Fred Hampton, deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, was born on August 30, 1948 and raised in the Chicago suburb of Maywood, Illinois. In high school he excelled in academics and athletics. After Hampton graduated from high school, he enrolled in a pre-law program at Triton Junior College in River Grove, Illinois. Hampton also became involved in the civil rights movement, joining his local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His dynamic leadership and organizational skills in the branch enabled him to rise to the position of Youth Council President. Hampton mobilized a racially integrated group of five hundred young people who successfully lobbied city officials to create better academic services and recreational facilities for African American children.

In 1968, Hampton joined the Black Panther Party (BPP), headquartered in Oakland, California. Using his NAACP experience, he soon headed the Chicago chapter. During his brief BPP tenure, Hampton formed a “Rainbow Coalition” which included Students for a Democratic Society, the Blackstone Rangers, a street gang and the National Young Lords, a Puerto Rican organization. Hampton was also successful in negotiating a gang truce on local television.

In an effort to neutralize the Chicago BPP, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Chicago Police Department placed the chapter under heavy surveillance and conducted several harassment campaigns. In 1969, several BPP members and police officers were either injured or killed in shootouts, and over one hundred local members of the BPP were arrested.

During an early morning police raid of the BPP headquarters at 2337 W. Monroe Street on December 4, 1969, twelve officers opened fire, killing the 21-year-old Hampton and Peoria, Illinois Panther leader Mark Clark. Police also seriously wounded four other Panther members. Many in the Chicago African American community were outraged over the raid and what they saw as the unnecessary deaths of Hampton and Clark. Over 5,000 people attended Hampton’s funeral where Reverends Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference eulogized the slain activist. Years later, law enforcement officials admitted wrongdoing in the killing of Hampton and Clark. In 1990, and later in 2004, the Chicago City Council passed resolutions commemorating December 4 as Fred Hampton Day.

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  • plinky [he/him]
    ·
    21 days ago

    Idk why my brain jumped from wolves to them eating berries, they do do that however to get vitamins.

    When was the last time you ate a berry you have not tried before though owl-wink

    • PaX [comrade/them, they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      21 days ago

      It has been a while :(
      Would try if I had money for berries
      That's a really cool wolf fact though, I didn't know that

      • plinky [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        21 days ago

        two-wolves-1 Wolves don't need money to find berries

        some of them are poisonous two-wolves-2

        two-wolves-1 use ai lol

        fucking wolf number 1, stg two-wolves-2

        but fr, sure you get enough vitamins?

        • PaX [comrade/them, they/them]
          ·
          21 days ago

          Sorry, didn't see your edit until now

          but fr, sure you get enough vitamins?

          I'm probably deficient in vitamin D but everything else is fine I think, idk I haven't had any tests done in a while tbh

          • plinky [he/him]
            ·
            21 days ago

            I just chuck vitamins for a week when I feel weird as an exploratory medicine tbh. They aren’t harmful, cheap, don’t go bad, and sometimes fix some stuff/undefinable cravings. My greatest achievement yet was figuring out I was missing magnesium.

              • plinky [he/him]
                ·
                edit-2
                21 days ago

                Idk, unless it’s some nuclear grade stuff, hard to overdo them.

                It was weird couple of weeks, just muscle cramps for nights, out of nowhere. Or in childhood I nearly managed to get vitamin a deficiency cause I hated carrots and didn’t eat fruits for some dumb reason in autumn, got like vision issues when it started snowing.

        • PaX [comrade/them, they/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          21 days ago

          I wish I was a wolf sicko-wistful
          They probably already know which berries are safe but humans have to use their child labor bricks to burn down a forest to run their berry analysis statistical models so they can know which berries are safe 80% of the time or they have to pay 4 times the price of a loaf of bread for like 100 grams of prepackaged, soggy, mushy berries grown in a desert or something