12/04/2018
On this day in 1969, Illinois Black Panther Party founder and chairman Fred Hampton was assassinated by the Chicago Police Department as he lay sleeping in his bed at his west side apartment. He was just 21 years old. Make no mistake: the cops, in collaboration with the FBI, targeted Hampton specifically because he was an incredibly talented and effective organizer. He fought to radicalize and politicize street gangs to fight racism and class exploitation; he helped build a multiracial “rainbow coalition” of working class Chicagoans to take on the ruling class and their lackeys in City Hall; he was an integral part of the Panthers in Chicago and helped make it perhaps the most important organization of the radical left in the city. They killed him because they were terrified by his successes. We’ll never know what else he could have accomplished had this racist, violent society allowed him to live more than 21 years. But his legacy lives on and today we honor it and carry it forward. The revolutionary socialist and anti-racist message of the Panthers is more relevant today than ever.
