Fred Hampton
The FBI, determined to prevent any enhancement of the Black Panther Party leadership’s effectiveness, decided to set up an arms raid on Hampton’s Chicago apartment. FBI informant William O’Neal provided them with detailed information about Hampton’s apartment, including the layout of furniture and the bed in which Hampton and his girlfriend slept. When Hampton and a group of Panthers arrived at the apartment that night, they were met by O’Neal, who had prepared a late dinner. O’Neal had slipped the powerful barbiturate sleep agent, secobarbital, into a drink that Hampton consumed during the dinner, in order to sedate Hampton so he would not awaken during the subsequent raid. O’Neal left at this point, and, about 1:30 a.m., Hampton fell asleep in mid-sentence talking to his mother on the telephone. When automatic gunfire converged at the head of the south bedroom where Hampton slept, unable to awaken as a result of the barbiturates, he was lying on a mattress in the bedroom with his fiancée, who was 8 1/2 months pregnant with their child. When two officers found him wounded in the shoulder, fellow Black Panther Harold Bell reported that he heard the following exchange:
“That’s Fred Hampton.”
“Is he dead?… Bring him out.”
“He’s barely alive.
“He’ll make it.”
Two shots were heard, which were later discovered to have been fired point blank in Hampton’s head. According to a Panther who overheard them, one officer then said:
“He’s good and dead now.”
Patrice Lumumba
Patrice Lumumba was a Congolese independence leader and the first democratically elected prime minister of the Republic of the Congo (now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo). As founder and leader of the mainstream Mouvement National Congolais (MNC) party, Lumumba played an important role in campaigning for independence from Belgium. Just three months after Congolese independence in 1960, Lumumba’s government was deposed in a coup following his attempt to solicit support from the Soviet Union against the Katanga secessionists. This led to growing differences with President Joseph Kasa-Vubu and chief-of-staff Joseph-Désiré Mobutu as well as foreign opposition from the United States and Belgium. Lumumba was subsequently imprisoned by state authorities under Mobutu and executed by firing squad under the command of the Katangan authorities. The United Nations, which he had asked to come to the Congo, did not intervene to save him. Belgium, the United States and the United Kingdom have all been accused of involvement in Lumumba’s death. According to Democracy Now!, “Lumumba’s pan-Africanism and his vision of a united Congo gained him many enemies. Both Belgium and the United States actively sought to have him killed. The CIA ordered his assassination but could not complete the job. Instead, the United States and Belgium covertly funneled cash and aid to rival politicians who seized power and arrested Lumumba.”
