The Murder of Fred Hampton

This documentary was released just a year and half after Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton and his colleague Mark Clark were killed in a raid by Chicago policeman, who were there ostensibly to serve a warrant at a pre-dawn hour. It's an operation that is now widely considered to have been a brutal political assassination for Hampton's revolutionary views, and because of that, the interviews, press clips, and speeches assembled here are incredibly important, and still chilling 51 years later.

The first half of the documentary show the political movement Hampton was a part of without sugar-coating it, which I thought was important, even as I wished it had been pared down (especially that fictional "People's Court") and narration provided to better frame the context. Through speeches and discussions, though, we see that the movement was one that advocated an overthrow of the oppressive, capitalist system that had exploited the common man and people of color for centuries, in order to advance to the "utopia of the communist state" of being. It advocated for blacks arming themselves and then killing policeman who "bother the people." It acknowledged cases where revolution had led to the revolutionary becoming an oppressor himself, like François "Papa Doc" Duvalier in Haiti, and yet still held out hope for the communist systems in Cuba and China, and indeed there are posters of Mao Zedong on walls. That's certainly not something that's aged well, but can you blame people for searching for an alternative when they're in a system that brutalizes them? And this quote early on is one that eerily rings true today:

"...racist, decadent, capitalist, imperialist America is a phony state. That a phony state exists here and that these pigs are doing nothing but protecting the avaricious businessman and the demagogic politicians, protecting the exploitative system that they got going. That, in fact, we are tired of it, we are sick of it. You've been brutalizing black people. You've been murdering and lynching them. Black people are tired of it!"

We also see the movement trying to provide for the community, e.g. Setting up medical care that's more concerned with public health that it is about profit, something which has gotten far worse all these decades later. They were for education, and standing up for their legal rights in a system that was trampling them. They were also dead on in their assessment that oppressed people had been successfully turned against one another by their oppressor, e.g. Poor white people against black people, something remarkably still true today. It's also important to note that they were young - Hampton was just 21 - and look at the arc of his colleague Bobby Rush, who was 23 here, and who would go on to serve in Congress for 30 years, announcing his retirement just this year.

Whatever you believe about the political views and lyrics to songs being chanted about killing policemen, no one should be executed over them, least of all in a country that prides itself on its freedom and democracy. You also have to understand where these views come from, and I wish the documentary had provided a little bit more by way of that.

Where it delivers best, however, is in its second half. There's something spine tingling about hearing Fred Hampton telling those in the audience to say "I am a revolutionary" before going to bed at night in case they don't wake up, and then seeing soundless footage of his dead body being carried out on a stretcher and all the blood at his apartment. From there the cutting back and forth to the establishment's version of events, given by police officers and Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan, and those who were in the apartment under a hailstorm of bullets and those who examined the scene afterwards, is as mesmerizing as it is disturbing. The inconsistencies in the State's story, the horrifying actions by the police, and the depraved indifference to both life and the truth are all outrageous. The fact that the documentary was made, bearing witness to what happened, is important, and it's one I wish was included in U. S. history curriculums. Sadly, that may be illegal now in some states, which is also outrageous.

A powerful last third makes up for the technical rawness (including some sections where it's hard to hear what's being said).

Hampton can be initially be tough to sympathize with, especially for an audience 40+ years later, as he preaches what sounds like a hopelessly naïve call for violent revolution. But the slowly growing evidence that the so-called 'shoot-out' in which he died was nothing less than the intentional murder murder of a charismatic black leader set up by the police is deeply chilling, and makes Hampton's call to take up arms in self-defense seem a little less unreasonable in retrospect.

An important reminder of a now all-but-forgotten time in our not so distant history.

Fred Hampton was murdered. Because he was black and because he stood up for black rights. In Chicago, that town we all love and hate. Chicago, the town that is. In Chicago, one town we can't put a finger on. Or we can, can't we? Chicago, that great town. Love you, Fred. This small town guy in Kentucky can't pretend to know what happened. But I think I know. The police, the gov't killed you, Fred. We all know that. God and Christ and Mohammed and Islam and all peoples...how many sentences do I have to submit? OK, Fred was murdered. We all know that. Fark this minimum bulls hart. And I hope the young ones can find out what Fred died for. God support the anarchists. God support the weathermen. I support and believe in the weathermen. Come get me. I love you.

This documentary can be split into two parts. The first half is a biography of Fred Hampton, a civil rights pioneer, community organizer, and Black Panther member. The second half is a stunning work of investigative journalism that provides clear evidence that Hampton was assassinated by the Chicago police.

Hampton was called a dangerous revolutionary, but his message was nothing more revolutionary than social justice and equality. While there is certainly a revolutionary aspect to that, it is not the angry and violent rhetoric with which the state wanted to tar him. So they simply assassinated him and concocted a story that portrayed him how they wanted him -- dangerously violent. The facts of the case just don't fit that narrative, however.

Hampton's story is not well known. That makes this film even more important. It is extremely dangerous to think that state-sanctioned political assassinations could not happen or do not happen in the United States. Hampton's death is tragic enough without us learning nothing from it. Fascism can rise anywhere, and it can be as petty as racist cops working for a corrupt city government or as insidious as a federal agency that engages in black ops against its own citizens.

If you lived through the 60s, or if you are a student of political movements and truth, you will find this fascinating.

The facts are simple enough: The US had an overtly racist political system, working differently in big northern cities than backwards southern towns. Although the major sweep of protest was a noble, steady stand for simple justice, some hotheads took a violent stand. One of these was the Black Panthers, and a stronghold was Chicago.

Chicago was famously corrupt in the sense of an inbred political establishment, including the police. Loyalty to the establishment was the game and the truth was expendable, malleable, inventable. Well, that is an old story.

The interesting element is the Panthers. We have this film as consisting of footage from before and after the murder. The Panthers are possibly honest but probably not so. They surely are passionate, and committed to "the people." The striking thing is how utterly stupid the politics is: a combination of plain unrealistic Marxism, uneducated rhetoric and logic and earnest but goofy metaphors. These guys are basically well-meaning, frustrated nitwits with guns, who had a genuinely honest complaint and a lucked into an adversary that was incompetent at lying.

The second half of this film was produced by the Panthers (and their white lawyers) as detectivework to show the lies of the Chicago police. There is no controversy about what happened and it is instructive to compare it to today's obsession with terrorists.

There is a frustrated people who take up an armed struggle. They mix their aggressiveness with service programs for an underserved society on whom they depend for support. In this case, it was breakfast and "education" programs. This is the model for Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah. A large establishment opposes them, fears about safety abound. There is a threat of overthrow, destruction. Each side vilifies the other. But one side has governmental stability and organized forces. So they do what they believe is necessary, constitution be damned.

No one listening to the news actually believed the police story, neither white nor black. Whites fabulated a story to explain away the discrepancies from the truth. This differs from today where torture is openly supported rather than lied about. But otherwise this film does what the best of history can do: give us insight into ourselves.

Yes, the filmmakers, presenters and detectives are not admirable. Yes, you would not want to sign up for their childish politics. Unless you are grasping for a manufactured ethnic identity, the language and means of expression grate, embarrass. But they were fighting a great lie, a great lie in front of a great injustice.

And the footage is real. So this matters.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.