I knew of this story when I was young, because I remember seeing an episode of Unsolved Mysteries about it. At the time, being a white girl, I believed the lies that Black Panthers were violent criminals who deserved to be arrested or worse. Now I know better. If you don't know, I highly encourage you to look into the history of the group. The general violence they were known for was actually usually the fault of the police, or reporting by white reporters. Please, remove your white goggles and look into who they truly were.
1969: The Assassination of Fred Hampton
Fred Hampton was identified as a threat to the United States by the FBI in 1967. They worried about his influence among the growing white leftist community, and wanted to stop him from gaining more influence. They tried to sow discord among the groups listening to him with various disinformation attempts, and also managed to insert a mole in his group. The mole, William O'Neal, became Hampton's bodyguard through a series of false events that made him look heroic to Hampton and the Panthers. On the evening of December 3, Hampton, O'Neal, and several prominent members of the Black Panther party returned to Hampton's flat to crash for the evening. O'Neal drugged Hampton, causing him to fall asleep suddenly, though this was mostly unnoticed given it was after midnight by this time. Cook County PD arranged a raid that night, surrounding the building. At 4 AM, they stormed into the apartment, shooting the man on guard, whose gun discharged as he died. Hampton's pregnant girlfriend was dragged from the apartment, and then Hampton was shot several times. They then shot at the remaining people in the apartment, beating them and arresting them for being in a shootout with the police (the dead guard's round was the only round the Panthers discharged at all during this time). The Panthers who survived were indicted on charges of attempted murder, and other weapon and violence charges. During the trial, the Police attempted to say that the Panthers started the shooting, and that they were merely defending themselves, but proof at the trial showed that nearly all rounds were from police guns. All charges were later dropped. A group later broke into FBI headquarters in 1971 and proved the existence of COINTELPRO, an illegal operation trying to take down Black and Leftist leaders in the US, which was determined to be in charge of the attack on Hampton, and that O'Neal had been a mole against him.
Sources:
- Wikipedia articles:
- Fred Hampton
- Black Panther Party
- COINTELPRO
- New York Times Archive: 7 Panthers Freed in Chicago Clash
- Newsweek: Who Was Fred Hampton
- Twitter Thread: Michael Harriot "50 years ago...Chicago cops killed 21-year-old Black Panther Fred Hampton
- The Assassination of Fred Hampton
- The Assassination of Fred Hampton (video included)
- The Assassination of Fred Hampton
- The Killing of Fred Hampton
- The Murder of Fred Hampton
- The short story of Fred Hampton, assassinated Black Panther leader
Of course, many of the best known names in the fight for African American rights died in the 60s: Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers, among many others. But before King and Hampton were killed, we had one of the most important confrontations in the whole of the Black Civil Rights movements, only four years before King's assassination, and five years before the assassination of Fred Hampton.
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