Before dawn on December 4, 1969, Chicago police raided an apartment on West Monroe Street and killed Fred Hampton, the charismatic 21-year-old chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party, and Mark Clark, a Panther from Peoria. Hampton was shot in his bed; evidence later showed he had likely been drugged beforehand by an FBI informant.
The raid, carried out by officers attached to the Cook County State's Attorney, was later shown to have been coordinated with the FBI's COINTELPRO program, which had targeted Hampton for his success at building alliances across racial and gang lines — the original "Rainbow Coalition." The killings, and the exposure of the FBI's role, became one of the most notorious episodes of state repression against the party.