Talk:Fred Hampton

Initial description

The initial line describes him as "American activist, Marxist-Leninist and revolutionary socialist." I feel that the second 2 descriptions are redunant. But also, they don't seem to be his main motivation. Nothing in there about race and what his focus was. For many whose main focus was racial equality or justice during the Cold War, they'd come across Marxist or socialist writings that seemed more in line with their thinking than contemporaneous American political discourse. They were not first a Marxist, then came to the conclusion for racial equality, but started looking for racial equality and found sympathetic voices in those writings (though where that writing came from wasn't necessarily beacons of racial diversity, and there may have been some pushing those aspects of it to help disrupt things in the West). I don't think the references should be taken away, but more emphasis up from on his focus on race in America in the 1960s should be more prominent at the start.

Marxist-Leninist-maoist?

I don’t know what the Haas source says, but Marxism-Leninism-Maoism originated in Peru in the 1980s (according to Wikipedia anyway), therefore the term would not apply to Hampton. I’m guessing Haas calls him a Maoist or says that he praised Mao—not the same thing. Prezbo (talk) 01:36, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Assassination

What a ridiculous biased subtitle designed to portray Hampton as this noble martyr murdered by the state despite the torture, brutality and murder he was implicated in. - The Mummy 146.90.0.46 (talk) 04:45, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Missing fact.

At present, this article does not say when Hampton joined the Black Panther Party. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 17:03, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

For the ignoramuses who love to whitewash and smear Fred as a mere activist

Any which way you slice it, the overwhelming consensus is Fred Hampton was a revolutionary, and the organization for which he served as deputy chairman, the Black Panther Party, was a revolutionary organization Sorry reality does not fit what you want, you will not slander and whitewash Chairman Fred Hampton. He was not just an "activist", he was not just a "guy". He was a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary and this is the scholarly consensus of the BPP and objective reality you will need to conform yourself to, https://exhibits.stanford.edu/saytheirnames/feature/fred-hampton "Fredrick Allen Hampton was a powerful 21-year-old Black Panther Party (BPP) activist and self-described revolutionary socialist"

https://www.naacpconnect.org/blog/entry/fred-hampton-a-leading-light "Fred Hampton was a revolutionary ... Hampton was raised in Maywood, Illinois and would go on to have invaluable impact in Chicago and nationally as a revolutionary icon"

https://www.marxists.org/archive/hampton/1969/04/27.htm "The Black Panther Party is about the complete revolution...Because, like Mao says, we are supposed to be ridden by the people and Huey says we’re going to be ridden down the path of social revolution and that’s for the people. The people ought to know that the Black Panther Party is one thousand percent for the People."

https://www.hamptonthink.org/read/its-a-class-struggle-goddammit-fred-hampton "We move in and we’re saying that there’s no better, there’s no higher Marxist than Huey P. Newton. Not Chairman Mao Tse-Tung or anybody else. We’re saying that 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, truly Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries. We look at Kim Il Sung. We look at Comrade the Marshall, Marshall Kim Il Sung of Korea as towering far and high above in his social practice as Mao Tse-Tung."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/25/judas-and-the-black-messiah-misses-the-mark-in-its-portrayal-of-fred-hampton (Opinion piece) "Fred Hampton was a radical revolutionary"

https://www.latinxproject.nyu.edu/intervenxions/the-legacy-of-fred-hampton-remembering-as-an-active-process "Fred Hampton was an activist and revolutionary"

https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/individuals/fred-hampton links to https://rediscovering-black-history.blogs.archives.gov/2019/12/04/fred-hampton-vanguard-revolutionary/ as a selected blog which describes Chairman Fred as a revolutionary https://www.vox.com/videos/2021/6/2/22464896/why-the-us-government-murdered-fred-hampton "The movement Hampton helped create was unique and revolutionary." https://harvardpolitics.com/fred-hampton-assassination/ "the group of Black revolutionaries who carried guns and wore leather jackets was described by Director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” https://vault.fbi.gov/Fred%20Hampton https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/24/entertainment/fred-hampton-son-interview-judas/index.html Describes Chairman Fred as a revolutionary https://www.savethehamptonhouse.org/ "Chairman Fred Hampton, leader of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party, was a revolutionary and a role model for Chicago, the international community, and the ongoing movement for the liberation of Black people"

Wikipedious1 (talk) 15:52, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Change to Introduction

The sentence I removed was not realistic nor was it propery sourced.

First reference was from a University at Santa Barbara "undergraduate journal" where the author was (quoted from the source)

"The Author: David Adams is a sophomore at Murray State University, majoring in History and minoring in East Asian Studies. He hopes to pursue an academic career in the future."

Not at all a "reputable source"

And the second one is slightly more reasonable, a Stanford "Library Exhibit" summary. However it does not even contain the words "Mao" or Lenin" or even "Marx". It does describe Mr Hampton as a "revolutionary socialist", which description also applies to Bernie Sanders. While there are people in the US who would describe Mr Sanders as a Marxist-Leninist scourge of the devil and tool of Satan, that's not the overwhelming evaluation of his positions. A quick search of "Fred Hampton" finds only this ONE source claiming Mr Hampton was a wild-eyed plant serving the International Communist Party in their quest to overthrow the United States.

My new version is not that good but at least it's not silly. A better revision would be fine by me, but please no unsubstantiated John Birch claims founded on third-rate frothings by sophomore history students from Nebraska. 204.174.230.37 (talk) 09:00, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say this but Hampton really was a Leninist. Better sources are needed though. Simonm223 (talk) 12:44, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

This source is a good starting point. But, seriously, this isn't John Birch silliness. Hampton was an honest-to-goodness revolutionary before the police martyred him for it. Simonm223 (talk) 12:51, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

I understand that primary sources are not used in Wikipedia, but I'm just putting it for the record that Hampton's political beliefs -- in line with the rest of the Panther leadership and its stated political line, as well as the New Communist Movement and some elements of the New Left both of which Hampton either helped beget or was apart of -- were Marxist-Leninist and Maoist. You can find Hampton discussing his political philosophy here and here, where he cites Leninist revolutionaries like Mao and Kim Il Sung, says the BPP "puts Marxist-Leninist theory into practice", and outright states "We are Marxist-Leninists" with a "Marxist-Leninist [political] line"

The issue is that Hampton's and the Panther's radical political views are often whitewashed and overlooked when they are discussed, and they are often misunderstood by the general public, a phenomena noted by Jacobin (considered reliable) here. So yes, there are not many sources discussing Hampton's Marxism-Leninism, and I will concede that there are not many sources describing him as such. At the same time, it's clear that merely discussing him as a "revolutionary" is too vague and inadequate in describing him.

> A quick search of "Fred Hampton" finds only this ONE source claiming Mr Hampton was a wild-eyed plant serving the International Communist Party in their quest to overthrow the United States.

...What?

The funny thing is, maybe you are unaware, Hampton is also known to have discussed the necessity of international proletarian revolution, as discussed by some sources here and here. Here are his words (emphasis mine):

>We don’t think you fight fire with fire best; we think you fight fire with water best. We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism. We’re stood up and said we’re not going to fight reactionary pigs and reactionary state’s attorneys like this and reactionary state’s attorneys like Hanrahan with any other reactions on our part. We’re going to fight their reactions with all of us people getting together and having an international proletarian revolution Wikipedious1 (talk) 19:37, 8 February 2025 (UTC)