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December 4, 2019

Today Marks 50th Anniversary of Assassination of Fred Hampton
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Today marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Black Panther leader
Fred Hampton. On December 4, 1969, Chicago police raided Hampton's
apartment and shot and killed him in his bed. He was just 21 years old.
Black Panther leader Mark Clark was also killed by police in the raid.
Authorities initially claimed the Panthers had opened fire on the police
who were there to serve a search warrant for weapons. But evidence later
emerged that told a very different story: the FBI, the Cook County
State's Attorney's Office and the Chicago police had conspired to
assassinate Fred Hampton. This is Fred Hampton, in his own words,
speaking before his death about the repression against his fellow Black
Panther Party members.

Fred Hampton: "Bobby Seale is going through all types of physical and
mental torture. But that's alright, because we said even before this
happened, and we're going to say it after this and after I'm locked up
and after everybody's locked up, that you can jail revolutionaries, but
you can't jail the revolution. You might run a liberator like Eldridge
Cleaver out of the country, but you can't run liberation out of the
country. You might murder a freedom fighter like Bobby Hutton, but you
can't murder freedom fighting."

That was Fred Hampton, speaking in the 1969 documentary The Murder of
Fred Hampton, produced by the Chicago Film Group. Fred Hampton and Mark
Clark were assassinated the FBI and Chicago police 50 years ago today.


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