On this date in 1969, the Chicago police murdered Fred Hampton. I write about the murder in my new novel, A SPY IN THE STRUGGLE, about a rookie FBI attorney going undercover to infiltrate an African American eco-racial justice organization that is part of both the Movement for Black Lives and the climate justice movement.

Since childhood, Yolanda Vance has forged her desire to escape poverty into a laser-like focus that took her through prep school and Harvard Law. So when her prestigious New York law firm is raided by the FBI, Yolanda turns in her corrupt bosses to save her career—and goes to work for the Bureau. Soon she’s sent undercover at Red, Black, and Green—an African-American “extremist” organization back in her California college town.

In Chapter 18, Yolanda Vance has encountered the suspicious death of a Black woman connected to the case. She has a tense meeting with the FBI, where they seem to be questioning her loyalty. Here’s the excerpt from Chapter 18, which takes place after that uncomfortable meeting.

She walked briskly from the Bureau office to Market Street in downtown San Francisco. She passed the Civic Center BART station and didn’t walk down the cement steps into the subway as usual. She wasn’t ready to return to Holloway.

Yolanda needed to think.

Further down Market, Yolanda came across the blazing windows of Sally’s Books. As a kid, the library had often been her refuge. She walked into the bright, warm store.

            Yolanda wandered into the magazine section and picked up a copy of Vogue. Everyone expected women to be fascinated by fashion. She flipped idly through the pages, and drifted into the political section, scanning book spines. She picked up A G-Man’s Life: The FBI, Being ‘Deep Throat,’ And the Struggle for Honor in Washington by Mark Felt, the former FBI Associate Director. As she scanned the book, she looked around to see if anyone could see her. Satisfied that she was alone, she quickly slipped a thicker volume off the shelf about COINTELPRO, and slid it under the Vogue. She carried the three items, the magazine shielding the COINTELPRO book from anyone who might be watching, and settled herself in an armchair in an alcove between bookshelves, with her back to the wall. She opened the magazine and slid the COINTELPRO book in front of it and began to skim the book’s pages.

Five minutes later, a young man came and sat in the chair across from her. Yolanda studied him in several quick glances. Neat haircut, starched collar, navy blue trench coat in case the rain started up again before he went back to his downtown office. Or he could be FBI.

If he was an agent, he would notice that she wasn’t actually turning the pages of the magazine.

Yolanda slid down in the chair and put her knees up, sliding the book below the magazine and nestling the spines of each in the crack between her thighs. The magazine peeked out above her knees, but the COINTELPRO book was hidden below it.

COINTELPRO was the FBI’s counter-intelligence program of the sixties and seventies, where they spied on their own citizens and used dirty tricks to destroy radical movements, especially the Black Panther Party.

Yolanda spent the next hour perfecting her technique of flipping the pages simultaneously. To any observer, Yolanda looked like a woman deeply absorbed in fashion.

            And so it was that in her mind, the murder of Fred Hampton would always be juxtaposed with “What to Wear When Throwing the Perfect Spring Evening Party.” The combination was so bizarre that she would recall the experience as a sort of surreal dream. The image of Fred Hampton, open mouth to microphone, with his circa-1969 kinky hair matching the pale nap of the faux sheepskin lining of his dark leather coat, would always be juxtaposed with the sleek and shiny fabrics of evening wear, his earnest, furious expression contrasting with the vapid, sullen faces of the models. The image of fourteen heavily-armed Chicago police officers storming into the apartment of the young Black Panther leader would always have the unexpected presence of white fashion models with inhumanly long eyelashes that extended beyond the thick black smudges of liner at the edges of their glassy eyes strutting through the runway of the frame with long, bony legs and pointy stiletto heels, carrying trays of canapés that none of them would be allowed to eat. How to stand out when so many of your guests will be dressed alike? The mental newsreel of the police in identical riot gear, busting into Hampton’s bedroom and killing Hampton while he slept next to his wife who was expecting, would always coexist with the challenging questions of style. Are you ready for the unexpected? What does the well-dressed widow wear to her husband’s murder? If she’s eight months pregnant, which designers will offer their couture in maternity wear? So many unexpected guests, all so early for the party. 4:45 am and the hostess is unprepared for company. But funeral black is perfect for all such occasions. Black dress, Black Panther, Black Power.

Mark Clark, the young Panther guarding Fred Hampton, fired only one bullet; one witness said it was accidental, as he fell from his chair, shot in the heart by police. Between eighty-two and ninety-nine shots were fired by police. The well-dressed hostess will hope it was ninety-nine. That plus the Panther shot makes a nice, even one hundred. Parties thrive on even numbers.

What to do when some of your most influential guests exhibit such bad manners?

          “That’s Fred Hampton.”

“Is he dead? . . . Bring him out.”

“He’s barely alive. He’ll make it.”

Two shots were heard, which, it was later discovered, were fired point blank in Hampton’s head. According to Deborah Johnson, one officer then said:

“He’s good and dead now.”

            Parties are wonderful, but such a trial to clean up.

Hampton’s body was dragged into the doorway of the bedroom and left in a pool of blood. The raiders then directed their gunfire towards the remaining Panthers, who were hiding in another bedroom. They were wounded, then beaten and dragged into the street, where they were arrested on charges of aggravated assault and the attempted murder of the officers. They were held on $100,000 bail apiece.

What will people say about your party afterward?

Yolanda rubbed her eyes as the pages blurred into double vision. How could this be true? When Marcus mentioned Hampton, she had pictured him heavily armed. Come and get me, motherfuckers! Not asleep in bed with his pregnant wife. The book had a color photo of the blood-soaked bed he was lying in when the police killed him.

During her FBI training at Quantico, they had mentioned that there were books out there, books that distorted, exaggerated, and just plain lied about the FBI’s activities.

The trainer had paced while he lectured, a tall, intense older man with a shaved head, striding up and down the rows of chairs in the lecture hall and looking at different students as he spoke.

“Hoover’s decisions were sometimes controversial,” he said. “But he made the best calls he could at the time and helped guide the country through an era of civil unrest. With cities burning and criminals looting, and leftist extremist hate groups running around rioting and shooting peace officers, Hoover wasn’t about to send agents into the field offering Girl Scout Cookies. The Bureau showed strength. We played hard and used tough tactics. We got the job done.”

But in the COINTELPRO book, Yolanda read account after account of FBI intervention in groups, sending fake memos to start fights between leaders, leaking lies to the press that ruined peoples’ marriages, families, careers, and FBI agent infiltrators promoting and using violent tactics, even in peaceful organizations. The FBI operative had turned the floor plan of Fred Hampton’s apartment over to the police for the purposes of the raid? Could all of this be true?