Fred Hampton

Fredrick Allen Hampton (1948 – 1969) was an American revolutionary activist and deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. A brilliant orator who led youth chapters of the NAACP as a teenager, Hampton built a formidable community movement on Chicago's West Side, establishing free medical clinics, community security patrols, and a Free Breakfast for Children program feeding thousands daily.

Hampton pioneered the groundbreaking 'Rainbow Coalition', forging an unprecedented political alliance between Black Panthers, the Young Patriots (poor Appalachian white youths), and the Young Lords (Puerto Rican activists), alongside city street gangs. Targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO program as a dangerous potential 'messiah' who could unify minority communities, Hampton was drugged with secobarbital by an FBI informant on December 4, 1969, and shot to death in his bed during a 4:30 a.m. raid by Chicago police, sparking national outrage and civil rights investigations.