49 years ago early in the morning on this date, Fred Hampton, revolutionary organizer and Chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, was murdered by the State as he slept, in a joint raid organized by the office of Cook County State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan and executed in conjunction with the Chicago Police Department and the FBI. They kicked in the door of a house full of Panther members and stormed in with guns ablaze. By the time the smoke cleared, Hampton and one other Panther would be dead, and the remaining Panthers in the house wounded and arrested on a veritable laundry list of trumped-up charges (all of which would later be dropped for lack of sufficient evidence).

The timing of the raid was already certainly suspicious, to say the least. Hampton had recently been very vocally critical (and correctly so) of Hanrehan’s office’s “war on gangs” rhetoric as being a dog whistle phrase used to justify what would be, in practice, merely yet another state offensive against the black youth of Chicago. Hampton had also been on the verge of creating a merger between the local Panthers and a major south side street gang which would have doubled the local member/active supporter base of the local Party chapter, as well as forming working links with local Latin-American and white working-class political formations (while continuing to resolutely oppose and criticize tendencies of chauvinism, opportunism, and reckless adventurism amongst many local elements of the white Left especially in their interactions with Black and other nationally-oppressed peoples) and working towards building genuine revolutionary multi-national working class solidarity. Additionally, these successes earned the further ire of notorious FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, who saw these political advances as a threat of the highest order to “national security” (meaning, a threat to American settler-bourgeois hegemony) and ordered in response an intensification of already existing COINTELPRO counter-intelligence and sabotage programs against the BPP, with the intent to now thoroughly crush and neutralize the Panthers “by any means necessary.”

After initial State accounts of the alleged pretext of the raid and the timeline of events during the actual raid itself were challenged and criticized by local journalists for many apparent inconsistencies, an internal “investigation” was launched, and the officers involved in the raid swiftly exonerated of any wrongdoing — and unsurprising outcome, as what else ever happens when pigs investigate pigs? What is more noteworthy in this case, however, is that through further independent investigation, almost all aspects of the State’s account of the assassination were thoroughly picked apart and proven to be largely outright fabrication — the pretext for the raid, the claim of a stockpile of illegal weapons, was largely an exaggeration of the truth; it was also in fact CPD who shot first and not the Panthers as was initially claimed by the State, and that furthermore the Panthers only fired one shot during the raid, determined to be caused by a reflexive death convulsion on the part of Panther member Mark Clark, who was on house guard duty near the front door and who was shot and killed instantly upon police entering the dwelling. Years later, after many of these findings had come to light and the State’s accounts largely rejected by all serious inquirers, the families of Hampton and Clark filed civil suits against Cook County, the CPD, the FBI, and certain other related individuals, and, after suit dismissals, appeals, and new trials, the defendants were eventually cornered into a settlement of $1.85 million total to the plaintiffs as their involvement became clearer and clearer as the proceedings unfolded; from the State’s perspective it was the preferable alternative to letting the trial unfold to the point where they could actually be found guilty of such repressive collusion in public court records.

In hindsight, given the eventual revelations regarding the existence and full scope of the COINTELPRO program from leaked and/or later-declassified internal memos coupled with a more general historical understanding of how the bourgeois state reacts to challenges against its hegemony, it is now of course only obvious that Hampton, a rapidly-rising, driven, and successful young Panther cadre in a position of clear, respected, and organically-earned leadership, would be a clear target for the State in their (regrettably, eventually successful) attempts to fracture the local Panther organizations and send a clear warning message to other revolutionary organizers, especially those from nationally-oppressed communities. We see more than mere echoes of COINTELPRO in the manner by which the modern American state continues to engage in such monitoring, sabotage, and repression of militant movements against white capitalist-imperialist hegemony under the guise of “national security”, with the most recent wave coming in behind the visible uprisings and disruptions in order surrounding recent cases of police lynchings of unarmed Black men, and setting its sights on so-called “Black Identity Extremism”, according to a recently leaked FBI internal memo. The wording of their intended targets makes it clear: any remotely-militant movement that coalesces around issues specifically affecting Black people in this country is to be treated as criminal. The state sends the unequivocal message: stick to playing our rigged electoral games, by our rules, or feel our retribution. The state acts this way towards struggles for Black liberation because Black liberation is inherently opposed to the material interests of the American settler-bourgeois state because the American settler-colonial project was built on and continues to rest on a foundation of the super-exploited labor of Black people.

Maintaining that historical analysis of the class function of the bourgeois state, and an understanding of the true motivations for his assassination as revealed in numerous now-declassified FBI documents, it is clear that Fred Hampton was murdered by the State precisely because he was so successful in his organizing work and providing such astute and in-touch leadership to such a genuinely revolutionary Party in the process of developing real mass bases of support. Unlike many US “left” organizations, both back then and today, the Panthers (and Hampton in particular) wasted little of their time involving themselves in the drama, formalism, and petty sectarian squabbles of the more “established” radical left, or orienting themselves towards other existing organizations, and instead oriented themselves directly towards the masses themselves; they moved and lived directly amongst the hard core of the American proletariat — the nationally-oppressed Black and Brown working classes. Hampton and the Panthers studied in great detail their problems and concerns, their collective strengths and weaknesses, and their visions of the future; they both taught and were themselves taught by the masses which they aimed to serve, organize, and prepare for revolutionary upheaval. This dedication to the people and these people’s subsequent identification with the aims and methods of the Party, in recognition of the sincerity and steadfastness of the Panther cause, made Fred and the local Panthers infinitely more dangerous to American settler-bourgeois rule than any white, university-educated thrill-seeking Weather Underground adventurists, or revisionist “communist” parties like the CPUSA, have ever been. This is why there are many Panthers *still* locked up for their service to the people to this day, yet the majority of Weathermen who were caught and convicted received comparatively short sentences, have since been released, and many of whom are now quasi-revolutionary liberals who have re-assimilated into the largely academic sphere of politics or are living off press tours for books chronicling their past exploits, and generally able to live off of publicly basking in their “glory days” without much further pressure from the State. Some of them were even specifically criticized by Hampton for the ways that their reckless bomb-throwing adventurism often resulted in no concrete gains for the people yet resulted in much concrete blowback against the Black masses of Chicago who often bore the brunt of police retaliation and retribution for those adventuristic acts. Such organizations are ultimately not at all a threat to settler-bourgeois rule, no matter how militant and openly hostile to the bourgeois State their rhetoric may be, if the masses are not standing alongside them, participating in realizing their program, like the Black masses of Chicago and other cities across the United States were supporting and actively participating in, the Panther’s many social relief programs (programs they often referred to as programs for “survival pending revolution”). Like Mao said, “ The masses are the real heroes, while we ourselves are often childish and ignorant, and without this understanding, it is impossible to acquire even the most rudimentary knowledge”, and it is clear through his life and deeds that Hampton also had a fundamental, intrinsic understanding of this basic fact that all too many self-styled revolutionaries forget entirely.

In this sense, despite the fact that Hampton and the Panthers at large correctly understood that the genuine liberation of oppressed peoples only comes about in earnest through armed struggle, it was their social initiatives, thing such as their Free Breakfast for Children programs, People’s Free Medical Centers, free grocery programs, and Youth Institute and tutoring programs, that made them so truly dangerous to the existing order. Hampton and the Panthers were literally building the nucleus of a new society and set of social relations in the decaying shell of the old society; they were organizing to meet the material needs of the people in ways that showed the inadequacy and lack of concern by the settler-bourgeois state in regards to meeting these needs. Indeed, they were demonstrating to both the state as well as the masses they served that they could organize to meet their own social and material needs further and further outside the existing capitalist-imperialist political and legal superstructure, and had the tools and willingness to defend this emerging transformative movement. This was the supreme fear felt by the American ruling classes at the growth of the Panthers during that period: the masses were being organized in ways that demonstrated and started to make clear to them that not only was the settler-bourgeois State and existing capitalist-imperialist social order not necessary for, indifferent towards, and even actively hostile to, their continued social and economic development; it was utterly incompatible with and diametrically opposed to it, and that the creation of a social order that would see justice for them as peoples is intrinsically and inseparably linked to the destruction of the old social order and there was and is no way to reconcile the two. The guns weren’t wielded because anyone arbitrarily enjoyed violence and pain; on the contrary, ultimately, the final aim of picking up the gun to struggle for liberation is to be able to put it down again, for good. They’re utilized as a tool because it’s recognized that they’re ultimately necessary regardless of anyone’s personal feelings on the matter; it is the sheer repressive force of the bourgeois state and the nature of class society and class struggle itself that makes them necessary. As Hampton so neatly sums up, “Let me just say: Peace to you, if you’re willing to fight for it.”

In summation, Hampton in many ways embodied both the practical understanding of correct methods of political work and engagement, merging theory and practice, etc., and also the discipline, selflessness, and dedication to the people that all of us should look to for inspiration. Fred went so hard for the people that, in one instance, his comrades took him by surprise after a few straight days of all Party work and little sleep, and tied him up to a chair, just so he could get some rest for a bit that his comrades saw he sorely needed. Now i’m not saying that is a healthy way to work nor that that particularly is something to specifically emulate, but it’s an anecdote that illustrates just how all-in Hampton was for the liberation of his people and the liberation of oppressed peoples across the world.

Rest in power, Chairman Fred; you may no longer walk among the people, but your ideas and revolutionary fighting spirit live on in the oppressed masses of this country, and not even the most cynical of commentators can ever dispute how thoroughly you lived for, and eventually, died for, the people.