The FBI didn’t kill Fred Hampton because of the guns. They killed him because of the coalition.

In 1969, Hampton united the Black Panther Party, the Puerto Rican Young Lords, and Confederate flag-wearing white Appalachians into the original Rainbow Coalition. J. Edgar Hoover ordered it destroyed in writing.

This is the four-phase campaign the FBI ran against Hampton’s coalition — from the racist cartoons they planted in the Panthers’ name, to the floor plan William O’Neal passed to Cook County State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan, to the secobarbital slipped into Hampton’s drink the night before a fourteen-man tactical unit fired ninety-nine rounds into his Chicago apartment.

Fred Hampton was twenty-one. The Panthers fired one shot. Six months after announcing the Rainbow Coalition, Hampton was dead. Fifteen years later, Jesse Jackson copyrighted the name.

Phase 1: Disinformation

The FBI’s first move was to make the Panthers look like they hated the very people Hampton was recruiting. COINTELPRO operatives planted racist cartoons attributed to the Panthers in Young Lords territory and sent forged letters between factions designed to start a gang war. Hampton kept building anyway.

Phase 2: Infiltration

William O’Neal was recruited as an informant before he ever joined the Panthers. By 1969 he was Hampton’s bodyguard and head of security. He passed a floor plan of Hampton’s apartment — including the location of his bed — to the FBI, which forwarded it to Hanrahan’s office.

Phase 3: The Drugging

The night before the raid, O’Neal put secobarbital in Hampton’s drink at a Panther dinner. Witnesses reported Hampton fell asleep mid-sentence during a political education class. He never woke up to defend himself.

Phase 4: December 4, 1969

At 4:45 AM, fourteen members of Hanrahan’s tactical unit entered Hampton’s apartment. Ninety-nine rounds fired inward. One shot outward. Hampton was shot twice in the head at close range while unconscious in his bed. He was twenty-one years old.

The federal grand jury that reviewed the raid found the official account — that the Panthers fired first — to be unsupported by ballistic evidence. No one was ever prosecuted.

Sources: “Black against Empire” by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr. (UC Press); FBI COINTELPRO files; Federal grand jury report (1970); “This Side of Glory” by David Hilliard.