The Murder of Fred Hampton

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.

Much better than the film makers' previous "American Rev. 2" because it is more focused on a single unjust incident and its terrible reverberations than the earlier work which took its sweet time to get to the point, namely that poor whites and blacks should forge a common bond, with way too much time spent on extraneous stuff like the anti war protests in Chicago in '68. Not that this documentary is all that concise! The first hour is basically a series of Fred Hampton speeches in which he makes some cogent points, like the need for affordable healthcare and the alliance between racism and capitalism, as well as some, like an admiration for the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti and the virtues of Chairman Mao, that show why it's a good thing that the Panthers were doomed to failure.

However, once we get to the eponymous slaying and see the clumsy machinations of the corrupt Chicago justice system, personified by DA Ed Hanrahan who looks and sounds like a character right out of Ben Hecht, the film's pace considerably picks up and we are riveted. Whereas I periodically stopped to check the time during the first hour there were no such signs of impatience and ennui during the second. Give it a B.

PS...One wonders if, had he lived, Hampton would have morphed into Bobby Rush, his number two guy, who is now a reliably corporate Democratic member of Congress or if he would have stayed true to his extreme left wing beliefs. We'll never know but his fervency, as opposed to Rush's more measured tones, perhaps provides us with a clue.

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.

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.