On 4 December 1969, Chicago Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed by police in Chicago.
Hampton was murdered while asleep in his bed during a raid on his apartment by Chicago Police in conjunction with the FBI. Hampton had been drugged earlier in the evening by an FBI informant, who also told agents the location of Hampton's bed, where he slept alongside his nine-month pregnant fiancée, Akua Njeri. Several other Panthers were injured.
Aged just 21, Hampton was an active, charismatic and effective organiser, who had been making significant inroads into making links with working class whites and building a "Rainbow Coalition" including Puerto Rican, Native American, Chicane, white and Chinese-American radicals.
Clark, aged 22, had been active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), before joining the Panthers, establishing a chapter in Peoria, Illinois, and setting up a free breakfast programme for local children. He was acting as security in the apartment at the time of the raid, and had a shotgun in his lap. He was shot in the heart and killed instantly.
Fellow Panthers Blair Anderson, Verlina Brewer, Brenda Harris and Ronald “Doc” Satchel were all wounded in the attack.
Hampton and Clark were amongst the most prominent victims of the FBI's COINTELPRO program, which amongst other things was instructed by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to "prevent the rise of a Black Messiah".
Fred Hampton and Mark Clark killed - WCH | Stories
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