On the morning of Dec. 4, 1969, Nwhai Nefahito was in the Near West Side house where local and federal police stormed in and assassinated Black Panther leaders Mark Clark and Fred Hampton.
Nefahito was shot twice, once in the hand and once in the leg, as a police officer fired an automatic rifle through the wall of 2337 W. Monroe St. into the bedroom where she had been sleeping.
She saw then 22-year-old Clark — who she described as a quiet, humble person who would watch over the room — be fatally shot.
Until last month, she hadn’t been back to the home where she saw two of her friends die.
Wednesday night, though, she joined others who had survived the raid, as well as other former Black Panthers, as they dedicated a plaque at the site 56 years after the assassination.
It’s the latest of 12 plaques to be placed around Chicago, as well as another in Peoria, as part of the Black Panther Heritage Trail that denotes historic sites in Illinois.
“We have to remember the people who stood up and gave their lives,” Nefahito said. “We see where we’re at now. … We can’t be complacent, we can’t take the liberties and rights we have for granted. We have to fight, work and be kind to each other. We always have to help others and look for opportunities to get involved.”
The commemorations were first revealed last October after a fight over how the organization’s legacy would be preserved, one commemorating the since-demolished Illinois Black Panther Party headquarters was installed on the Near West Side in July during a similar ceremony.
Nefahito took her time addressing the crowd to commemorate other Panthers who had since died, and later recounted memories of the assassination and Hampton, who she said was always educating and watching out for others.
“[The officer shooting] said ‘I’ll get ‘em out with this,’” she said. “They were shooting through the wall.”
At the hospital, Nefahito was chained to her bed by officers despite orders from her doctor to walk as part of her physical therapy. In the Panthers, she worked in the party’s information cadre, handing out papers and writing articles in addition to serving in its free breakfast program.
Wednesday night vigil’s was briefly interrupted by Fred Hampton Jr., Hampton’s son, who accused the preservation society’s representatives of being federal operatives.
Congressman Bobby Rush, former defense minister of the Illinois chapter, hailed Hampton as “more courageous than Malcolm [X].” He said officers had kicked down the door to his apartment the next day as they sought to wipe out the party’s local leadership.
“Fred Hampton’s murder we can never forget,” Rush said. “It was the only political assassination in the history of this nation that was officially sanctioned by the U.S. government. … I don’t know of any man, young or old, who represented the very best of human kind like [Hampton].”