In late 1969, Fred Hampton issued a call to defund the police, if in different terms than those currently in use. Speaking at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, 60 miles west of Chicago, Hampton, the leader of the Illinois branch of the Black Panther Party, called for the police to be “decentralized”—shorthand for what was elsewhere known as “community control of the police.” His political perspective in the broad sense was molded by a capacious vision and dogged pursuit of a just world. It was based on a desire to dismantle the evils of fascism, capitalism, imperialism and racism.
