Site 11

“The People’s Law Office was to the Panthers as the NAACP was to the Civil Rights Movement.”

Panther Lynn French

Skip Andrew and Donald Stang, two young lawyers from the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, met Fred Hampton in the summer of 1969. They, like Jeffrey Haas, Dennis Cunningham and Flint Taylor, were becoming more involved in the social justice movement. Finding themselves at a crossroads between becoming corporate attorneys and movement lawyers, they chose the latter. With other young attorneys, they founded the People’s Law Office. Clients included the Panthers, the Young Lords, antiwar protesters, and Students for a Democratic Society during an intense period of political repression in American history. 

A Panther would be arrested, and his one phone call would be to headquarters. The People’s Law Office would be alerted, show up at the police station, and most times, the Panther would be released immediately. Other times, arrests would follow police raids and shootings, and the Panthers would be held on attempted murder charges.

Attorneys from the office represented Panthers across Illinois—from Chicago and Altgeld Gardens to Cairo, Carbondale, Champaign, and other communities—who were repeatedly arrested on charges ranging from disorderly conduct for selling Black Panther newspapers to serious felonies from confrontations with law enforcement.

Following the assassination of Illinois Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton and Peoria Defense Captain Mark Clark on December 4, 1969, attorneys, law students, and legal workers from the People's Law Office immediately began documenting the crime scene and gathering evidence the police hastily left behind. The Panthers opened the apartment to the public and directly challenged State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan’s narrative with evidence at the apartment.

Later, Skip Andrew pushed for an independent autopsy on Fred Hampton, with the permission of Francis and Iberia Hampton. Hampton had been shot twice in the head, consistent with the police firing machine guns into the bedroom, but Andrew believed something was missing from the official autopsy.

Another autopsy was performed on Hampton’s body at Rayner Funeral Home. Two tests revealed he had been drugged with the barbiturate Seconal, rendering him immobile and unconscious.

The People’s Law Office, other attorneys, the Black Panther Party, and the mothers of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark worked together to disprove Hanrahan’s narrative and proved that the attack was an FBI- and Chicago Police-coordinated assassination.

The People's Law Office filed litigation that exposed the FBI's secret COINTELPRO campaign against the Black Panther Party and helped secure one of the largest civil rights settlements of its time. Their work also contributed evidence to the U.S. Senate's Church Committee investigation, which publicly documented the FBI's illegal efforts to disrupt and destroy the Black Panther Party and other political organizations.

The People's Law Office did more than defend individual cases. By representing Panthers throughout Illinois and relentlessly challenging false prosecutions, police misconduct, and government deception, the office prevented many from being wrongfully imprisoned and helped preserve the historical record. 

Without their work, many Panthers could have spent decades incarcerated on false charges, and much of what is now known about the campaign against the Illinois Chapter might never have come to light.

Still in operation today, the People’s Law Office continues to fight against government overreach, police brutality, police torture, wrongful convictions, protest and free speech.

The People's Law Office did not simply argue cases in court—it helped ensure that the people's history became the people's true narrative.