Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton, 21, and Mark Clark, 22, were shot and killed in during a raid by Chicago police officers.
Under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI had been battling civil rights activists and other minority leaders for years under the Cointelpro program, whose purpose, according to one FBI document, was to “misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist hate type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership and supporters.”
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The raid came less than a month after two Chicago police officers were killed in an ambush. FBI officials asserted to the Chicago police that the Black Panthers had been responsible. Despite the evidence showing that police had fired 99 percent of the bullets and had falsified the report on the incident, the first federal grand jury did not indict anyone involved in the raid. A subsequent grand jury did indict the 14 police officers involved, but the charges were dismissed.
No one has been charged in the slayings of the two officers.
