You Can Kill the Revolutionary, But You Can't Kill The Revolution: Fred Hampton

On this date in 1969, Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party and Mark Clark, a fellow member were killed (while sleeping) by Chicago police. The attack, aided by the help of an infiltrator, was masterminded by the city police force and the FBI's powerful counter-intelligence program(COINTEL-PRO).

The panthers left alive, including Deborah Johnson, Hampton's girlfriend, who was eight months pregnant at the time, were arrested and charged with attempting to murder the police. Afterwards, ballistic evidence revealed that only one bullet had been fired by the Panthers whereas nearly a hundred came from police guns.

After the resignation of President Richard Nixon, the Senate Intelligence Committee conducted a wide-ranging investigation of America's intelligence services. Frank Church of Idaho, the chairman of the committee, revealed in April, 1976 that William O'Neal, Hampton's bodyguard, was a FBI agent-provocateur who, days before the raid, had delivered an apartment floor-plan to the Bureau with an "X" marking Hampton's bed. Ballistic evidence showed that most bullets during the raid were aimed at Hampton's bedroom.

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