On December 4th, 1969,
Chicago police raided Fred Hamptons with 99 bullets into his apartment.
He was asleep next to his pregnant wife,
drugged the night before by his private bodyguard
(a car thief turned FBI informant who later committed suicide in his 40's)
and gave a sketch of Fred's apartment to the FBI
The Chairman was just 21 years old.
*Black Panther leader Mark Clark was also killed in the raid.
While authorities claimed the Panthers had opened fire on the police who were there to serve a search warrant for weapons, evidence later emerged that told a very different story: that the FBI, the Cook County states attorneys office and the Chicago police conspired to assassinate Fred Hampton.
We don’t think you fight fire with fire; we think you fight fire with water.
We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity.
We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism.
We’re still here to say we’re not going to fight reactionary pigs and reactionary state’s
attorneys like Hanrahan with any other reactions on our part.
We’re going to fight their reactions with all of us people getting together and having an international proletarian revolution.
- Ch. Fred Hampton
So we say—we always say in the Black Panther Party that they can do anything they want to to us.
We might not be back. I might be in jail. I might be anywhere.
But when I leave, you’ll remember I said, with the last words on my lips,
that I am a revolutionary. And you’re going to have to keep on saying that.
You’re going to have to say that I am a proletariat, I am the people.
- Ch. Fred Hampton