Fred Hampton, Black Panther Activist

On this day, 30 August 1948, leading Black Panther activist Fred Hampton was born in Summit, Illinois. Hampton was instrumental in forming links between the Panthers and organisations of working class Chinese people, whites, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans in what he dubbed the Rainbow Coalition. A revolutionary internationalist, he explained: "We're going to fight racism not with racism, but we're going to fight with solidarity. We say we're not going to fight capitalism with Black capitalism, but we're going to fight it with socialism." Hampton was a central target of the FBI's COINTELPRO programme, which resulted in him being drugged by an FBI operative, then shot in the shoulder while he was asleep, then shot twice more in the head at point-blank range by Chicago police during an FBI raid in 1969. He was only 21 years old. Learn more about the Panthers in these books by former members: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/all/black-panthers

Fred Hampton born - WCH | Stories

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