GATEWAYS

The evening prior to Fred Hampton and Mark Clark’s murder in 1969, member of the FBI’s COINTELPRO drugged Hampton’s drink with a powerful sleeping drug.

Officers later raided the apartment at 4:30am and opened fire throughout the house with the sole purpose to murder Fred Hampton, arresting the rest of the wounded Panthers in the house on attempted murder and a variety of weapons charges.

In a press conference later in the day, the CPD claimed a fierce shootout between the police and panthers, however later investigation showed only one gun shot from the BPP.  

For the subsequent 13 years after Fred Hampton’s death, civil suits provided evidence of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program as well as the CPD’s search and destroy mission instead of a “shootout” the previously claimed, winning a $1.6 million settlement.