Dennis Cunningham on the Attica Prison Uprising

Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show, September 12, 2008.

Our guest, Attorney Dennis Cunningham, established the People's Law Office in Chicago, from which he and young Attorney Jeffrey Haas conducted a landmark civil rights lawsuit, "Hampton v. Hanrahan," on behalf of the families of slain Black Panther Party (BPP) leaders Mark Clark and Fred Hampton, and the survivors of the Dec. 4, 1969 police raid on the apartment of Illinois BPP Chairman Fred Hampton, at 2337 West Monroe Street in Chicago. The civil rights lawsuit lasted for almost 13 years, but ended with a $1.85 million settlement paid equally by the city, county, and federal governments--although Chicago's killer cops were never criminally charged.

Dennis continued doing civil rights cases over these 40 years, during which he also worked on the long-running class action for the prisoners who rebelled and survived the massacre at New York's Attica State Prison in 1971, and the Earth First case resulting from the 1990 bombing of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney in Oakland, among many other defenses of protesters and victims of police misconduct, brutality and/or murder.

RELATED EPISODES: Dennis Cunningham: The FBI and the Resistance (May 2, 2008), Dennis Cunningham: The 40th Anniversary of the Assassination of Fred Hampton (Dec. 4, 2009), Bobby Seale: The Attica Uprising (Sept. 11, 2009), Elbert "Big Man" Howard and Billy X Jennings: Black August (Aug. 7, 2009), Willie Sundiata Tate: Black August (Aug. 21, 2009)