The following is taken from Aaron J. Leonard’s new book Meltdown Expected: Crisis, Disorder, and Upheaval at the End of the 1970s (Rutgers University Press; on sale May 17, 2024).
“In the predawn hours of December 4, 1969, fourteen Chicago Police Department (CPD) officers, claiming they were searching for illegal weapons, raided a first-floor apartment on Chicago’s Monroe Street. Inside, nine members of the Illinois Black Panther Party (BPP) were in various phases of sleep. While police claimed they were fired on, the fusillade of over ninety bullets hit only Black Panthers. Two of them — Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois Panthers, and Mark Clark, who had organized the group’s Peoria chapter — were fatally wounded…“
Read the rest of the excerpt here.