Fred Hampton

Fredrick Allen Hampton Sr. (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was an African American activist and revolutionary socialist. He came to prominence in his late teens and early 20s in Chicago as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter. He founded the anti-racist, anti-classist Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included Black Panthers (which organized African Americans), Young Patriots (which organized White Southerners), and the Young Lords (which organized Puerto Ricans), and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. Hampton was a Marxist–Leninist, and he considered fascism the greatest threat to African American communities.

In 1967, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) identified Hampton as a radical threat. It tried to subvert his activities in Chicago, sowing disinformation among black progressive groups and placing a counterintelligence operative in the local Panthers organization. In December 1969, Hampton was drugged, then shot and killed in his bed during a predawn raid at his Chicago apartment by a tactical unit of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, who received aid from the Chicago Police Department and the FBI leading up to the attack. Law enforcement sprayed more than 100 gunshots throughout the apartment; the occupants fired once. During the raid, Panther Mark Clark was also killed and several others were seriously wounded. In January 1970, the Cook County Coroner held an inquest; the coroner's jury concluded that Hampton's and Clark's deaths were justifiable homicides.