12/05/2025
Ag cuimhneamh ar Fred Hampton. ✊🏾
On this day, 4th of December 1969, at only 21 years of age, revolutionary leader of the Black Panther Party (BPP), Fred Hampton, was assassinated by Chicago police and the FBI.
Hampton became an enemy of the state due to his revolutionary work and his attempts to transform the lives of the Black and working-class communities of Illinois.
During his time as deputy chairman of the BPP Illinois chapter, he enacted a series of reforms from challenging misogyny within the BPP's hierarchy to establishing a highly successful free breakfast programme which fed hundreds of children in Chicago each morning.
Hampton, in seeking to break down racial barriers and unite the working class of Chicago, succeeded in uniting some of the most powerful street gangs in Chicago, forming the Rainbow Coalition. The Rainbow Coalition consisted of the Black Panthers alongside the Young Patriots Organization, which was made up of working-class white people, and the Young Lords, which was made up of Puerto Ricans.
Of course, this work soon caught the attention of the FBI. In 1956, the FBI launched COINTELPRO, a covert operation for radical liberation movements in the USA. It targeted many movements, from the anti-Vietnam War movement to various leftist groups, but Black liberation groups were of particular interest. Both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were targets of the FBI, both of whom were assassinated.
The FBI infiltrated the Illinois chapter of the BPP with their informant, William O'Neal. O'Neal developed a close relationship with Hampton, reporting back to his FBI handlers about Hampton's activities. The FBI became particularly alarmed by his Rainbow Coalition, fearing that a working-class revolution was about to begin from Chicago.
As a result of this, the FBI in a conspiracy plot between themselves, local police forces and government officials, each fearful of Hampton’s immense power, devised a plan to have him assassinated in a raid of his home.
On the evening of 3rd of December, their informant drugged Hampton's drink during a dinner gathering at his house so that he could not wake up during the incoming raid. Following this, in the early hours of 4th of December, heavily armed police officers broke into Hampton's home, firing indiscriminately. 22 year old Panther Mark Clark was murdered first before they found Hampton asleep in his room with his pregnant fiancé Deborah Johnson. Johnson attempted to shield Hampton from the police but was forcefully dragged away. Hampton was shot three times, twice in the head while lying asleep in bed.
Declassified documents have since shown a conspiracy to murder Hampton, at the highest levels of the FBI, which included director, J. Edgar Hoover.
For five decades after his death, Hampton’s headstone was regularly riddled with bullets by the Chicago Police before being covered with bulletproof casing by his son, in 2021.
For the crime of loving the working class, Hampton was sentenced to death by the state. His legacy of fighting for the liberation of all colonised people continues through his only son, Fred Hampton Jr, who calls for solidarity between all movements from black power in the USA to Palestine, having been a vocal opponent of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“...you can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail the revolution. You can run a freedom fighter around the country but you can’t run freedom fighting around the country. You can murder a liberator, but you can’t murder liberation."
