Tag Archives: Fred Hampton
A Nation of Law?: The Murder of Fred Hampton
What the GET YOUR BOOTY TO THE POLL initiative tells us about apolitical black males
- Please join us tonight (10/8/2020) @ 7:30 EST — 6:30 CST as we discuss this topic. Click here to gain entry.
Although it may be difficult to believe, I have moments where black males of all ages challenge my sanity. Trust me when I say that the words of trusted friend William A. Foster IV’s comment that
The black intellectual is the loneliest person on the planet
resonates within my soul. In this era of “wokeness,” my encounters with black men who prefer to pontificate about irrelevant revisionist history topics instead of developing liberation are increasing.
Experience has taught me that some Black males have doused themselves in outlandish conspiracy theories and revisionist history interpretations informed by nothing more than ridiculous half-baked YouTube and Facebook videos. I have learned that such people prefer unproductive conversations that hide their cowardice behind crazy talk and unrealistic goals. I am convinced that if Frederick Douglass were alive, he would address these loud-mouth phrasemongers with the following admonishment.
It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
I am confident that not even Frederick Douglass could move such people beyond endless discussions of irrelevant historical facts that hold no potential to liberate blacks.
Such people foolishly believe that their careless talk paints them as a formidable opponent to mighty whites. The alluded to idiocy is an obvious sign of their unwillingness to abandon their rabble-rousing in favor of meaningful politics. I have tired of planting black liberation seeds in barren soil.
It appears as if I am not the only one frustrated with black males’ disengagement with the political arena. As the 2020 election season approaches, the usual groundswell of getting out the Vote is occurring. Predictably, few of these endeavors target black male voters.
My how things have changed
The latest group to address this issue of getting black males to the Poll are exotic dancers. Yes, you read that correctly, a rising tide of exotic dancers are imploring apolitical black men to get their booty to the Poll.
The women behind Get Your Booty to the Poll may be able to reach black men who have ignored standard voter registration drive initiatives. This latest effort to get out the black male vote is innovative, intriguing, and problematic.
Although the Get Your Booty to the Poll effort is notable, it raises troubling questions regarding why some black males are so afraid to confront other groups on the political battlefield? The prophetic words of Fred Hampton, Chairman of the Chicago-branch of the Black Panther Party, should haunt many black males. According to Hampton,
War is nothing but politics with bloodshed, and politics is nothing but war without bloodshed.
I reserve the coward label for extreme circumstances.
How strange would it be if the missing ingredient in getting black males to the Poll is booty cheeks? Most of us could never fathom that instead of political education classes and voter registration drives, our efforts would have been much more productive had we used sultry black women to swing on poles with the words “Vote! Vote!” on their left and right cheeks?
The above leads me to ask the following question.
Have black males fallen into a bottomless abyss of foolishness and political ineptitude?
It is incredibly disappointing that our best hope to grasp the attention of apolitical black males is by writing the word Vote on the booty cheeks of scantily clad strippers. Lord knows that I wish that we weren’t in the midst of such an important political season; however, this moment mandates unprecedented voter turnout for apparent reasons. It appears that the nation’s future direction may be determined by how many black males are coaxed into a voting booth by booty cheeks.
I guess that in the end, a vote is a vote after all.
Dr. James Thomas Jones III
© Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2020.
Black Panther Party Leader Bobby Rush Remembers the Murder of Fred Hampton
The first evening we held a Political Education class and after that the Central Committee was supposed to meet at Fred’s. After the Central Staff meeting, which ended early, there wasn’t enough room for everybody to stay there, and a member dropped me off. It must have been about two-thirty.
Between four and five that morning I got a call from a member who had gotten a call from a woman who lived down the street. They said there was a shoot-out at Fred’s house and the cops had cordoned off the streets. So I had somebody come by and pick me up, and went over to the woman’s house.
Her apartment was in the basement. We stayed there, listening to the radio. I guess it must have been about six, six-thirty. And they – they had said, you know, that there was a shoot-out – but they said Fred Hampton had been killed. He had been taken to the Cook County Hospital. I don’t know what other persons they had announced. I don’t know if they announced anybody, but they said Fred Hampton was killed. That’s how we found out about it. On the radio.
It was very…I mean it was something where you…I mean I broke down and cried.
I guess the next thing I remember was that I hoped Fred took someone with him. They didn’t say, but I knew that Fred was…that taking someone with him was what Fred was gonna be about.
I guess maybe we stayed down there till eight, eight-thirty, nine o’ clock. I’m not sure what all was going on. It’s almost a real blank in terms of what was happening. People calling in, us calling folks, things like that. I remember Eldridge. He called fro Algiers. Tried to tell us how to deal with the situation. Something to do with retaliation and that kind of thing. What was he doing calling from Algiers, some villa in Algiers, telling us how to deal with something here in Chicago?
Not so say retaliation wasn’t on our mind. We were gonna retaliate. I had given some specific directions about what should have happened and where it should happen. But certain things didn’t get carried out. In retrospect it was good that revenge didn’t happen militarily, but politically. The political development and consciousness of the people of Chicago would never have occurred, the whole thing would have been blurred and obliterated, had we gone out and killed some policemen.
We went over to the house and saw the bullet holes. Then we dealt with the attorneys, dealt with the media, dealt with trying to find out whether or not somebody else had been killed, trying to find out what had really happened. It was then that we found out another member, Mark Clark, the defense captain of the Peoria branch, had also been killed.
I remember going to the morgue…you know, identifying Fred’s body.
They didn’t cordon off the apartment. So we had people walk through the apartment. Twenty-five thousand people came through that apartment to see what was going on. That was the biggest thing in terms of making sure that our version of the story was at least heard and also accepted.
The next thing was this guy who used to be a producer of the NBC midday news. He invited me and another Party member and Hanrahan, the state’s attorney, to be on his show. Hanrahan refused. We went on the station and told him that Fred had been murdered. That’s how the word really began to get out that Fred had been murdered. One reporter, named Phil Walters, took the side of the Panthers. He called it murder. He almost got fired. But then a couple of days after, the Tribune came out with this big article questioning who did it, who shot, how many bullets were fired, and was it a really shoot-out, or was it murder, just cold-blooded murder?
(Interview with Bobby Rush)