By Gavin Nascimento | A New Kind Of Human
At the young age of just 21 years old, this Black Panther leader managed to pull off what many at the time considered to be impossible — uniting different races and seemingly opposed political groups in common cause against the ruling class.
Some say this is the true reason why he was assassinated.
Sadly, very few people today know who Fred Hampton really was, what he truly stood for, and how he was brutally assassinated. In this blog I will not be exploring the complexity and exceptional integrity of this man’s character in detail, since I believe he is deserving of a much more meticulous write up than I can offer at this time. Nonetheless, I would like to share his transcendent message of unity and solidarity to help remind everyone who the real enemy is. Please feel free to take and share any of these quotes from this article. His message is extremely important.
Rising quickly within the ranks of the Black Panther Party in Chicago, under Fred Hampton’s leadership they were feeding more hungry children free meals than ever before through the BPP Free Breakfast Program. The group also offered free healthcare to those in need; safe transportation for the elderly and they provided education to children and adults on subjects like political science, and other relevant topics, that were (and still are) sorely lacking from government controlled education. Perhaps most controversial, but well known today, is that they also had patrol units that would police the police, and ensure the cops were not violating anyone’s constitutional rights.
Fred Hampton also managed to broker a peace between some of Chicago’s most powerful gangs and formerly opposed groups, by helping them become aware of their mutual struggles and human principles. It was through these brilliant communication skills that he was also able to coordinate the establishment of the “Rainbow Coalition,” which brought together the Young Lords (Largely representing poor Latinos), Young Patriots (Largely representing poor Whites), and the Black Panthers. The group would also later be joined by a number of other revolutionary groups from other walks of life, including the mostly White Students for a Democratic Society, the mostly Mexican Brown Berets, the American Indian Movement and the mostly Chinese Red Guard Party, amongst others.
U.S. Government Counters Fred Hampton’s Efforts For Unity By Weaponizing Racism & Spreading Divide & Conquer Propaganda
According to FBI documents, Fred Hampton was considered a major threat to the U.S. government, as was the Black Panther Party in general. In fact, the FBI Head at that time, J, Edgar Hoover, considered them to be “the most dangerous group in the U.S.” and viewed their Free Breakfast Program to be a top priority to undermine since it was gaining so much public support.
According to historian Franziska Meister, this resulted in parents being told food was contaminated with venereal disease in an effort to shut them down; parents were also told that the youth were being indoctrinated to hate white people and even become killers. Police officials also raided these Breakfast gatherings randomly and openly harassed BPP members which terrified attending kids. In Los Angeles, police officials reportedly forced children to leave at gun point and then threw out all of the food. Bear in mind that these programs were feeding ±20,000 hungry children every school day.
The FBI resorted to even more reprehensible methods to create division between some of the more militant groups that the Black Panther Party members worked so hard to unite with, such as the Blackstone Rangers and the United Slaves (US). They did this by falsely insinuating that the BPP put out an assassination hit on the head of the United Slaves, Ron Karenga, and that Fred Hampton personally put out a hit on the head of the Blackstone Rangers. This resulted in a “gang war” that saw 4 members of the BPP being killed and many more, on all sides, being injured. They were also successful at creating division within the Black Panther Party itself.
In 1971, it was discovered that this was all part of a shocking illegal secretive FBI program known as COINTELPRO, where the FBI illegally targeted anti-war activists and civil rights groups, amongst others.
The Ruling Class Fear Unity & Favor Racism & Division
When we consider the elaborate tactics employed by the establishment authorities to sabotage the Black Panther Party’s efforts to promote unity and peace amongst different gangs, racial groups, and the oppressed masses in general — which was truly an unprecedented and extraordinary accomplishment — one can’t help but logically consider that they actually favor racism, division and war, over unity and peace.
This becomes particularly propitious, when we consider the bizarre case of another high ranking member of the group, Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, who was also a highly decorated soldier that rose to the position of sergeant whilst in the military. He was wrongfully imprisoned for 27 years — 8 of which were served out in solitary confinement. He was finally released after it was discovered that the prosecution knowingly concealed evidence that could prove his innocence — which is simply mind blowing to say the least. In 2000, he reportedly settled his false imprisonment case for $4.5 million. Sadly, he had a heart attack just a few years later and died.
A number of other BPP members were killed or imprisoned on various charges as well. How many of them were authentic and how many were the result of manipulation is something we may never know. In the case of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, it is open knowledge today that police officials outright murdered them by raiding their residence while most of the group were sleeping. It was also later found that Hampton had been drugged, which some people believe may have been the work of his personal bodyguard, who was later exposed as an undercover FBI agent. After more than a decade of legal battles surrounding their murders — which the authorities first tried to cover up — the government reportedly paid $1.85 million to the parents of the slain victims, and other plaintiffs in 1982. To go to such extraordinary lengths to suppress this movement is simply uncanny and should warrant further interest from us for obvious reasons.
The True Black Panther Legacy Has Been Poisoned
Despite Fred Hampton and other Black Panther Party leader’s noble efforts, and sacrifices, to unite different races in common cause against a mutual enemy — and thus focus our collective capabilities in helping all oppressed people regardless of skin color — today their message of “fighting racism with solidarity“(unity) seems to have largely been lost.
Where once the BPP rightfully acknowledged the palpable struggles of impoverished white people, for example — which naturally resulted in a stronger sense of unity and camaraderie to create a better world for all — today this demographic is largely being forgotten about through the oversimplification of their existence to one of “privilege,” which sadly only serves to radicalize their unvented frustrations further, and make them ripe pickings for those with sinister agendas who pretend to care.
In addition to this departure from the original Black Panther Party’s code of conduct to create positive change, today many people — particularly white people — appear to be under the false pretense that the BPP was an anti-white organization, which is absolutely not true. In fact, they constantly went out of their way to make that very clear and even isolated themselves from more extreme black nationalist groups that viewed all white people as being the enemy.
One of the reasons that this myth persists today, I believe, is a very dodgy modern organization proclaiming themselves to be the “new” Black Panther Party, but their ideology and political position is clearly one of racial intolerance and even outright hatred for white people, to the point of openly advocating killing babies. This is a major insult to what the original Black Panther Party stood for. In fact, multiple original BPP members have made it very clear that they want nothing to do with this “new” organization. As co-founder Bobby Seale commented on CNN when asked about the group, “We will never, ever stoop to the low level of the mentality of a racist to just hate another person because of the color of their skin or ethnicity. We don’t do that. That’s not the goal objective. The goal objective is human liberation.” When invited to debate with Bobby Seale, the “new” BPP reportedly declined.
