Four of the survivors were taken to the hospital and the other three went to Cook County Jail.
Police initially charged the seven survivors with unlawful use of weapons, aggravated assault, and attempted murder and held them on $100,000 bond, according to press reports. In the end, twenty-one-year-old Hampton and twenty-two-year-old Clark, who had been guarding the front door, lay dead. With tears in her eyes, Njeri recalled an officer remarking, “He’s good and dead now.” Soon after, police entered the bedroom where an unconscious Hampton lay, and continued firing. She stumbled into the kitchen with her hands up, hoping she would survive, she recalled. The shooting stopped only momentarily when another Panther shouted out that Njeri was pregnant. It would later be revealed that he had been drugged by a fellow Panther and FBI informant. As the raid started in the early hours of the morning, another Panther rushed in to alert Hampton that the police were in the building and shooting, but Hampton could not be awakened, Njeri said. Recounting the night of the raid at 2337 West Monroe, which served as the home of Hampton and Njeri and was frequented by other BPP members, Njeri recalled lying next to Hampton in bed as he drifted off to sleep, talking on the phone. She spoke about her relationship with Hampton, the Black Panther Party’s programs in Chicago, and December 4, 1969. Njeri, formerly named Deborah Johnson, was engaged to Hampton and carrying his child at the time of his death.
If you’ve ever been under gunfire, five minutes is five hours,” said Akua Njeri to the crowd assembled at the fiftieth anniversary vigil. While the vigil was at times somber, focusing on the injustice of Hampton’s assassination, recalling its details, and holding a five-minute moment of silence with raised fists, its tone was overwhelmingly resilient: former Black Panther Party (BPP) members, current BPP Cubs members, and other activists look to the legacy of Hampton to confront violence directed at the Black community today, both in the city and the world at large. Its organizers, led by son Fred Hampton Jr., sought not only to memorialize Hampton, but also to continue the “Save the Hampton House” campaign, an activist push to save Hampton’s suburban childhood residence from auction. The vigil was one event amid a week’s worth of tributes, fundraisers, and musical performances remembering December 4, 1969, the night Hampton was shot to death by police. The original house was demolished years ago and replaced by a modern brick two-flat. On a recent cold December day, a crowd of activists, journalists, and Black Panthers gathered in front of 2337 West Monroe Street, two blocks west of the United Center, to remember the fifty-year anniversary of the West Side police raid that killed Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton and Defense Captain Mark Clark.
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