Fred Hampton: The Rise, Betrayal and Murder of a Black Panther Leader
- Daniel Holland
- 8 hours ago
- 8 min read
In the darkness before dawn on the 4th of December 1969, the sound of breaking wood and gunfire pierced the quiet of Chicagos West Side. Neighbours later said it sounded like a war zone. Inside a small apartment at 2337 West Monroe Street, a 21-year-old man who had spent the previous evening teaching political education classes lay unconscious on a bloodied mattress. Minutes later, police officers would identify him, assess his condition, and, according to survivors, finish the job.
The police called what happened a gun battle. Some newspapers repeated the phrase. But the evidence that emerged in the hours, days and years after the shooting showed something very different. The raid that killed Fred Hampton was not chaotic. It was planned, assisted, mapped, and made possible by an informant working inside the Illinois Black Panther Party. It was also shaped by the FBI’s COINTELPRO programme, which openly aimed to prevent what J Edgar Hoover described as the rise of a Black messiah.
Fred Hampton’s death has since become one of the most widely studied episodes of domestic political repression in modern American history. This is the complete story, from his childhood to the events of horrific evening, the investigations that followed, and the legacy he left behind.
Early Life and a Natural Leader
Fredrick Allen Hampton was born on the 30th of August 1948, in suburban Chicago to parents who had moved north during the Great Migration. This was a period when millions of Black families left the South in search of industrial work and, with some hope, greater safety.
Even as a teenager, Hampton showed both confidence and moral purpose. He challenged racial segregation in his town by arguing that Black girls should be eligible for homecoming queen and that Black children should be allowed into the local swimming pool. These were not small matters. They touched the daily fabric of exclusion and humiliation.
The NAACP recognised him early. Hampton joined its youth wing and, through sheer energy and organisational talent, increased its membership from seven to 700. His political education expanded rapidly too. Like many young activists in the early 1960s, he began with admiration for Martin Luther King Jr’s non violent philosophy. But he later gravitated toward Malcolm X’s emphasis on self defence.
From Malcolm’s autobiography, one line struck him deeply:
"I am for violence if non violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American Black mans problem just to avoid violence."
To Hampton, who had seen the abuse directed at peaceful marchers, the sentiment sounded less like extremism and more like realism.
Hampton and the Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party for Self Defence was founded in Oakland in 10/1966 by Huey P Newton and Bobby Seale. By 1968, a Chicago chapter had formed and quickly attracted Hampton. Within months he became chairman of the Illinois Panthers, with Bobby Rush as deputy minister.
Popular images of the Panthers often focused on armed patrols or confrontations with police, but the Chicago chapter’s daily work looked quite different. They ran free breakfast programmes for schoolchildren, organised medical initiatives, and offered political education. They also believed that revolutionary politics had to be practical to make sense in working class neighbourhoods.
Hampton understood something else too: coalitions matter. His most significant achievement was the creation of the Rainbow Coalition, a multiracial alliance between the Panthers, the Young Lords (a Puerto Rican group), and the Young Patriots (a group representing white migrants from Appalachia living in poverty in Chicago).
This was not symbolic. It involved joint meetings, shared actions, and a clear message that racial division benefitted the city’s political establishment more than ordinary people. Jeffrey Haas, who later helped represent the Hampton family, observed:
"[Because of the Rainbow Coalition], Hampton represented a threat beyond just what the Panthers were."
The FBI was paying attention. Hoover called the Panthers "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country", and internal memoranda show that the Bureau considered Hampton a potential Black messiah capable of unifying the militant movement.
Chicago on Edge: The Tensions Before the Raid
The final months of 1969 were marked by escalating conflict. On the night of the 13th of November, while Hampton was in California, officers John J Gilhooly and Frank G Rappaport were killed in a gun battle with members of the Chicago Panthers. One died that night, the other the following day. Nineteen-year-old Panther Spurgeon Winter Jr was killed by police. Panther Lawrence S Bell was charged with murder.
The Chicago Tribune responded with an editorial titled "No Quarter for Wild Beasts", urging police to approach suspected Panthers prepared to shoot. The temperature in the city was rising rapidly.
Within the FBI, the climate was no less heated. Agency memoranda from July 1969 show that COINTELPRO’s explicit aim was to prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify Black nationalist groups. Hampton was specifically flagged as such a figure.
To achieve this, the FBI relied heavily on a single informant.
The Informant Inside the Party: William O’Neal
William O’Neal, a young man who had been recruited by the FBI after an arrest, infiltrated the Chicago Panthers and rose to a position of trust. His job gave him access to the chapter’s inner workings, security positions, and living arrangements.
O’Neal provided the FBI with detailed maps of Panther apartments, including 2337 West Monroe Street, noting the location of beds, doors and furniture. He was also the one who informed the FBI that Hampton was likely to move up to national leadership within the party.
On the evening of the 3rd of December, after Hampton led a political education class, he returned home with his pregnant fiancée Deborah Johnson and several Panthers, including Mark Clark, Ronald Satchel, Blair Anderson, James Grady, Harold Bell, Verlina Brewer, Louis Truelock and Brenda Harris. O’Neal had prepared a late dinner for them.
During that dinner, O’Neal slipped secobarbital into Hampton’s drink. Hampton was not known to take drugs, and Cook County chemist Eleanor Berman later confirmed that two separate tests showed the presence of barbiturates in his system. An FBI chemist claimed not to detect them, but Berman did not retract her findings.
Around 01:30, Hampton fell asleep mid-sentence while speaking to his mother on the phone.
Johnson later recalled watching him try to rouse when the raid began:
"It was like watching a slow motion film. He raised his head up real slow with his eyes toward the entranceway and laid his head back down. That was the only movement he made."
O’Neal left the apartment shortly before the shooting began.
The Raid Begins
The raid was organised by Cook County State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan through his Special Prosecutions Unit. Armed with a search warrant for illegal weapons, a 14-man team arrived at the apartment at around 04:00.
At approximately 04:45, they launched the assault.
Mark Clark, 22, was on security duty in the front room with a shotgun resting in his lap. Police shot him in the chest instantly. His shotgun discharged once into the ceiling as a reflex after his death. This single round would later be used to claim that the Panthers had fired first.
Police then directed heavy fire into the bedrooms. Survivors described a barrage of bullets. Ballistics later confirmed that officers fired between 82 and 99 shots. The Panthers fired one.
Deborah Johnson was pulled from the room as Hampton lay on the mattress, still unconscious. According to both Johnson and fellow Panther Harold Bell, the following exchange took place:
"That’s Fred Hampton."
"Is he dead? Bring him out."
"He’s barely alive."
"He’ll make it."
Then Johnson heard two shots and someone say:"He’s good and dead now."
Hampton had been shot twice in the head at close range.
His body was dragged into the doorway and left in a pool of blood.
In the north bedroom, Panthers Ronald Satchel, Blair Anderson, Verlina Brewer and Brenda Harris were also shot, then beaten, dragged outside and arrested on charges of attempted murder.
Immediate Aftermath: Competing Narratives
At a press conference the next day, the police announced the arrest team had been attacked by the "violent" and "extremely vicious" Panthers and defended themselves accordingly. In a second press conference on December 8, the police leadership praised the assault team for their "remarkable restraint," "bravery," and "professional discipline" in not killing all the Panthers present. Photographic evidence was presented of "bullet holes" allegedly made by shots fired by the Panthers, but reporters soon challenged this claim, saying they had clearly been made by nails in the hope they would look like bullet holes.
An internal investigation was undertaken, and the police claimed that their colleagues on the assault team were exonerated of any wrongdoing, concluding that they "used lawful means to overcome the assault." The police called their raid on Hampton's apartment a "shootout." The Black Panthers called it a "shoot-in," because so many shots were fired by police.
On the 6th of December thousands of people walked through the unguarded apartment. Among them was student photographer Jack Challem, whose photographs showed no evidence of bullets fired outward at police.
The Chicago Sun-Times published the headline: "Those bullet holes aren’t."
On 11 and 12 December, both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times published long front page accounts. They reached opposite conclusions.
A coroner’s inquest ruled the deaths justifiable homicides. Only police and state witnesses testified, surviving Panthers refused to testify because they still faced criminal charges.
At the same time, major civil rights figures, including Roy Wilkins and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, formed an independent commission and concluded the police had killed Hampton without justification and violated constitutional protections.
Federal Scrutiny, Legal Battles and the Exposure of COINTELPRO
In May 1970, a federal grand jury released a report criticising actions by both the police and the Panthers, but returning no indictments.
In 1970, the survivors and families of Hampton and Mark Clark filed a civil rights suit seeking USD 47.7 million in damages. After years of delays, the trial began and continued for 18 months. In 1977, the case was dismissed.
But in 1979, the United States Court of Appeals found that the government had withheld evidence, including documents linking the FBI to planning the raid. The case was reinstated. In 1980, the Supreme Court upheld that decision.
In 1982, the City of Chicago, Cook County and the federal government reached a settlement of USD 1.85 million. Attorney G Flint Taylor described the settlement as:
"An admission of the conspiracy that existed between the FBI and Hanrahan’s men to murder Fred Hampton."
The government denied wrongdoing, claiming it wished only to avoid further cost.
Meanwhile, a 1971 break-in at an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania exposed COINTELPRO publicly for the first time. Among the documents were:
• A floor plan of Hampton’s apartment
• Communications between the FBI and state authorities
• Evidence that O’Neal had been paid and rewarded for his role
William O’Neal later admitted his involvement in setting up the raid, he died by suicide in 1990.
Funeral and Public Reaction
More than 5,000 people attended Hampton’s funeral in December 1969. Jesse Jackson said in his eulogy:
"When Fred was shot in Chicago, Black people in particular, and decent people in general, bled everywhere."
A few days later, in retaliation, members of the Weather Underground bombed several police vehicles in Chicago.
Four weeks after the raid, on Boxing Day, 1969, Deborah Johnson gave birth to their son, Fred Hampton Jr.
Legacy
Fred Hampton’s killing is widely viewed as a turning point in the decline of the Black Panther Party. By 1982, the party had effectively dissolved. Yet Hampton’s work left deep marks:
• His Rainbow Coalition influenced later multiracial organising in Chicago
• His focus on police brutality anticipated the concerns of Black Lives Matter
• His legacy shaped the city’s political transformation, including the 1983 election of Harold Washington as Chicago’s first Black mayor.
Georgia State University professor Craig McPherson said Hampton belongs in the same grouping as Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and Medgar Evers, adding that he should receive far more recognition nationally.
The 2021 film "Judas and the Black Messiah" helped bring the story of Hampton and O’Neal to new international audiences. But the fact remains that Hampton’s life ended at 21. His supporters have long argued that his death removed a political organiser who had the potential to alter the course of American urban activism.
Sources
https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/individuals/fred-hampton
https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-81-fbi-cointelpro
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/12/fred-hampton-black-panther-william-oneal-fbi
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/hampton-black-panthers/
