Keyon Marshall

Bonnie Robinson 

ENGL 1117

04/25/20

The death of Fred Hampton 

There are people in this world who feel so strongly about a cause that they will give their life for it. And the person I’m talking about today did exactly that: his name is Fredrick Allen Hampton or just Fred Hampton he was a chairman in the Chicago branch of the black Panthers in the late 60’s.

 See I would love to talk about the things he did for his community but I would rather talk about the things that surround his death that are truly heartbreaking so for starters he was killed by Chicago police in the dead of night in his home while sleeping right next to his pregnant wife.

 I feel to completely understand why this happened you have to know what was happening at the time see at this point of time was the rise of the black panther party and if you know anything about them the FBI was not very fond of them and wanted them gone and eventually they were. See Fred Hampton started to come up as a threat to the way life in America was when it came to race he started making people of color see that they were more than what was being portrayed. And the FBI saw this as a threat to national security and at this time the head of the FBI was no other than J. Edgar Hoover who was known to be against civil rights of blacks in America and wanted to disband the black Panther party. And that all started with Hampton when murdered him they tried their hardest to make it seem like the black panther where trying to kill the cops until it was later revealed that only one shot was fired by the panthers after the police started firing they fired somewhere around 60 shots into the apartment and that night Fred Hampton died for a cause he believed in.

It’s like how in present day police kill unarmed blacks in the streets although it is nothing like Fred Hampton it is similar. I feel like his death was not in vain because we have come so far and we will only go forward.