Chicago, December 4 (RHC)-- U.S. activists marked the 50th anniversary of the murder 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 only 21 years old.   Another Black Panther leader, Mark Clark, was also killed by police in the raid. 

Authorities initially claimed the Panthers had opened fire on the police who were there to serve a search warrant for weapons.  But evidence later emerged that told a very different story: the FBI, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and the Chicago police had conspired to assassinate Fred Hampton. 

Fred Hampton: “Bobby Seale is going through all types of physical and mental torture. But that’s alright, because we said even before this happened, and we’re going to say it after this and after I’m locked up and after everybody’s locked up, that you can jail revolutionaries, but you can’t jail the revolution. You might run a liberator like Eldridge Cleaver out of the country, but you can’t run liberation out of the country. You might murder a freedom fighter like Bobby Hutton, but you can’t murder freedom fighting.”