The betrayal of Fred Hampton
THE SHOCKING TRUE STORY BEHIND OSCARWINNING FILM JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH
When Daniel Kaluuya’s character Fred Hampton utters the words, “Anywhere there’s people, there’s power,” in Judas
And The Black Messiah, it’s enough to put a lump in anyone’s throat. The real Fred Hampton was just 21 when he was shot dead by police, targeted because he wanted a better life for people of colour. Here’s the story behind one of the standout films of the year.
BLACK POWER
Back in 1960s America, a potent force for change was emerging. Much like today’s Black Lives Matter movement was founded after multiple deaths of black people at the hands of police officers, the Black Panther Party
(BPP) was formed following the assassination of Malcolm X, and the shooting of unarmed black teenager Matthew Johnson by police in San Francisco.
Created in 1966 in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, it was a proactive alliance that aimed to advocate for victims of racial injustice. The BPP wanted liberation and empowerment for all black people, and its “Ten-point Program” included calls for gainful employment, decent housing and free healthcare. It also called for an immediate end to police brutality. As former Panther Kathleen Cleaver said, “The Oakland police beat up a lot of people. They were brutal, arrogant.”
The movement was deeply involved in social welfare and reform. In 1969, the party set up the Free Breakfast Program, to provide food for thousands of African-american children who would otherwise go hungry. They also set up initiatives offering free legal services, medical clinics and housing cooperatives. But the party was not always peaceful, any more than those who sought to attack it were. They organised armed citizen patrols and actively resisted oppression, which led to violent clashes with authorities. Consequently, they gained a skewed reputation as militant and dangerous.
All of these elements meant the party soon drew the attention of then-head of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover. He decided the Black Panthers were a subversive
threat to the very fabric of US society, and set about disrupting this civil rights movement by any means necessary.
CHARISMATIC LEADER
Fred Hampton was a young man with a dream of a better day. He had been mobilising for change since he was 12, campaigning for better access to academic and recreational services.
So, it was inevitable that he gravitated towards the BPP. In 1968, he began working with them in Chicago, and he was a persuasive, impassioned speaker with a natural gift for galvanising people to action. Recognising that the disenfranchised were stronger together, he began working with organisations from all races. He also helped negotiate a peace agreement among Chicago’s gangs, reasoning that racial groups fighting among themselves just kept everyone oppressed. Eventually, his work led to the formation of the Rainbow Coalition, an “anti-racist, anti-class, multicultural movement” united against oppression, poverty, corruption and police brutality. He also initiated numerous community programmes, including blood drives.
Within a year, Fred had become Chairman of one of the largest chapters of the Black Panther Party, which effectively put a target on his back. Beloved by thousands, he was unifying disparate groups for a common good – but to the authorities, that made him dangerous. Hoover was convinced Fred’s alliance was leading to a revolution that would overthrow the government of the
United States and needed to be stopped. So, the FBI sent an undercover informant to infiltrate his life, setting into motion a chain of events that would end with Fred’s murder.
Almost since the BPP’S inception, the FBI had been working to dismantle it from both the outside and inside, most often through their Counterintelligence Program, known as COINTELPRO. According to the FBI’S own records, the initiative, “Began in 1956 to disrupt the activities of the Communist Party of the United States. In the 1960s, it was expanded to include a number of other domestic groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Socialist Workers Party, and the Black Panther Party.”
And they were willing to go to any lengths. FBI agents were exploiting existing, and actively creating, simmering rivalries between Black nationalist groups, and within the party itself. The Free Breakfast Program was viciously targeted in a series of “pantry raids” committed while children were eating, because as an internal memo from Hoover stated, “The [Program] represents the best and most influential activity going for the BPP, and is potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralise the BPP and destroy what it stands for”.
Perhaps their most insidious tactic was the use of undercover informants, and here enters William O’neal. A petty criminal with a history of stealing cars and impersonating an officer, it’s been said O’neal was flipped by the FBI when he was 17, becoming an informant in return for staying out of prison. O’neal’s job was to infiltrate the
BPP and befriend Hampton, and he did it brilliantly. He was so convincing, in fact, that he became Hampton’s bodyguard and confidante, before rising to the position of the BPP’S head of security. It was from this trusted position that O’neal was able to sow dissent. The FBI repeatedly encouraged previously allied factions to fight using disinformation, and at one point, O’neal instigated a serious altercation between Panthers members
‘HE WAS SHOT THREE TIMES AND DIED OF WOUNDS TO THE HEAD’
and the Blackstone Rangers gang.
But it was when Hampton and his fiancée Akua Njeri (then known as Deborah Johnson) moved into a flat near BPP headquarters that O’neal committed the ultimate betrayal. He told the FBI that weapons were being stored inside the property, and provided them with details of where everything was in the flat. Then, on 3 December 1969, O’neal is said to have drugged Hampton with fentanyl to incapacitate him ahead of a raid by the Chicago Police and the FBI.
COLD-BLOODED KILL
Seven Panther party members were staying in Hampton’s property when 14 armed officers stormed in just before 5am on 4 December. Upon entry, they immediately shot Mark Clark, who had been on watch at the door with a shotgun in his lap. As he died, the gun fired into the ceiling on a reflex.
According to witness reports, Hampton was fast asleep in a back bedroom – laying on a mattress, with Akua next to him – when the police entered. Speaking years later, Akua said,
“Fred just raised his head up real slow. It was like watching slow motion… He raised his head up real slow, with his eyes toward the entrance way, toward the bedroom, and laid his head back down. That was the only movement he made.” She was then removed from the room, and Hampton – practically unconscious from the drugs given to him – was shot and killed.
The New York Times reported, “Mr Hampton was shot three times and died of bullet wounds in the head and brain. The coroner’s pathologist who examined him testified that two bullets had gone through Mr Hampton’s head from opposite sides and that the third bullet, the carbine slug, had entered his shoulder.” It was noted that there was no plaster in the wounds, meaning he was not accidentally shot through the wall.
Survivors on the scene described how Hampton’s body was then dragged out of the bedroom and left on the floor. The other Panthers were beaten up, before all were arrested on charges of attempted murder. As her fiancé lay dead, Akua was charged with two counts of attempted murder and aggravated assault – she was almost nine months pregnant at the time. She said, “When I was handcuffed, the police said, ‘You better not run, you better not try to escape’, and he kept pressing that gun to my belly. So, my child felt that cold steel.” The police would later describe the incident as “a fierce gun battle with members of the Black Panther Party” in which over 100 shots were fired. However, it was later determined that only one bullet came from anyone other than the police – Mark Clark’s death shot into the ceiling.
NO JUSTICE
The deaths of Hampton and Clark sparked incandescent fury, and a special coroner’s inquest was convened. It declared the deaths to be “justifiable homicides”, denying any chance of justice. The New York Times reported that, after the police were cleared in court, Fred’s mother Iberia Hampton was asked if she had any comment on the verdict. “No, not any to make,” she said, shaking her head. “Rotten people, the whole bunch is rotten people. They’re no good. I hope they all got children and they know how I feel.”
Despite the verdict, it is widely believed the killing of Fred Hampton was nothing short of an assassination – sanctioned by Hoover’s FBI, carried out by the police, and enabled by the betrayal of O’neal. He’s believed to have gone into witness protection in 1973, and he died in 1990, after being hit by a car. Some say it was an accident, others say he died by suicide, unable to live with what he had done.
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