Exactly 50 years ago, Black Panther Party of Illinois Chairman Fred Hampton was killed. A white gang raided his West Side Chicago apartment and fired approximately 99 bullets, killing not only 21-year-old Hampton but fellow Panther, 22-year-old Mark Clark, according to a nonprofit research and education initiative dubbed the Zinn Education Project. Clark fired one shot in return, likely after he had been “fatally shot in the heart and was falling to the ground,” researchers said.
If any majority-minority gang had launched the shootout, the offenders would likely have ended up in prison—well, assuming authorities felt like caring two black men were killed—but the gang that killed Hampton and Clark was none other than Chicago police, accompanied by officers of then-State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan’s office.
Billy “Che” Brooks, deputy minister of education of the Panther Party of Illinois, said police had harassed the Panthers and raided their offices repeatedly in an interview last year with the University of Illinois at Chicago. He told the school when Martin Luther King Jr. died April 4, 1968, black youth took to the streets, although he wasn't one of them. "I've never, never ever did anything illegal other than be black," he said. "The police came down pretty f--king hard, you know." Chicago Mayor Richard Daley Sr. reportedly issued a "shoot to kill order" on the protestors.