Fred Hampton Jr was days away from taking his first breath when his father was assassinated. Still in his mother’s womb, he would have sensed the shots fired by police into his parents’ bedroom at the back of 2337 Monroe Street, Chicago.

He would have absorbed the muffled screams, felt the adrenaline rushing through his mother’s veins, been jolted by her violent arrest. Could he also have somehow sensed the moment of his father’s death?

His dad was “Chairman” Fred Hampton, leader of the Illinois chapter and deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party, who was sleeping beside his pregnant fiancee when 14 Chicago police officers burst into the apartment. They shot him in bed, striking him twice in the head. Hampton, who was 21, was killed on the spot.

The attack – up to 99 incoming gunshots and only one fired by the Panthers from inside – also claimed the life of Panther Mark Clark in what later emerged was a meticulously planned, FBI-backed operation.

Twenty-five days later, on 29 December 1969, Akua Njeri (then Deborah Johnson), gave birth to a baby boy. From that moment on, the child’s life was to be defined by the father whom he never met.