Today marks the 50th anniversary of Fred Hampton's assassination. Originally going into production with the title BLACK PANTHER, the Film Group’s 1971 film THE MURDER OF FRED HAMPTON was supposed to cover the rise of the group’s Illinois chapter, with a focus on its charismatic leader, Fred Hampton. In the middle of production, Hampton was murdered by the Chicago police department, and the film was subsequently transformed into a two-part document of a stillborn revolutionary moment. The first h

Yesterday marked the 47th anniversary of the death of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. On December 4, 1969, Chicago police raided Hampton’s apartment and shot and killed him in his bed. He 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 State’s Attorne

52 years ago, Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party was murdered by police in his bed. But his story is about much more than the raid that took his life. | Vox