Fred Hampton, Sr.

“When one of us falls, a thousand will take his place.” -Fred Hampton, Sr., 1969

   Fred Hampton's: I am ... a Revolutionary, Listen

Fred Hampton (Sr.) was in a word – radical. He challenged and beat a system of inequality with his intelligence, his charisma, and his common sense. The effects of his vision far outlive his short 21 years of life.

Building A Movement

Social movements always focus on immediate perceptible grievances, problems which affect a social fraction or an entire class. Injustices like inadequate healthcare, education, and employment, like inhumane treatment of the poor and state-sanctioned brutality towards the citizens the state was created to protect – these are such immediate, perceptible grievances. They are visceral and personal. As such, the potential to build a force determined to end such injustices is overwhelming. Fred Hampton recognized that potential in the young people of Chicago and worked to channnel it into something real. His often-quoted words, "I am...a revolutionary" became the mantra of a city filled with young men and women determined to take back control of their lives.

Beginning at the age of 14 (the same age the FBI’s file on him began), Hampton was bent on confronting the injustices he witnessed in his Chicago neighborhood. He began his first organizational work with the NAACP as a youth organizer, where he focused on improving access to and quality of educational resources for the poor and black. At the age of 19 he joined the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, and by 20 he was the Chairman of the Chicago chapter of the BPP.

Fred Hampton is...Revolutionary

Fred Hampton doesn’t stand out simply because of his affiliations to the NAACP and the BPP; rather, the programs he instituted and his ability to mobilize people and organizations from conflicting parts of society for a united cause made him revolutionary. He organized weekly rallies to increase the political consciousness of the community, expanded and strengthened the BPP’s Free Breakfast Program, launched a community police watch program to protect citizens from abuses of power, and began work to establish a free medical clinic for the poor in Chicago. He accomplished all of this by bringing together young people – members of the BPP, the Young Lords, Students for a Democratic Society, the Young Patriots, and other political and street organizations into class-focused coalitions whose like had never been seen before. Fred Hampton had vision, but more than that – he had the ability to make the vision of bettering his community through collective work, an actual reality.

Despite - and perhaps because of - the pervasive climate of oppression, a young man awakened a people's consciousness that they did possess the power to shape their circumstances. He proved it with his life and in doing so forged a movement whose impact, as he would've hoped, is still inspiring art and inciting activism today.

For more information, please visit the following site(s):

Fred Hampton - The Black Commentator, The Talking Drum, and Wikipedia-Fred Hampton

The Black Panther Party - Wikipedia-BPP