Hampton’s vastly impactful work as leader of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party, landed him on the FBI COINTELPRO list of “threats” to be “neutralized.”. The FBI tried to subvert his activities in Chicago, sowing disinformation among black progressive groups and placing a counterintelligence operative in the local Panthers. [37], At a press conference the next day, the police announced the arrest team had been attacked by the "violent" and "extremely vicious" Panthers and had defended themselves accordingly. This book of the assassination of a sleeping Fred Hampton by Chicago police working for a mad state’s attorney is more important NOW than it was THEN. [14], O'Neal joined the Party and quickly rose in the organization, becoming Director of Chapter security and Hampton's bodyguard. O'Neal quickly became Hampton's local chief of security. [78], Jeffrey Haas wrote an account of Hampton's death, entitled The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther (2009). [46] "The Commission" further alleged that the Chicago Police Department had imposed a summary punishment on the Panthers. The article included photographs, supplied by Hanrahan's office, that depicted bullet holes in a thin white curtain and door jamb as evidence that the Panthers fired multiple bullets at the police. Through O'Neal, the FBI attempted to disrupt the Black Panthers' plans, such as telling the leader of the Rangers, a local gang with whom the Black Panthers had proposed to merge, that the Black Panthers had contracted a hit on him. He was arrested twice with Jimenez at the Wicker Park Welfare Office, and both were charged with "mob action" at a peaceful picket of the office. As a teen, Hampton became involved in civil rights by leading a local NAACP youth council. Fred Hampton was an active leader in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), leading their Youth Council of the organization’s West Suburban Branch. [citation needed], Hampton's funeral was attended by 5,000 people, and he was eulogized by black leaders, including Jesse Jackson and Ralph Abernathy – successor to Martin Luther King Jr. as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The Plaintiffs appealed and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed, ordering the case to be retried. [48] The two families each shared in the settlement. Already subscribe? O’Neal quickly gained access to Hampton by becoming both his bodyguard and a security director in Hampton’s Black Panther Party chapter. They adopted fake identities and decided to pursue covert activities only. [68] On Saturday September 7, 2007, a bust of Hampton was erected outside the Fred Hampton Family Aquatic Center. It said that the refusal of the surviving Black Panthers to cooperate hampered the investigation, and that the press "improperly and grossly exaggerated stories". As the mural was being painted, older people from the area approached the artists and shared stories about how their lives were touched by Hampton and how they participated in the Black freedom movement, Starz said. Hampton joined the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP) in November 1968. In an unsigned editorial headlined "No Quarter for Wild Beasts", the Chicago Tribune urged that Chicago police officers approaching suspected Panthers "should be ordered to be ready to shoot. Hampton joined the Party and relocated to downtown Chicago. Michael Newton is among those writers who have concluded that Hampton was assassinated. This 1967 arrest gave Hampton a more militarized outlook on policing and the capitalist system. In early October, Hampton and his girlfriend, Deborah Johnson (now known as Akua Njeri), pregnant with their first child (Fred Hampton Jr.), rented a four-and-a-half-room apartment at 2337 West Monroe Street to be closer to BPP headquarters. [11][12] In May 1969, Hampton called a press conference to announce that this "rainbow coalition" had formed. In 1967, Hampton and the Youth Council petitioned to have a non-segregated pool built in Maywood. Revolutionary violence is the only way. On May 21, 1970, the group issued a "Declaration of War" against the United States government, and used for the first time its new name, the "Weather Underground Organization". A natural leader, Hampton joined his school’s Inter-racial Cross Section Committee and was able to cool the tensions and unite the Black students and white students against one common enemy: the school system. ", Eyes on the Prize episode 12, chronicles the leadership and extrajudicial killing of Fred Hampton. David Alan Grier plays Hampton. The film stars Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton. Edward V. Hanrahan, who was indicted but cleared with 13 other law-enforcement agents on charges of obstructing justice. [3] State's attorney Edward Hanrahan said the verdict was recognition "of the truthfulness of our police officers' account of the events". There they were met by O'Neal, who had prepared a late dinner, which the group ate around midnight. 50 Years Later, the Fight Against Police Brutality Continues", "Fred Hampton to Barack Obama: The Illinois Black Panther Party, the Original Rainbow Coalition, and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago", Famous Assassinations in World History: An Encyclopedia, "Edward Hanrahan, Prosecutor Tied to '69 Panthers Raid, Dies at 88", https://libguides.depaul.edu/ld.php?content_id=10135864, "The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther", "“Exclusive – Hanrahan, Police Tell Panther Story". During the trial, the Chicago Police Department claimed that the Panthers were the first to fire shots. [58] After jurors deadlocked on a verdict, Perry dismissed the suit against the remaining defendants . The 2017 album The Underside of Power by Algiers begins with a sample of a Fred Hampton speech. They both worked at the Argo Starch Company. In the song, he says "Fred Hampton was an angel may his name ring". They adopted fake identities and decided to pursue covert activities only. [56][57] The grand jury said that the police department's raid was "ill conceived" and that there were many errors committed during the post-raid investigation and reconstruction of the events. As documented by the 1978 trial, William O'Neal walked into the Black Panther's office in November 1968 to enlist. Hampton's effective leadership and talent for communication marked him as a major threat to the FBI. "[59] An Assistant United States Attorney, Robert Gruenberg, said that the settlement was intended to avoid another costly trial and it was not an admission of guilt or responsibility by any of the defendants.[59]. Even during Hampton's tenure with the NAACP, which began when he was 16, he was incredibly successful, seeing their membership grow from 100 members to 700 and organizing a protest that changed rules which barred Black girls from becoming homecoming queens. On December 3, 1969, O’Neal secretly drugged Hampton by putting a sleeping pill into his drink. [58] After its conclusion in 1977, Judge Joseph Sam Perry of United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois dismissed the suit against 21 of the defendants prior to jury deliberations. O'Neal's main task: ingratiate himself with the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party, led by Fred Hampton. [30] This single round was fired when he suffered a reflexive death-convulsion after being shot. -Fred Hampton. Johnson, who was expecting a child with Hampton, was not killed. Judas and the Black Messiah is an upcoming film about Hampton. As Hampton’s influence in the Black Panthers grew, the FBI began to focus on his activities, opening a file on him in 1967. The article included photographs, supplied by Hanrahan's office, that depicted bullet holes in a thin white curtain and door jamb as evidence that the Panthers fired multiple bullets at the police. That evening, the Chicago Sun-Times published a page 1 article with the headline: "Those 'bullet holes' aren't." We say you don't fight capitalism with no Black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.". The film tells the real-life story of activist Fred Hampton’s rise to prominence as a Black Panther Party chairman, his eventual assassination in 1969, and the man who betrayed him. And then if they’re not educated, they want more and before you know it, they’ll be capitalist, and before you know it, we’d have Negro imperialists.”, Happy Birthday #FredHampton pic.twitter.com/h2ZRqCTINk, Hampton not only united students and poor members of the community, but he also convinced the local gang organizations to put aside their differences and forge a unity that has since become national in scope known as the “Rainbow Coalition.”. He called the multiracial groups he collaborated with his "Rainbow Coalition." This automatically made him a national BPP deputy chairman. As the National Archives charts, the charismatic Hampton had by the age of 20 already completed a successful stint with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to join the Chicago Chapter of the Black Panther Party and rise to the position of chairman of the Illinois Chapter. Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois Black Panthers, who in 1969 was murdered in his sleep by ...[+] Chicago police. [citation needed] On December 11, the Chicago Tribune published a page 1 article titled, "Exclusive – Hanrahan, Police Tell Panther Story." He was arrested twice with Jimenez at the Wicker Park Welfare Office, and both were charged with "mob action" at a peaceful picket of the office. As a youth, Hampton was gifted both in the classroom and athletically, and dreamed of playing center field for the New York Yankees. [35] According to Deborah Johnson, an officer then said: Hampton's body was dragged into the doorway of the bedroom and left in a pool of blood. Judas and the Black Messiah is an upcoming film about Hampton. The group decided the 2010 mural would be a more fitting way to honor Hampton’s memory and inspire conversation among residents about the struggle for Black liberation. Investigations have shown that FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover was determined to prevent the formation of a cohesive Black movement in the United States. Chicago police remove the body of Fred Hampton, leader of the Illinois Black Panther Party, who was slain in a gun battle with police on Chicago’s West Side on Dec. 4, 1969. In 1966, FBI Agent Roy Martin Mitchell (played by Jesse Plemmons) sat down in Cook County Jail to offer O'Neal a deal. They offered him a position on the Central Committee as the chief of staff and asked him to serve as the national spokesman for the BPP. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. Fred Hampton (August 30, 1948–December 4, 1969) was an activist for the NAACP and the Black Panther Party. [20] A total of nine police officers were shot; 19-year-old Panther Spurgeon Winter Jr. was killed by police, and another Panther, Lawrence S. Bell, was charged with murder. Hampton was just 21 when he was murdered. But a later investigation found that the Chicago police fired between ninety and ninety-nine shots, while the only Panthers shot was a bullet that hit the ceiling from Mark Clark's fallen shotgun. In his capacity as an NAACP youth organizer, he began to demonstrate natural leadership abilities; from a community of 27,000, he was able to muster a youth group 500-members strong. The footage captured is seen in the 1971 documentary “The Murder of Fred Hampton.”.