WHO IS FRED HAMPTON?
Fred Hampton was murdered fifty years ago, today. He was a revolutionary, a visionary, a fighter, a Black Panther, a man, a father.
but more importantly, he was a dreamer. his dreams are what got him killed. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr is famously known for “having a dream.” all of the fighters and a lot of our ancestors had dreams. and they died fighting for those dreams to become reality for the masses.
Fred Hampton was twenty one years old when he was asleep next to his pregnant wife on December Fourth, Nineteen-Sixty Four. chicago police busted in his house at two a.m., guns firing. there were at least eighty nine bullets coming in from the pigs, exactly one coming out. that one was not from Hampton’s room. once Hampton’s body was riddled with bullets, the gatekeepers of white supremacy (police officers) dragged his body from the room and delivered one last final shot to the head to secure his death.
but the all powerful amerikkka had bigger fish to fry than some young Black orator, right? i mean, Dr.King, Malcolm X and Hampton all were murdered within four years from each other so why is this assassinations such a secret? why don’t many scholars and “woke” ones discuss this dreamers dream and death?
in nineteen sixty seven, the director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, wrote a memo stating the COunterINTELligencePROgram objective was to get rid of the Black messiah.
The memo from FBI’s website said and I will quote, COINTELPRO’s mission was “to expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize the activities of Black nationalist, hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesman, membership, and supporters.”
WHY FRED HAMPTON?
Dr.King was hated when he started talking about Black struggle. although he had goals of integrating, white structures and systems didn’t want that. Martin was no moderate.do not let the history of King be whitewashed. he was a radical. but yet wasn’t killed. Malcolm taught the opposite. he desired separation. one would think his ideas were accepted by racists because they wanted to be far away from Black people, too. No. he taught Black independence. he demanded Black people buy Black, bank Black, teach Black and only Black. Fred was a Black Panther. He was around gun toting Black nationalists.
but Martin was a dead man walking when he starting to speak out on capitalism. when the system understood his following and he started talking on boycotting companies, thats when they had to kill him. Malcolm was dead when he came back from Mecca. he stopped talking about civil rights and focused on human rights. he was taking the united states government to trial and the judge was the United Nations. when he realized he could use Black and white people to fight this fight is when he had to go.
and then there’s this young cat in the midwest. Fred was a combination of both. and he was only more dangerous because of his youth. he said “We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism.”
he fought for better education and fair housing. Hampton fought to end police corruption. he was about uniting people, groups, ideas. he was all of that wrapped in one.
he was an unapologetic Black man. he was a Black man who knew his history and knew the world was out to destroy him and his community. but he would not fight fire with fire.
wait?? your motive is not to stay over there and have us stay over there? but you want to use Black and Asians and Latinxs and white people? you want them all to rally and not fight for just Black rights but for civil rights of all? and you’re going to have the numbers to back this all up? wait wait, AND you’re talking about capitalism? did you not learn? this is what got King killed a year after he gave the speech on this very issue. you can’t talk about socialism and dismantling this system that exploits the masses. did you NOT know we hated Cuba and their socialist leader Fidel Castro and killed his ace Che Guevara just two years before? you’re building relationships and starting a truce between rival street gangs?
NO. he must go. NOW. and they meant that. Fred Hampton did not even get to see his kid born, as his wife was eight months pregnant. his wife had a gun to her stomach by the great police. they threatened to kill her and her kid if she spoke. what is not decided when you have a Black parent is your Blackness. you have a target on your back before you’re even born. Black people are born hated. it’s not a choice. it’s not a job you apply for. it’s not an identity you feel. being Black is something that was given. Fred Hampton must have been killed, or well, neutralized, before he mobilized the same way (more likely even larger) like King and X. something that differentiated King and X from Hampton was religion. he did not connect to people via God. he did not use religion to have people see right from wrong. that’s dangerous.
TODAY.
as lovable and likeable and revered as our ancestors are today, a lot of the times, they were not at the time.
have you ever spoke truth about freedom and fighting capitalism and white supremacy and every one calls you extreme or “hateful”? people do not want to see change in their life time. it’s too harsh. it’s too unsettling. nobody wants to talk about breaking down the system in current time. nobody wants a Malcolm or Fred Hampton or even Dr.King in current time. majority of people who admire them today would have hated them then. you think Muhammad Ali would have been loved by you and your friends today? or just called difficult and “can’t go along with the program” like the masses.
we don’t allow revolutionaries to act or even THINK outside the box. we don’t allow another Fred Hampton to exist.
we see how Assata was about that life via books and movies and documentaries but we don’t want Assata to be Assata today. that’s only good for books and movies. make believe. it is better to glamorize and romanticize our heroes than to try to carry the baton that they left.
but i’ll tell you like JAY-Z said about Bobby Brown, “to be Bobby then, you gotta be Bobby now.”
to be Malcolm then, you gotta be Malcolm now. to be Afeni then, you gotta be Afeni now. to be wealthy then, you gotta be you now. to know how to ride a bike then, you gotta NOT know how to ride a bike now.
we must allow visionaries and fighters and leaders to dream NOW.
to people in nineteen sixty eight focusing on the now hating Fred Hampton because he spoke on destroying systems of oppression, but see people now, fifty years later writing books and making movies and adopting his ideologies, i have one thing to say: to be Fred Hampton then you gotta be Fred Hampton now.
you have to be ready to be ridiculed and doubted and second guessed.
let people be NOW and you will see the THEN.
DREAM. our ancestors had DREAMS.
the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE.
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