What's up family today marks the 48th anniversary of the assassination of Fred Hampton who was born August 30th 1948 and died December 4th 1969. Today we pay homage to the circumstances surrounding the death actually the murder of Fred Hampton who was only 21 years old and a deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party and considered by many to be the most inspiring young black leader to emerge in the wake of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. On this day in 1969 Hampton was brutally assassinated by the Chicago police in collusion with and on the direct orders of the FBI after J. Edgar Hoover declared the Panthers the greatest threat to internal security of the country and commanded the notorious Coentel Pro to neutralize leading black political activists and destroy their organizations. Tom Chomsky describes this shocking incident as the greatest domestic crime of the Nixon administration and for those with an anti-authority interest I would urge you to watch the 1971 documentary the murder of Fred Hampton but let us now briefly recall the facts of this shameful chapter in American history and lament the loss of a true luminary whose murder hurled it the end of the 60s and with it that decades revolutionary dream. At 4 o'clock a.m. on December 4th 1969 Chicago police rated the apartment that was home to several of the city's most prominent black Panthers Mark Clark the B.P. Defense Captain was on security duty. He had time for one reflective shot at the ceiling before Chicago police open fire on him over 200 shots would be fired in the next five minutes. But Clark's was the only one from a Panther rifle the police then turned their machine guns toward the wall of the bedroom where Fred Hampton lay sleeping with his fiance Dupor Johnson eight and a half months pregnant with their son Johnson tried desperately to rouse Hampton but he never woke. Earlier in the evening Hampton had been drug by his trusted bodyguard William O'Neill who was in fact an FBI informant and had backstabbed him and provided the Chicago police with a floor plan of the apartment. As fellow Panther screened that they were shooting at a heavily pregnant woman police stormed the bedroom and removed Johnson two officers approached the steel sleeping Fred Hampton who had been shot and wounded in the shoulder. After a chilling silence came the sound of two shots fired at point blank range into Hampton's head he's good and dead now one officer was heard to have said. Four other Panthers sustained gunshot wounds and were arrested and charged with attempted murder after Chicago police lied through their teeth about what went down. At a press conference that day Chicago's finest insisted they'd been violently attacked by the Panthers and were simply defending themselves. As evidence they issued a photograph of a door with bullet holes later discovered to be nail heads. The grieving Chicago Panthers responded by inviting the public to view the crime scene thousands visited and were appalled by the bloody and indisputable slaughter of these young civil rights leaders. No law enforcement officials were ever convicted of the crimes but when activists Berger Ries depents the vein of FBI office in 1971 they discovered and exposed documents conclusively providing that the raid had been a successful assassination attempt sanctioned by the FBI. And former William O'Neill had been paid handsomely for his dirty deed it was discovered but he would never again know peace years later he committed suicide after admitting his involvement in Hampton's assassination. Although the sickening story of Fred Hampton's death is sadly indivisible from his life on this anniversary of his assassination let us not neglect to pay tribute to this quite remarkable young man targeted specifically by the FBI for what they identified as his messianic qualities. To members of Chicago's black community in the 1960s no leader was more inspiring articulate effective are dedicated to the liberation of black people more than Hampton. A relentless grassroots organizer he established food pantries educational programs recreational outlets and free breakfast programs for impoverished black children perhaps his most extraordinary accomplishment and sobering evidence of what more he might have achieved was his brokering of a non aggression pack between Chicago's notoriously violent multi racial street gangs. In May of 1969 Hampton called a press conference to announce the truth had been declared among the rainbow coalition a phrase coined by Hampton and made popular over the years by Reverend Jesse Jackson Fred Hampton's murder was a great tragedy to all who knew him and a monumental set back to the civil rights movement. But the young pack understood the thread he posed to the establishment one of the most celebrated orators of his generation Hampton concluded a rally in speech shortly before his death with the chillingly press declaration but when I leave you remember I said with the last words on my lips that I am a revolutionary no more top.