panthers said they heard two shots. According to Hampton's supporters, the shots were fired point blank at Hampton's head. According to Deborah Johnson, an officer then said: "He's good and dead now."
