Biography
Akua Njeri, then known as Deborah Johnson, was a member of the Illinois Black Panther Party and the fiancee of chairman Fred Hampton. She was present and about eight months pregnant during the December 1969 Chicago police raid in which Hampton and Mark Clark were killed, an operation later tied to the FBI's COINTELPRO program. In the aftermath she was arrested and charged with attempted murder and aggravated assault and held on bail; forensic and ballistics evidence discredited the state's case, and the charges against the surviving Panthers were dropped in 1970. She later took the name Akua Njeri and became a longtime activist preserving Hampton's legacy.
