Forty-two
years ago, the Illinois Black Panther Party lost its chairman and another
member in an apparent one-way gun battle with Chicago police on the West Side.
Chairman
Fred Hampton Sr. and Mark Clark were ambushed in a raid by Chicago police on
Dec. 4, 1969. Police entered his apartment in the 2300 block of West Monroe
Street and fired at least 99 shots, versus one shot fired by the opposing side.
Hampton was 21 years old at the time of his death. The location has been dubbed
“Ground Zero” by his son, Fred Hampton Jr.
The
chairman was honored in September 2007 with an honorary street name and statue
in his honor in Maywood, where he grew up. The former Oak Street is now known
as Fred Hampton Way and the statue sits in front of the Fred Hampton Family
Aquatic Center.
The book,
The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police
Murdered a Black Panther by Jeffrey Haas, touches on Hampton’s early years that helped mold
him as a freedom fighter. Haas represented the chairman and the Panther Party
in the 1960s.
