Fred Hampton was twenty-one years old when he was killed in Chicago on December 4, 1969. Before that morning, he had become a prominent organizer, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, and a subject of government surveillance and informant activity. Before the Bullet: Target: Black Messiah reconstructs the documented record leading to December 4—Hampton’s organizing, the political environment around him, law-enforcement attention, surveillance, informants, and the sequence of events preserved in the historical record. Written as documentary narrative nonfiction, the book separates what the record establishes from what it does not. Where sources conflict, the conflict remains visible. Where the record is silent, the narrative does not manufacture an answer. The facts are the canon. The story is how we carry them.