On December 4, 1969, 21-year-old, civil rights leader and deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party, leader Fred Hampton was assassinated in his Chicago home during a pre-dawn raid by Chicago police, orchestrated with the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI in 1967 identified Hampton, chair of the Illinois Black Panther Party, as a major threat to be "disrupted" and "neutralized".
The youngest child of Francis and Iberia Hampton, Fred was raised in the Chicago suburbs. Among his family’s acquaintances was Emmett Till, a Black teenager tortured and murdered by the KKK In 1955, when Till was visiting relatives in Mississippi, he was lynched by local white men. The Hampton family’s connection with Till, along with their experience of racial inequity. While attending high school in Maywood, Illinois, Hampton organized a student section of the NAACP, served on his school’s Interracial Cross Section Committee (a club that helped white students confront their racist beliefs), and protested the unjust arrest of Eugene Moore, a classmate who would later become the area’s first Black state representative. After graduating from high school with honors, Hampton enrolled in a prelaw program at Triton College, a public community college near Maywood.
The Informant's Role:
FBI informant William O'Neal infiltrated the Chicago Black Panthers, providing the FBI with a floor plan of Hampton's apartment. Hampton was drugged with barbiturates earlier that night by William O'Neal. O’Neal handed the detailed, hand-drawn floor plan of Hampton's apartment to the FBI, which was passed to the Chicago Police Department. After William O’Neal drugged Hampton, Chicago policemen surrounded Hampton’s apartment in Chicago. Raided the apartment and started firing their weapons in total darkness. When they discovered Chairman Fred Hampton drugged and sleeping in his bed alongside his then wife Akua Njeri, who was known as Deborah Johnson at the time of their relationship. She was pregnant with their child, Fred Hampton Jr. during the raid. Despite being in bed with a pregnant woman, Chicago police fired over 90 shots, and according to reports, Hampton was shot at close range while in bed, killing Hampton and Mark Clark.
Key Aspects of the Assassination:
COINTELPRO J. Edgar Hoover marked Hampton as a target of the FBI's counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) to "destroy" the Black Panther Party and neutralize its leaders. The FBI's COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program) targeted Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton, identifying him as a "radical threat" to be neutralized. Through infiltration by informant William O'Neal, the FBI provided intelligence for a 1969 police raid that resulted in Hampton's assassination, intended to prevent the rise of a "Black Messiah". The assassination is considered a key example of the government’s illegal efforts to eliminate Black political leaders, with documents suggesting that Hoover's office was directly involved in organizing the raid.
Tune in to The Original OGs as OG Mister Rick sits down for an exclusive conversation with Fred Hampton’s son Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. This is an interview that you don’t want to miss. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com
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