Fred Hampton

Born on Aug. 30, 1948, Fred Hampton was a Black revolutionary socialist and activist who served as the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party and deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party. 

When he was 10 years old, his family moved to Maywood, a Chicago suburb, where he would attend Irving Elementary School and Proviso East High School. Leading his high school’s Interracial Committee, Hampton also protested the nominations of only white girls to run for homecoming queen, advocating for the inclusion of Black girls. After graduation, he then went on to study pre-law at Triton Junior College, also attending Crane Junior College (now Malcolm X College) and the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. 

In 1968, Hampton helped found the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, where he served as chairman, organizing rallies and promoting mutual aid by establishing free breakfast programs and health clinics. He also founded the Rainbow Coalition alongside William “Preacherman” Fesperman and José Cha Cha Jiménez. The coalition was a multicultural, multiracial joint political organization, including the Black Panther Party, The Young Patriots, and the Young Lords, that engaged in action against poverty, corruption, police brutality, substandard housing, and more. The individual groups supported each other at protests, strikes, and demonstrations where they had a common cause.

Throughout the Black Panther Party’s active years, the FBI and police targeted and threatened the organization, its leaders, and members, including founders Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Elbert Howard, as well as prominent figure Angela Davis. Shortly before Hampton’s assassination, Newton and Seale were out of commission after being targeted by the police and facing criminal charges. This elevated Hampton to be a national spokesman for the party prior to his death.

Hampton was a leading force in the fight for Black liberation, advocating for an international proletarian revolution against capitalism, imperialism, fascism, colonialism, and white supremacy by all means necessary. The United States government labeled him a “radical threat,” with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover calling the Black Panthers “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country,” targeting and threatening Hampton and other revolutionaries. The FBI aimed to destroy the Panthers and their mutual aid programs, as well as prevent the rise of a “messiah” who would unify Black people in the fight for liberation. 

Under the direction of Hoover, the FBI and local Chicago police assassinated Hampton on Dec. 4, 1969. The FBI coerced teenager William O’Neal into being an informant, having him infiltrate the Black Panther Party and eventually poison Hampton’s drink with a sleeping drug on the night of Dec. 3. FBI and police later raided Hampton’s apartment, murdering both him and Black Panther Defense Captain Mark Clark. The police fired nearly 100 times, while only one bullet of defense came from inside the apartment.  

The FBI and police’s violence against the Black Panthers continue after Hampton’s death, with the party ceasing operations in 1982 due to the smear campaigns, infiltrations, wiretapping, coerced informants, and assassinations committed by the FBI and police. 

Hampton’s legacy lives on as does the fight for Black liberation. His story has been told in the 1971 documentary The Murder of Fred Hampton, Ryan Coogler’s Judas and the Black Messiah, which comes out in 2021 and stars Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton, and the book The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther by Jeffery Haas. Kelvin Harrison Jr. also portrays Hampton in the 2020 movie The Trial of the Chicago 7. Hampton’s speeches can also be listened to in the Power to the People: The Black Panther Speeches audiobook.