By Marco Margaritoff | Checked By John Kuroski
\nPublished February 11, 2021\/Updated February 25, 2021<\/p>\n
As an FBI informant in the Black Panther Party, William O’Neal provided information that helped the Chicago police kill Fred Hampton in 1969.<\/p>\n
As far as the Black Panther Party was concerned, William O\u2019Neal was one of their most loyal brothers in arms. The head of security for the Black Panthers in Chicago, he was tasked with an enormously important job: guarding the group\u2019s leader Fred Hampton.<\/p>\n
But little did the Panthers know that O\u2019Neal had infiltrated the organization on behalf of the FBI. A car thief by trade, O\u2019Neal had been arrested in 1966 for driving a stolen vehicle across state lines. Authorities had offered him a deal: Infiltrate the Black Panther Party \u2014 or rot in prison.<\/p>\n
Not only did O\u2019Neal successfully join the Black Panthers, he also gained the trust of Hampton, the beloved chairman of the Illinois chapter. But behind the scenes, O\u2019Neal was secretly providing the FBI with a floor plan of Hampton\u2019s apartment. This allowed the Chicago police to raid the building \u2014 and\u00a0murder Fred Hampton<\/a>\u00a0in his sleep on December 4, 1969.<\/p>\n The brutal attack sent shockwaves across Black America. It had only been a year and a half since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. And now, a beloved Black Panther was dead at the hands of the police. Tragically, police brutality had been one of the main issues that Hampton had been fighting against.<\/p>\n While the story of Hampton\u2019s death is fairly well known, O\u2019Neal\u2019s involvement in the matter often goes overlooked. As chronicled in the 2021 film\u00a0Judas And The Black Messiah, O\u2019Neal\u2019s role in Hampton\u2019s tragic end was only revealed in 1973.<\/p>\n Subsequently placed in witness protection under an assumed name, O\u2019Neal would later say that he felt no remorse for being an informant. However, he also admitted that he was not a \u201chappy man.\u201d And in 1990, O\u2019Neal took his own life at age 40 \u2014\u00a0on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.<\/p>\n This is the little-known story of William O\u2019Neal, the Black Panther who betrayed Fred Hampton.<\/p>\n How William O\u2019Neal Became An FBI Informant<\/strong><\/p>\n William O\u2019Neal was born on April 9, 1949. From a young age, the native Chicagoan lived a life of crime as a car thief on the city\u2019s West Side. In 1966, when he was about 17 years old, he was caught stealing a car and driving it across state lines.<\/p>\n If he had been arrested by local police, he might\u2019ve languished in prison for years. But instead, he was tracked down by FBI Agent Roy Martin Mitchell. And this moment would change O\u2019Neal\u2019s life forever.<\/p>\n As O\u2019Neal would later reveal to his uncle Ben Heard, his criminal experience\u00a0was far more extensive<\/a>\u00a0than simply stealing cars. By 1966, he\u2019d already been in trouble for everything from home invasion to kidnapping. The stolen car charge was just the cherry on top. But William O\u2019Neal soon learned from Mitchell that all would be forgiven \u2014 if he was willing to work for the FBI.<\/p>\n Around this time, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had\u00a0<\/a>made it his mission<\/a>\u00a0to prevent the \u201crise of a \u2018messiah\u2019 who could unify, and electrify, the militant Black nationalist movement.\u201d This fear largely stemmed from the fact that the Black Panthers were becoming more and more popular. But Hampton in particular stood out among the pack.<\/p>\n Born just outside Chicago on August 30, 1948, Hampton got involved in civil rights activism early on. When he was just a young teenager, he pushed his school to allow Black girls to compete for homecoming queen and rallied for an integrated pool and recreational center. Before long, he\u2019d joined the NAACP and was marching alongside Martin Luther King Jr.<\/p>\n But after experiencing violence from anti-civil rights protesters, Hampton\u00a0became disillusioned<\/a>\u00a0with King\u2019s non-violent approach and began to lean more toward Malcolm X\u2019s message of self-defense. From there, he entered the Black Panther Party in 1968 \u2014 quickly assuming a leadership position.<\/p>\n The FBI feared that Hampton could become the next Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr. \u2014 and unite America\u2019s impoverished citizenry against the status quo. And so Mitchell made William O\u2019Neal a deal. If he joined the Black Panthers as an FBI informant and provided the bureau with information on Hampton\u2019s activities, he wouldn\u2019t get into any trouble for his crimes.<\/p>\n O\u2019Neal agreed.<\/p>\n The Betrayal Of Fred Hampton<\/strong><\/p>\n Since the FBI had struggled to stop the Black Panthers from organizing, infiltration seemed more imperative to them than ever. And since Hampton appeared to be quickly rising in the ranks of the organization, they paid especially close attention to him.<\/p>\n But Hampton was just one of many Black leaders victimized by\u00a0COINTELPRO<\/a>\u2014 the FBI\u2019s secret and illegal program that disrupted anti-establishment movements like the Black Panther Party. The fact that Hampton was campaigning so hard against police brutality and corruption made his treatment at the hands of those very police all the more tragic.<\/p>\n While Hampton was establishing free breakfast programs for children and negotiating a truce between Chicago\u2019s street gangs, William O\u2019Neal was tracking his every move \u2014 and reporting everything back to the FBI.<\/p>\n Although the FBI was initially interested in disrupting the breakfast program \u2014 as they claimed it was\u00a0\u201cindoctrinating children\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 their attention quickly turned to the group\u2019s supply of weapons and whether or not Hampton was on any drugs.<\/p>\n All the while, Hampton didn\u2019t know that his head of security was spying on him and undermining his work. He also had no idea that O\u2019Neal was providing the FBI with a floor plan of his apartment \u2014\u00a0so that authorities could break in on that fateful night in 1969.<\/p>\n A 1969 news segment on Fred Hampton\u2019s death.<\/strong><\/p>\n Perhaps most shocking of all is that William O\u2019Neal reportedly drugged Hampton with a barbiturate on the night of December 3, 1969 \u2014 so that he wouldn\u2019t wake up during the raid. Meanwhile, the floor plan that O\u2019Neal had given to the FBI had already been handed off to Chicago police \u2014\u00a0who were instructed to raid Hampton\u2019s home and seize the illegal weapons inside.<\/p>\n That night, Hampton was in a deep sleep beside his pregnant fianc\u00e9e, Deborah Johnson (who now goes by Akua Njeri). At about 4:45 a.m. on December 4, 1969, 14 plainclothes officers stormed the apartment. Armed with pistols, shotguns, machine guns, and the floor plan, they barged into the home and quickly headed toward Hampton\u2019s bedroom.<\/p>\n Around this time, Njeri\u00a0remembers someone shaking Hampton<\/a>, saying, \u201cChairman. Chairman. Wake up. Pigs are vamping.\u201d<\/p>\n Njeri said, \u201cThey just stormed the entranceway to the rear bedroom and they were shooting. It seemed like forever. I understand it only lasted 10 minutes. They were shooting into the mattress. The plaster was flying off and the mattress was vibrating and then the person that had come in to wake Fred up kept saying, \u2018Stop shooting! Stop shooting! We got a pregnant sister here.’\u201d<\/p>\n Eventually, they did stop and Njeri left the room. Despite her visible pregnancy, an officer reportedly dragged her over to the kitchen area. And then, the officers started shooting again.<\/p>\n Njeri continued, \u201cI remember someone saying that Fred was barely alive or he might not make it and then they started shooting again and then it stopped. Someone said, \u2018He\u2019s good and dead now.\u2019 I knew they had killed Fred at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n Hampton was just 21 years old when he died.<\/p>\n Soon afterward, seven Panthers in the building were arrested and indicted by a grand jury on charges of attempted murder, armed violence, and weapons charges. But these charges were eventually dropped during a later investigation when it was revealed that the police had fired nearly 100 shots in total. And the Panthers had only shot once.<\/p>\n Mark Clark was the only Panther to fire a single bullet \u2014 and the 22-year-old was fatally shot in the heart as a result.<\/p>\n O\u2019Neal Disappearance In The Aftermath Of Hampton\u2019s Death<\/strong><\/p>\n William O\u2019Neal and his uncle visited Hampton\u2019s apartment that same morning after he had been shot.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was papers strewn all over the floor, blood all over,\u201d said Ben Heard. \u201cThere was a trail of blood from where they had dragged Fred\u2019s body. Bill just stood there in shock. He never thought it would come to all this.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfortunately, it had. Clark and Hampton were dead, while several other Panthers had been wounded \u2014 and charged with serious crimes.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Chicago police shared news of their success and praised their officers for their \u201cbravery\u201d and \u201cprofessional discipline in not killing all the Panthers present.\u201d They claimed that \u201cthe Panthers opened the battle by firing a shotgun blast through the apartment door,\u201d and even filmed a reenactment of the supposed incident to appear on television.<\/p>\n A\u00a0Democracy Now\u00a0segment on the FBI\u2019s plot to kill Fred Hampton.<\/strong><\/p>\n But the story from the police quickly began to fall apart. A report by the\u00a0Sun-Times\u00a0revealed that the so-called \u201cbullet holes\u201d that police showed to back up their claims were actually nail heads. And sure enough, a 1970 grand jury investigation found that nearly all of the empty shells and bullets at the scene had been fired by police weapons \u2014 not Panther weapons.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, a coroner\u2019s jury ruled that the deaths of Hampton and Clark were both \u201cjustifiable homicides.\u201d And O\u2019Neal\u2019s involvement in the attack came to light in 1973 \u2014 much to the fury of the Black community.<\/p>\n Quickly whisked into witness protection, William O\u2019Neal lived as William Hart in California for several years after being outed as an informant. But he secretly returned to Chicago in 1984 and\u00a0worked<\/a>\u00a0for an attorney.<\/p>\n Just two years prior, the Justice Department, the city of Chicago, and Cook County had\u00a0settled a $47 million civil suit<\/a>\u00a0filed by the families of Clark and Hampton for $1.82 million. Even then, a Justice Department attorney insisted that this settlement did not mean an admission of any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n As for O\u2019Neal, he had divorced his wife, remarried, and had no real friends at that point. In 1984, he spoke of his past for the first time with the\u00a0Chicago Tribune\u00a0\u2014 and admitted that he had been \u201cjust a pawn in a very big game.\u201d He would later appear in a public television series called\u00a0Eyes on the Prize, in which he\u2019d talk a little more about his role.<\/p>\n While he didn\u2019t express remorse for his role as an informant, he did express sadness \u2014\u00a0and anger \u2014 over Hampton\u2019s death.<\/p>\n