18 18 By 1969, Black Panther chapters had been established throughout the United States, from North Carolina to Nebraska. That same year, 27 Panthers were killed by local police and law-enforcement agencies and 749 members were arrested. Perhaps the most influential chapter outside of the Bay Area was headed by activist Fred Hampton (1948–1969) in Chicago. Hampton was an outstanding organizer and charismatic speaker. In 1969, the Chicago police launched a carefully planned raid against the Panther headquarters and murdered Hampton. In this excerpt, Hampton presents in a popular style a synthesis of Marxian theory within the framework of Black Power.
A lot of people get the word revolution mixed up and they think revolution’s a bad word. Revolution is nothing but like having a sore on your body and then you put something on that sore to cure that infection. I’m telling you that we’re living in a sick society. We’re involved in a society that produces ADC victims. We’re involved in a society that produces criminals, thieves and robbers and rapers. Whenever you are in a society like that, that is a sick society.
… We’re gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we’re gonna fight reactionary pigs with international proletarian revolution. That’s what it has to be. The people have to have the power—it belongs to the people.
… Unless people show us through their social practice that they relate to the struggle in Babylon, that means that they’re not internationalists, that means that they’re not revolutionaries. And when you’re marchin’ on this cruel war in Washington, all you radicals … we need to have some moratoriums on Babylon. We need to have some moratoriums on the Black community in Babylon and all oppressed communities in Babylon.
… We have to understand very clearly that there’s a man in our community called a capitalist. Sometimes he’s Black and sometimes he’s white. But that man has to be driven out of our community because anybody who comes into the community to make profit off of people by exploiting them can be defined as a capitalist.
Any program that’s brought into our community should be analyzed by the people of that community. It should be analyzed to see that it meets the relevant needs of that community.
… That’s what the Breakfast for Children Program is. A lot of people think it’s charity. But what does it do? It takes people from a stage to a stage to another stage. Any program that’s revolutionary is an advancing program. Revolution is change.
… We say that the Breakfast for Children Program is a socialistic program. It teaches the people basically that—by practice. We thought up and let them practice that theory and inspect that theory. What’s more important?
… And a woman said, “I don’t know if I like communism, and I don’t know if I like socialism. But I know that the Breakfast for Children Program feeds my kids. And if you put your hands on that Breakfast for Children Program …”
… You know, a lot of people have hang-ups with the Party because the Party talks about a class struggle…. We say primarily that the priority of this struggle is class. That Marx and Lenin and Che Guevara and Mao Tse-tung and anybody else that has ever said or knew or practiced anything about revolution always said that a revolution is a class struggle. It was one class—the oppressed, and that other class—the oppressor. And it’s got to be a universal fact. Those that don’t admit to that are those that don’t want to get involved in a revolution, because they know as long as they’re dealing with a race thing, they’ll never be involved in a revolution.
… We never negated the fact that there was racism in America, but we said that the by-product, what comes off of capitalism, that happens to be racism … that capitalism comes first and next is racism. That when they brought slaves over here, it was to make money. So first the idea came that we want to make money, then the slaves came in order to make that money. That means, through historical fact, that racism had to come from capitalism. It had to be capitalism first and racism was a by-product of that.
… We may be in the minority, but this minority is gonna keep on shouting loud and clear: We’re not gonna fight fire with fire, we’re gonna fight fire with water. We’re not gonna fight racism with racism, we’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We’re not gonna fight capitalism with Black capitalism … we’re gonna fight capitalism with socialism.
… We know that Black people are most oppressed. And if we didn’t know that, then why in the hell would we be running around talking about the Black liberation struggle has to be the vanguard for all liberation struggles?
Any theory you got, practice it. And when you practice it, you make some mistakes. When you make a mistake, you correct that theory, and then it will be corrected theory that will be able to be applied and used in any situation. That’s what we’ve got to be able to do.
… A lot of us read and read and read, but we don’t get any practice. We have a lot of knowledge in our heads, but we’ve never practiced it; and made any mistakes and corrected those mistakes so that we will be able to do something properly. So we come up with, like we say, more degrees than a thermometer but we are not able to walk across the street and chew gum at the same time. Because we have all that knowledge but it’s never been exercised, it’s never been practiced. We never tested it with what’s really happening. We call it testing it with objective reality. You might have any kind of thought in your mind, but you’ve got to test it with what’s out there. You see what I mean?
… The only way that anybody can tell you the taste of a pear is if he himself has tasted it. That’s the only way. That’s objective reality. That’s what the Black Panther Party deals with. We’re not into metaphysics, we’re not idealists, we’re dialectical materialists. And we deal with what reality is, whether we like it or not. A lot of people can’t relate to that because everything they do is gauged by the way they like things to be. We say that’s incorrect. You look and see how things are, and then you deal with that.
… We some Marxist-Leninist cussin’ niggers. And we gonna continue to cuss, goddammit. ’Cause that’s what we relate to. That’s what’s happening in Babylon. That’s objective reality.
… You’re dealing in subjectivity, because you’re not testing it with objective reality. And what’s wrong is that you don’t go test it. Because if you test it, you’ll get objective. Because as soon as you walk out there, a whole lot of objective reality will vamp down upon your ass….
… You can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail the revolution. You can lock up a freedom fighter like Huey P. Newton, but you can’t lock up freedom fighting…. Because if you do, you come up with answers that don’t answer, explanations that don’t explain, conclusions that don’t conclude.
If you think about me and you think about me, niggers, and you ain’t gonna do no revolutionary act, then forget about me. I don’t want myself on your mind if you’re not going to work for the people.
Like I always said, if you’re asked to make a commitment at the age of 20, and you say I don’t want to make no commitment only because of the simple reason that I’m too young to die, I want to live a little bit longer. What you did is … you’re dead already.
You have to understand that people have to pay the price for peace. You dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not struggle, then goddammit you don’t deserve to win. Let me say to you peace if you’re willing to fight for it.
Let me say in the spirit of liberation—I been gone for a little while, at least my body’s been gone for a little while. But I’m back now, and I believe I’m back to stay.
I believe I’m going to do my job. I believe I was born not to die in a car wreck. I don’t believe I’m going to die in a car wreck. I don’t believe I going to die slipping on a piece of ice. I don’t believe I going to die because I have a bad heart. I don’t believe I’m going to die because I have lung cancer.
I believe I’m going to be able to die doing the things I was born for. I believe I’m going to die high off the people. I believe I’m going to die a revolutionary in the international revolutionary proletarian struggle. I hope each one of you will be able to die [in] the international revolutionary proletarian struggle, or you’ll be able to live in it. And I think that struggle’s going to come.
Why don’t you live for the people.
Why don’t you struggle for the people.
Why don’t you die for the people.
Source: Excerpts from “Fred Speaks”: Fred Hampton 20th Commemoration (Chicago: December 4th Committee, 1989).
Artists United, When One of Us Falls, a Thousand Will Take His Place (Chicago: Artists United, 1970).
Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (Boston: South End Press, 1988).
Commission of Inquiry into Black Panthers and the Police, Ramsey Clark and Roy Wilkins, chairmen, Search and Destroy: A Report (New York: Metropolitan Applied Research Center, 1973).