They just came and murdered Fred Hampton. Nelson Mandela they put in jail for a long time and then they let him out. He had a “Party”. He was allowed a wife and a life somehow. For some reason they didn’t murder him like they did Fred Hampton.
Fred said that the System was strong enough to withstand his loss. There were people who got these primitive video cameras and shot him talking. Video Freeks? I think that is what they called themselves. I’ve looked at the tape and read the Wikipedia story about Fred Hampton.
But the Black Panther Party, and it’s “System”, wasn’t strong enough to withstand the loss of Fred Hampton.
Chicago hasn’t been able to withstand losing Fred Hampton.
(Those early video cameras were difficult as hell to operate and getting on all this time to have saved the images and been able to transfer it onto youtube, is something i applaud as a feat.)
I’ve never met a person with so much charisma myself. The man was what they talk about. He got up one day and started feeding children before they went to school. This was on the South Side of Chicago in 1968, 1969, when he was murdered in a drugged sleep. Cops came in and shot the guard and machine gunned the place killing Fred Hampton in his sleep.
A traitor had been paid to put barbituates in the food. That guy committed suicide like a Judas story.
The story now is that J. Edgar Hoover told Chicago to kill him and they did. That was Mayor Daley and Hanrahan the way I remember it. Guys from Kenwood went and looked around the apartment where Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were murdered and said all the bullet holes in the walls went the wrong direction.
My Uncle and Mother had decided I could go to school on the South Side with them and I got to go North from Greensboro to Chicago and go to school. Out of that came two scholarships. Even going to school in Chicago was a scholarship. You could call it a scholarship within the family.
High school in Greensboro, North Carolina was hard to take. I’d gotten thrown out of class for saying to the FBI history teacher VietNam was second to the war in the Philippines when American troops shot and tortured Filipinos in 1899. I’d been thrown out of school for three days. I went and moved rugs around in a fast money rug sales scheme. “Some people will say these rugs aren’t real Persian rugs after we are gone.”
Greensboro was where lots of Civil Rights actions had happened.
It is a big old fine old suburbs town these days. It is a good place for white people with money who fly around.
I had a friend there whose brother had gone to the war. He was all fucked up. The brother and him really and I drifted away because my friend was mean.
We get mean.
They had a nice house. The mom kept things nice. His dad had a club foot. He was a trumpet player. They had a basement band. So many things happen so fast when you are in high school. Somehow you find people nearby and hangout and watch TV and you are smarter than anybody.
In two years I don’t think I saw his father twice. His mother I hardly ever saw either. The house was a great house though really. There were all these great houses all over the place back when I was growing up. There were enough rooms in them. Now houses and apartments never have enough rooms in them.
Mom didn’t mind chasing us with a broom to get us to go to church. There are lots of things moments not remembered by any of my interior. The photographs I took, or have seen remind me of girls and cars. Drugs were important then and so we were after pot and peragoric and LSD and I wanted to take movies.
In Chicago I have to say my Uncle was a hero for being in the church that was anti war. One of the priests, these being Episcopalians called us in the US the New Nazis, because of Grant Park riots and the Viet Nam war.
I did LSD there in Chicago and wanted to tell my Uncle what I was thinking about and he was horrified and told me to go to bed and sleep it off. I watched Bob Dylan’s hair go out off that poster all over and was disappointed.
He is still mad about me smoking pot but never mentions the LSD?
My mother died a few months ago and he came for the memorial internment service and said he almost sent me away for smoking pot. 47 years ago and I don’t feel sorry about things. He writes a blog about worries about how they prayed. I can’t seem to be nice enough.
Grant park was where I was in a discussion circle with Fred Hampton doing all that corny chanting and talking about how there was a cause and we were the people and we had the power.
I was sorry I’d missed the riot.
There was nobody like him ever. Not that I’ve met. Maybe near Nelson Mandela you can feel his spirit and energy and goodness and spirit. Some people leap off the screen like they say. Some people get photographed in the first place because of how they are.
At least in South Africa they didn’t just shoot Nelson Mandela like they did Fred Hampton.
Then Governors and Senators all say that they invented Head Start. Every University level Sociologist I ever talked to knows who Fred Hampton was. They all say he was the one.
I hear that J. Edgar Hoover heard about Fred Hampton, and determined he was an existential threat to “The System” and had him murdered.
The Black Panthers really couldn’t do without him. They became crude and stupid and are gone dead in gun fights and prison. The murders mattered. Staying alive was too hard and is really a lot harder for non conformist than it looks. Being Black or Mexican in the US is illegal. Smoking and selling pot is illegal and they arrest you and put you in jail for it if you are Black or Mexican.
60 thousand have been killed in the Drug War the past 5 years gone. For most of us that is a statistic and really it is coward killing being done considering there would be more honor fighting the governments.
But I am wrong and lying because a lot of that is deaths from mobster to GI of Mexico. Mexican Police and Mexican army guys are killing the cartel guys who are well armed and live there in Mexico and kill people nearby.
The hippies went into coke. Coke is the worst thing that happened to my generation.
The literature said it wasn’t addictive.
If it hadn’t been for the top guys getting into coke, things would be different in this country.
But I don’t understand how Kanye West goes off singing rapping and all these people have heroes like Martin Luther King who had Charisma like my hero Fred Hampton and he got assassinated too. Martin Luther King was about to give up on non violence last I heard.
Crack is the underground drug they use to help them keep up and go on rapping, isn’t it?
Crack makes people mean doesn’t it? Sure did seem so. The art coming along is ugly.
Before crack it was reported in the papers when a cash carrying cab driver in NYC was shot. After crack they had to give up listing all the crack cash motivated murders is what my cab driver from NYC friend told me.
Last time I was in Chicago I didn’t want to be on the South Side.
I don’t understand how Kanye West in particular has never sung about Fred Hampton. Nor really do I understand even why Barack Obama hasn’t ever mentioned Fred Hampton, when I think about it.
It just shows that murder works for the system that is dominate and in power better than you want to believe.