Fred Hampton Aniversari, data de naixement

Fredrick Allen Hampton Sr. (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was an African American revolutionary and political activist who served as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party, a Marxist-Leninist and black power political and militant organization from 1966 until his assassination in 1969. He was also chair of the Illinois chapter and founded the anti-racist, anti-classist Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that combined Black Panthers, Young Patriots, and the Young Lords, which were all leftist political organizations that included African Americans, White Southerners, and Puerto Ricans. Hampton also formed an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. Hampton advocated for the overthrow of the federal government of the United States in a communist revolution.

In 1967, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) identified Hampton as a radical threat. It tried to subvert his activities in Chicago, sowing disinformation among black progressive groups and placing a counterintelligence operative in the local Panthers organization. In December 1969, Hampton was drugged, then shot and killed in his bed during a predawn raid at his Chicago apartment by a tactical unit of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, who received aid from the Chicago Police Department and the FBI leading up to the attack. Law enforcement sprayed more than 100 gunshots throughout the apartment; the occupants fired once. During the raid, Panther Mark Clark was also killed and several others were seriously wounded. In January 1970, the Cook County Coroner held an inquest; the coroner's jury concluded that Hampton's and Clark's deaths were justifiable homicides.

A civil lawsuit for wrongful death was later filed on behalf of the survivors and the relatives of Hampton and Clark. It was resolved in 1982 by a settlement of $1.85 million (equivalent to $6.17 million in 2025); the U.S. federal government, Cook County, and the City of Chicago each paid one-third to a group of nine plaintiffs. Given revelations about the COINTELPRO program and documents associated with the killings, many scholars now consider Hampton's murder, at age 21, a deliberate assassination at the FBI's initiative.

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