Remembering Fred Hampton

Fred Hampton

Dec. 4 is the 37th anniversary of the assassination of Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago. In the early morning of Dec. 4, 1969, Chicago police attacked a house on the city’s West Side where several Panthers were living.

Hampton was killed while sleeping in his bed. There is a well-known picture of a Chicago cop grinning as he’s wheeling out Hampton’s corpse.

The police fired close to a hundred bullets. The Panthers opened up their house to the community to show what really happened.

This didn’t prevent the Chicago Tribune from printing pictures of a door that was riddled by “bullet holes” from shots allegedly fired by the Panthers. These “bullet holes” were actually nails.

The documentary “The Murder of Fred Hampton” helped to expose this lie.

Today the Chicago Tribune controls a media empire that includes Newsday, the Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times. In 1983 the Tribune repeated racist slander that Harold Washington, then campaigning to be Chicago’s first Black mayor, was a child molester.

Members of the McCormick family, which controlled International Harvester, continue to be the largest stockholders in the Tribune Company. The 1886 workers’ rally at Chicago’s Haymarket was called because strikers at McCormick’s factory were fired upon by cops.

Fred Hampton was only 21 years old when he was murdered. He was an extremely talented organizer. Hampton built the Black Panther Party not only in Chicago but throughout Illinois.

Fred Hampton was the quarterback of his high school football team in Maywood, Ill., just outside Chicago. His father was a worker at International Harvester.

Even though he died so young, Fred Hampton did so much. The Young Lords were a street gang in Chicago’s Puerto Rican Community. When Fred Hampton was in jail with the leader of the Young Lords, he won him over to revolutionary politics. The rest is history.

Fred Hampton is best known for saying “You can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill a revolution.” This shows his courageous determination. Yet the murder of Fred Hampton—like the death of Che Guevara in combat—did set back the struggle temporarily.

The assassinations of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were among the most notorious atrocities committed by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program. But at least another 25 Panthers were murdered as well. The assassination of Malcolm X was also linked to COINTELPRO.

Along with other Workers World Party members, I attended the funeral of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. The same Chicago police framed up Fred Hampton’s son—Fred Hampton, Jr.

Long live the memory of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark!