The Murder of Fred Hampton

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.