Street named in honor of Fred Hampton, Black Panther leader killed by police in 1969

By Todd Feurer

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    CHICAGO, Illinois (WBBM) — Fred Hampton Sr., a Black Panther Party leader who was shot and killed in Chicago during a 1969 police raid, received an honorary street name on Saturday on the Near West Side.

Hampton’s friends and family, along with Mayor Brandon Johnson, gathered on the same portion of West Monroe Street where Hampton and fellow Black Panther Party member Mark Clark were killed in a raid ordered by Cook County State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan.

That block has now been designated Honorary Chairman Fred Hampton Sr. Way. Saturday would have been Hampton’s 77th birthday

At the time Hampton was gunned down, Hanrahan’s office claimed Hampton and Clark were killed in a shootout after they fired first, but years later, a federal grand jury determined that police falsified reports on the raid. Ballistics evidence determined all but one of the 100 shots were fired by police.

It also was later revealed that an FBI informant had drugged the 21-year-old Hampton with barbiturates before the raid, and he was likely asleep at the time.

Hanrahan was later indicted for obstruction of justice, but was acquitted.

After evidence surfaced that the FBI coaxed Chicago Police and other law enforcement agencies in the United States into armed clashes with the Black Panthers, a federal judge approved a $1.85 million settlement to Hampton and Clark’s families and survivors of the raid, to be paid by the city of Chicago, Cook County and the federal government.

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