Fred Hampton was 21 when his life was cut short in the wee hours of the morning on December 4, 1969. He was the leader of the Black Panther Party in Chicago and was known as a uniter, famous for his effective oratories emphasizing organization, education, and "revolutionary political power" (Hampton 36). It was because and despite his peaceful organization tactics and pseudo-success with developing political coalitions between violent black gangs that a fourteen-man police squad assassinated him on that fateful morning.

There is not a doubt that Fred Hampton was destined to become a leader. At 17, Hampton was a black youth on the road to "making it" in white America. He graduated from high school in Maywood, Illinois with academic honors, three varsity letters, and a Junior Achievement Award. As youth director of the Maywood NAACP, he had built an unusually strong 500-member youth group in a community of 27,000 (Gottlieb 680). After his nonviolent, integrationist activities aroused the hostility of Maywood authorities, Hampton was recruited by the Black Panther Party in the fall of 1968 on the strengths of his leadership and oratory skills; in the words of fellow Panther David Hilliard, "he moved people based on his own strengths" (Hillard 215). As a leader of the Black Panther Party in Chicago, Hampton emerged as a national leader in a very short time, gaining the media’s attention as an effective orator and "feel-good preacher" (Hilliard 227).

The media weren’t the only ones paying attention to Hampton’s success. FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) formally launched a counterintelligence program in 1967 against "black hate groups," and was also observing Hampton’s activities, although a bit more covertly (O’Reilly, Black 48). Various "experienced and imaginative" agents were assigned by COINTELPRO as "counterintelligence coordinators" to be given free reign "to expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters." Initial "targets" included Martin Luther King, Stokeley Carmichael, Rap Brown, Maxwell Stanford, and Elijah Muhammad (O’Reilly, Black 49).

Thus, when Hampton was showing considerable promise in negotiating a working alliance with a huge black street gang known as the Black Stone Rangers (or Black P. Stone Nation), J. Edgar Hoover wrote a letter to Marlin Johnson, the Chicago SAC (special agent in charge), prompting the sending of an anonymous letter to Ranger head Jeff Fort, falsely warning that Hampton had "a hit [murder contract] out on" him as part of a Panther plot to take over his gang (Churchill 135). In a memo outlined by Johnson to Hoover, it is clear that the FBI’s concern in the matter was not that someone might be killed as a consequence of such "disruptive activities," but that measures would be taken so the letter could not be "traced back to" the Bureau (Churchill 138). Similar tactics were employed to block or "destabilize" emerging alliances between the Chicago Black Panther Party and another black gang, the Maus Maus, as well as the already politicized Puertorriqueno Young Lords, a white street gang called the Young Patriots, and even the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). COINTELPRO’s letter writing had a significant impact in preventing Hampton from consolidating the city-wide "Rainbow Coalition" he was attempting to establish at the time, but it failed to bring about his eventual untimely death (Churchill 139).

Hence, FBI agents began to shop around for a police agency to raid Panther headquarters. They approached the Chicago Police Department twice, in October and November 1969, but were turned down both times. The FBI then approached Cook County State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan, who agreed to carry out the operation. Hanrahan, in a TV interview, said that he agreed to the raid after the FBI told him that the Panthers were stockpiling illegal weapons at their headquarters. However, on November 19, O’Neal had reported to the FBI that the guns had been legally obtained (Gottlieb 681).

In mid-November 1969, COINTELPRO specialist Roy Mitchell met with William O’Neal, a psychopathic infiltrator for the FBI (Churchill 139). O’Neal was a captain of security in the Chicago Black Panther Party and for a time one of Hampton’s bodyguards. He used a bull whip and a homemade electric chair to coerce confessions from accused part members and thereby ease his stool pigeon activities, pocketing some $30,000 of Bureau money from 1969 to 1972 (O’Reilly, Racial 310). Not simply an informant, O’Neal was also assigned to provoking others into "kamikaze"-type activities. O’Neal would repeatedly make provocative proposals, such as blowing up an armory or robbing a McDonald’s restaurant. Basically, O’Neal was instructed to carry out the FBI’s "divide-and-conquer" program. He was so valuable, in fact, that Mitchell once dished out $1,600 to buy him a car and $1,000 to bail him out of jail (Gottlieb 681).

When Mitchell and O’Neal met at the Golden Torch Restaurant in downtown Chicago, Mitchell secured from O’Neal the accompanying detailed floor-plan of Hampton’s apartment, including the disposition of furniture, and denotation of exactly where the BPP leader might be expected to be sleeping on any given night (Churchill 139). Mitchell then took the floor plan to Richard Jalovec, overseer of a special police unit assigned to State Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan; together, Mitchell and Jalovec met with police sergeant Daniel Groth, operational commander of the unit, and planned an "arms raid" on the Hampton residence (Churchill 139).

On the evening of December 3, 1969, shortly before the planned raid, infiltrator O’Neal slipped Hampton a substantial dose of secobarbital, a sedative-hypnotic drug designed to induce sleep, in a glass of kool-aid (Churchill 140; "Secobarbital"). Thus, Hampton was lying comatose in his bed when the fourteen-man police team slammed into his home at 4:30 am on the morning of December 4 (Churchill 140). They carried twenty-seven guns, including five shotguns, an M-1 carbine, and a Thomas submachine gun. Sergeant James "Gloves" Davis, a black cop with a reputation for brutalizing black citizens, led them into combat (O’Reilly, Racial 311). The police fired at least 98 rounds at the occupants of the apartment. Wounded were Panthers Ronald "Doc" Satchell, Blair Anderson, and Verlina Brewer, all teenagers. Panthers Deborah Johnson, who was Hampton’s fiance and eight months pregnant with their child, Brenda Harris, Louis Truelock, and Harold Bell were uninjured. Fred Hampton was shot three times, once more-or-less slightly in the chest, and then twice more in the head at point-blank range (Churchill 140). Shot through the heart at the moment Davis broke through the front door, Mark Clark, head of the Peoria, Illinois chapter, fired the only Panther round – into the floor, during his death convulsions (O’Reilly, Racial 312).

A week later, on December 11, Chicago COINTELPRO section head Robert Piper took a major share of the "credit" for this "success" in a memo, informing headquarters that the raid could not have occurred without intelligence information provided by O’Neal via Mitchell and himself. He specifically noted that "the chairman of the Illinois BPP, Fred Hampton," was killed in the raid and that this was due, in large part, to the "uniquely valuable services" of O’Neal’s work inside the party. He then requested payment of a $300 cash "bonus" to O’Neal for services rendered, a matter quickly approved by FBI headquarters (Donner 229). Over the next two years, O’Neal would report to the Bureau on such things as the strategies of the lawyers for the Hampton and Clark families (O’Reilly, Racial 312),

Meanwhile, a web of lies was being sewn. O’Neal went to Mayhood, to pay his respects to Hampton’s mother and father, and to circulate rumors that one of the other Panthers in the apartment that morning was a police informant (O’Reilly, Racial 312). On December 11, Hanrahan, Jalovec, and Robert Boyle, the criminal division police, made available to the Chicago Tribune official police photographs, which they said proved that "the Panthers opened the battle by firing a shotgun blast [through] the apartment door." Not only that, but Hanrahan stated that a warrant was issued to search the apartment on the basis of information that the apartment was a clandestine cache for weapons and that the police had "no prior knowledge" that Hampton and Clark would be found in the flat (Lee 1-1). Hanrahan later had a full-scale model of the apartment constructed so that the participating policemen could re-enact the raid on WBBM-TV, the local CBS affiliate. Each officer acted out his part step by step for the TV cameras "as if rehearsing a scene for a SWAT episode in slow motion." One cop said that as soon as he announced he was a police officer, occupants of the apartment responded with shotgun fire. Two raiders demonstrated how as they approached the front room, they were greeted by a woman who fired a shotgun blast at them as they stood in the doorway. Another cop explained how he had fired through a door and then received return fire, presumably from Mark Clark (Gottlieb 680).

Despite the elaborate re-enactment for TV and the explanations given by the fourteen policemen, it soon became apparent that the official version was at variance with the facts. The "bullet holes" in the Tribune photograph turned out to be nail heads. Although officers Groth and Davis both alleged that Brenda Harris fired a shotgun blast as they approached, there was absolutely no evidence of such a blast (Gottlieb 680).

Under pressure from the press and public opinion generally, Jerris Leonard, the Civil Rights Division Chief, opened a civil rights case. As always, the FBI did the investigating, and the agent assigned to the case worked under the close supervision of SAC Marlin Johnson. No Division executive recognized the irony in that or said anything when a federal grand jury convened in the winter of 1970 and the FBI withheld information regarding the roles of O’Neal and Mitchell. Leonard, who also served as the prosecutor in charge of the grand jury, said "O’Neal had nothing to do with the investigation we conducted." When the grand jury finished its preliminary report, Leonard told Marlin Johnson there would be "no indictments of police officers." In return, Hanrahan remained silent regarding the FBI role in setting up the raid. Because any sort of prosecution might compromise the Bureau, Hanrahan also agreed to the dismissal of indictments against the surviving Panthers (O’Reilly, Racial 313).

Because of rising anger in Chicago’s black community at the failure to indict any law-enforcement officials, Joseph Power, Chief Judge of the Cook County Criminal Court, established a special county grand jury on June 27, 1970, Barnabas Sears, a prominent Chicago lawyer, was appointed special prosecutor and promised a free hand in investigating the affair. In late April 1971, it appeared that indictments against Hanrahan and other police officials were imminent. But when the grand jury handed Power an envelope containing the indictments, the judge sought to prevent their return by refusing to open the envelope. The matter was resolved on August 24 by a unanimous opinion from the seven-man Illinois State Supreme Court that "the interests of justice would best be served by opening the indictment and proceeding pursuant to the law." The indictments against Hanrahan and thirteen others for conspiracy to obstruct justice in the investigation that followed the raid were finally made public. Still, no one was held accountable for the deaths of Hampton and Clark (Gottlieb 683).

The obstruction of justice case went to trial on July 10, 1972, with Cook County Criminal Court Judge Philip Romiti presiding without a jury. The indictments were dropped on November 1, 1972 as part of a quid pro quo arrangement in which remaining charges were dropped against the Panther survivors. The latter then joined the mothers of the deceased in a $47 million civil rights suit against not only the former state defendants, but a number of Chicago police investigators who had "cleared" the raiders of wrongdoing, and the FBI as well (Churchill 140).

The civil suit began on January 5, 1976 (Gottlieb 683). The Bureau had already brought in "ace" COINTELPRO manager Richard G. Held, who replaced Marlin Johnson as Chicago SAC, in order to handle the administrative aspects of what was considered to be a monumental cover-up. But even his undeniable skills in this regard were insufficient to gloss over the more than 100,000 pages of relevant Bureau documents concerning Hampton and the Chicago BPP he claimed under oath did not exist (Churchill 140). Finally, after years of resolute perjury and stonewalling by the FBI and Chicago police, as well as directed acquittals of the government defendants by U.S. District Judge Joseph Sam Perry (which had to be appealed and reversed by the Eighth Circuit Court), People’s Law Office attorneys G. Flint Taylor, Jr., Jeff Haas, and Dennis Cunningham finally scored (Churchill 141). In November 1982, thirteen years after "Gloves" Davis and the others entered the Monroe Street apartment, the Hampton and Clark families and the survivors agreed to a $1.85 million settlement that their attorney Taylor described as "an admission of the conspiracy that existed between the FBI and Hanrahan’s men to murder Fred Hampton." Robert Gruenberg, the assistant U.S. attorney who handled the case, said the federal government settled merely to avoid another costly trial. The multimillion-dollar cost included $36,000 paid to O’Neal for his services as a witness. Hampton’s relatives used their money to endow their family project, the Fred Hampton Scholarship Fund, for young blacks who want to become lawyers (O’Reilly, Racial 315).

The Hampton-Clark assassinations were unique in that the cover stories of involved police and local officials quickly unraveled. Notwithstanding the FBI’s best efforts to help "keep the lid on," there was a point when the sheer blatancy of the lies used to "explain" what had happened, obvious falsification of ballistics and other evidence, and so on could not be avoided. Fred Hampton’s murder leaves its mark in history books as a part of the "seamier side" of America, namely, the bigotry, intolerance, and repression (Ray 745). His murder also left its mark in Chicago as a symbol of the corruption and injustice of the Daley political machine (Travis 74).

Fred Hampton, like many other rising political leaders of the 1960s, was shot down before he was able to realize his full potential as a civic leader and authority of the changing and impressionable America of the 1960s. It is an unfortunate travesty that such crimes are permissible in a nation whose founding was based on political freedom and speech. It is even more horrendous that one of our nation’s institutions, the FBI, committed these assaults. Unfortunately, our government institutions commit these types of offenses more often than is reported or known to the general public and thus go unpunished and uncensored; thereby, in effect, allowed to continue these transgressions of human rights to continue unabated. Perhaps one day more public consciousness of these infractions will exist and ensue widespread protest against them, leading to a long-awaited age of true political freedom.

Churchill, Ward, and Jim Vander Wall. The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars against Domestic Dissent.

    Boston: South End Press, 1990.

Donner, Frank J. The Age of Surveillance. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980.

Gottlieb, Jeff, and Jeff Cohen. "Was Fred Hampton Executed?" The Nation 25 December 1976: 680-684.

Hampton, Fred. "All Power to the People." The Black Panther Leaders Speak. Ed. G. Louis Heath. Metuchen: The Scarecrow Press, 1976:
    35-36.

Hilliard, David, and Lewis Cole. This Side of Glory: the autobiography of David Hilliard and the Story of the Black Panther Party. Boston:

    Little, Brown and Company, 1993.

Lee, Edward, and Robert Wiedrich. "Detail of Events Leading to Raid and Gun Battle." Chicago Tribune 11 December 1969, late ed.: 1-1+.

O’Reilly, Kenneth. Black Americans: the FBI files. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1994.

---. Racial Matters: the FBI’s secret file on Black Americans. New York: The Free Press, 1989.

Ray, Gerda W. "A Readiness to Act: William Preston Jr,’s Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppresion of Radicals, 1903-1933." Reviews in

    American History 23.4 (1995): 744-755.

"Secobarbital." Encyclopedia Brittanica Online. Online. Excite. 31 July 1997.

Travis, Dempsey J. "Harold," The People’s Mayor: The Authorized biography of Mayor Harold Washington. Chicago: Urban Research
    Press, 1989.