Fred Hampton and Racial Harmony

From "The Underhanded History of the US"

I have a lot of respect for Fred Hampton. He was probably one of three leaders who might surprise people as to how inclusive they were since most people don't associate Malcolm X with being inclusive. Malcolm's going on the Hajj changed his perspectives toward race which may have led to his assassination by the Nation of Islam (see Netflix's Who Killed Malcolm X). Likewise, Martin Luther King may have been too far to the left for the establishment.

 But I want to talk about Fred Hampton.  A short bio of Hampton is:

He came to prominence in Chicago as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter. As a progressive African American, he founded the anti-racist, anti-classist Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots (which organized poor whites), and the Young Lords (which organized Hispanics), and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. A Marxist–Leninist,  Hampton considered fascism the greatest threat, saying, "nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all.”

He majored in pre-Law and used his knowledge of the law in his community police supervision project. I would like to think he was intelligent enough to not have been as into armed self-defence since that was the ostensible reason for his assassination. My opinion was that he was someone who would have unified diverse groups into a viable resistance. Divide and conquer has long been a tactic of repression and I think he was well aware of that. Or to use his own words:

"We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism"

J Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, Knew that the radical coalitions that Hampton forged in between the Black Panthers, Young Patriots, Young Lords, and other groups in Chicago were a stepping stone to the rise of a revolution that could cause a radical change in the United States. I'm not sure what the exact course of events were that led to the brutal murder of Fred Hampton, but it was planned at high levels. The Chicago police announced the hit squad who killed Hampton had been attacked by the "violent" and "extremely vicious" Panthers and defended themselves accordingly. 

But Hampton didn't shoot back. He had been drugged and was slaughtered in his sleep. This is why I would like to believe he wasn't tooled up and knew that option was not the best choice. I would like to believe that he knew that being non-violent does not mean being submissive, but it also doesn't mean being a fool.  Unfortunately, he let the wrong person into his inner circle.

I'm not sure how much I agree with Judas and the Black Messiah, but the bottom line is that Hampton was someone who understood what the issues were, and still are, in US culture. I imagine him being the first black president. Even sadder is the fact that he was sold out by a Judas and we are left waiting for a second, or first, coming.

Then Bernie Sanders would have seemed conservative if Fred Hampton had been around.

Mentioning Fred Hampton is the best way to celebrate today. Focusing on the issues that effect us all is the best way to remember him. I wish I could have him say it, but the quote above pretty much does the job.

I am hopeful that there is another Fred Hampton out there who will work to unify the races because he really speaks the truth to power. It's hard to believe that such a person doesn't exist in the age of the internet. We need the new black messiah to straighten things out between the races.

But will people listen to that person?