Fred Hampton

Fred Hampton (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was a radical African American

Chicago

At about the same time that Hampton was successfully organizing young African

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Americans for the NAACP, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (as it

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was originally called) started rising

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to national prominence. Hampton was quickly attracted to the Black Panther's

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approach, which was based on a ten-point program of black

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self-determination. Hampton joined the Party and relocated to

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downtown Chicago, and in November of 1968 he joined the Party's nascent Illinois

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chapter — founded by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizer Bob Brown in late 1967.

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Over the next year, Hampton and his associates made a number of significant

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achievements in Chicago. Perhaps his most important accomplishment was his

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brokering of a nonaggression pact between Chicago's most powerful street gangs.

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By emphasizing that racial and ethnic conflict between gangs would only keep its

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members entrenched in poverty, Hampton strove to forge a class-conscious,

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multiracial albeit tenuous alliance between the BPP, Students for a Democratic Society (a radical

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political action group, most of whose members were white), the Blackstone

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Rangers, the Young Lords (a Puerto Rican organization), and the

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Young Patriots (a white group). In May of 1969, Hampton called a press

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conference to announce that a truce had been declared among this "rainbow

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coalition," a phrase coined by Hampton and made popular over the years by

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Rev. Jesse Jackson.

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Due to his organizing skills, oratorical gifts, and personal charisma, he rose

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quickly in the organization, becoming leader of the Chicago chapter of the

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party. He organized weekly rallies, worked with a People's Clinic, taught

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political education classes every morning at 6am, and launched a project for

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community supervision of the police.

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Hampton was also instrumental in the BPP's Free Breakfast Program.

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When Brown left the Party with Stokely Carmichael in

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the FBI-fomented SNCC/Panther split, Hampton assumed chairmanship of the Illinois

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state BPP, automatically making him a national BPP deputy chairman.

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As the panther leadership across the country began to be decimated by the impact of

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the FBI's COINTELPRO, Hampton's prominence in the national hierarchy

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increased rapidly and dramatically.

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Hampton was in line to be appointed to the Party's Central Committee's Chief of

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Staff, were it not for his untimely death on the morning of December 4, 1969.

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