The Murder of Fred Hampton

I saw this movie when i was a journalism student at NYU in the '70's. the organization that I belonged to-The Revolutionary Student Brigade-took the movie around to different collages and also showed it in Newark at a Project where a young boy-Charles Sutton-had been shot. The movie is an eye opener. There is no doubt in your mind as to why Fred Hampton was killed. It's a great job of investigative reporting. If your stomach is not already turned by what is currently called "news" this will do it for you. It will also make you mad to see what we were once, what we could have done-what we did do and how our potential was destroyed by the powers that be. We can all get along-we can doanything as long as we recognize who the enemy really is. The people united will never be defeated.

Fantastic documentary- both a great piece of journalism and a beautiful example of verite-filmmaking. It shows the truly socialist character of the Black Panthers as they feed and educate oppressed people of many backgrounds.

The radical journalists who made this film make clear that the Chicago police felt the need to execute Hampton, an important Black Nationalist, potentially an important Marxist revolutionary leader, before he developed any more of a mass, multi-national following. The fact that Hampton was convicted of clearly trumped-up charges of robbery by an all-white jury shows that the general white populace feared Black people, yet the many white progressives and radicals in Hampton's circle shows that the racial divide was gradually declining in the near- revolutionary climate of the late-'60s, at least among young people. The film thus makes terrifyingly comprehensible the capitalist state's desire to quash Black Power before it could be equated with, in Hampton's words, "Brown Power for Brown people, Yellow Power for Yellow People..." and even "White power for White people."

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.

I was 10 years old when this happened and I was taken to the apartment with my mother (a Chicago school teacher) and several of her co-workers. The black community was so up in arms about this that the schools pretty much closed down that day. We toured the apartment with the Panthers (not a police in sight). They had marked how all the shots in the walls were coming from outside to the inside. We saw the blood soaked mattress and how the apartment drawers and closets were all over turned like they were looking for something. Chicago PD was and still is crooked as hell. Fred Hampton was only 21 years old. Those young brothers (Mark Clark also) were about something great for the community and they were murdered!! Rest in Peace.

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.