Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are shot and killed during a raid by 14 Chicago police officers.

The Black Panther Party was a Marxist–Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia. They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria. Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.

Fredrick Allen Hampton Sr. was an American activist and revolutionary socialist. He came to prominence in his late teens and early 20s in Chicago as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter. He founded the anti-racist, anti-classist Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots, and the Young Lords, and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. He professed to be a Marxist-Leninist. Hampton considered fascism the greatest threat, saying "nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all."

Mark Clark was an American activist and member of the Black Panther Party (BPP). Clark was instrumental in the creation of the enduring Free Breakfast Program in Peoria, as well as the Peoria branch's engagement in local rainbow coalition politics, primarily revolving around the anti-war movement. He was killed on December 4, 1969, with Fred Hampton, state chairman of the Black Panthers, during a predawn Chicago Police raid.