by “I believe I’m going to die doing the things I was born to do. I believe I’m going to die high off the people. I believe I’m going to die a revolutionary in the international revolutionary proletarian struggle.”
The story of Fred Hampton – and his assassination on orders from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover – is being introduced to a new generation by the new movie Judas and the Black Messiah. A powerful performance by rising star Daniel Kaluuya offers a deeply sympathetic portrayal of the young socialist firebrand. The story is told from the point of view of William O’Neal, played by Lakeith Stanfield, and his role as an informant for the FBI. We were able to see the speeches, personality, and struggle of the Black Panther Party come to life in this film.
While there are some helpful critiques of this film circulating on the left, it cannot be accused of white-washing the story and revolutionary politics of Fred Hampton. The film was given a Hollywood sized budget, a cast of big-name stars, and distributed by HBOMax (owned by AT&T). Seeing a generally honest, if at times shallow and sensationalized, portrayal of the political ideas of Fred Hampton and the Black Panther Party is a welcome addition to the wave of social justice orientated films in recent times. In the midst of renewed mass resistance to police brutality and repression, it’s a sign of the times that a major HBO film didn’t flinch from articulating Hampton’s idea of uniting working class people in the struggle for a socialist revolution.
In the shadow of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X, the Black Panther Party and a number of charismatic socialist leaders like Fred Hampton arose. The radicalization emerging from the Civil Rights era and the growing disillusionment with capitalist reform gave rise to the Black Panther’s socialist ideas.
After stepping down as NAACP Youth Council President, Fred Hampton joined the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panthers in 1968 and quickly rose to prominence, becoming the chairman of the chapter at age 20. He was fully committed to building a Black revolutionary organization alongside a militant multi-racial movement to fight for a socialist society. His ability to build solidarity among unlikely groups inspired fear within the FBI and then-director Hoover.
Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers inspired by the Civil Rights era movement that began with MLK Jr. and Malcolm X went in a much more radical direction with the clear aim of building a revolutionary socialist movement. They studied Marx, Lenin, Mao and learned from other contemporary revolutions around the world.
In Chicago, they developed the Free Breakfast Program for Children, along with health clinics, free busing programs, and other mass mutual aid to expose the failures of the capitalist state to provide basic necessities. As Malcolm X said, in a recording replayed in the movie, “Any time you’re… walking around here singing “We Shall Overcome,” the government has failed you.”
These mutual aid programs were not only meant to address people’s immediate needs. Their ultimate purpose was to teach community members about socialist ideas and to organize them. Fred Hampton explained: “A lot of people think the Breakfast for Children program is charity. But what does it do? It takes the people from one stage to another stage. Any program that’s revolutionary is an advancing program. Revolution is change.” Through the Panthers famous Ten-Point Program, they were able to link the struggle for immediate needs and reforms to the struggle for a socialist revolution.
Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers took these survival programs and used them as a tool to build political support, agitate for their politics and used them to recruit to the party. They did not just want to give help to those who need it but give revolutionary political education to those that used the programs.
A Rainbow Coalition
In response to the police repression and the desire to organize under the banner of revolutionary socialism, Fred Hampton started the Rainbow Coalition. The film portrays Hampton’s success in bringing together the Young Patriots Organization (YPO), the Young Lords and the Crowns, a local gang, among many other community organizations. The Young Patriots Organization was made up of white workers who moved to Chicago from Appalachia. The Young Lords fought for the rights of Puerto Ricans and Latinos in Chicago and had chapters across the country. To bring together such groups was no easy task.
In the documentary “American Revolution 2,” there is a powerful clip showing Bob Lee of the Black Panthers attending a meeting with the Young Patriots Organization to discuss common issues they can work on. One of the YPO leaders instructed the crowd, “I want you people to stick together, I’ll stick with the Black Panthers and they’ll stick with me.”
The YPO declared themselves a leftist organization fighting on many issues surrounding poverty in Chicago. While they had Italians, Latinos, and American Indians in their organization, they were mostly known as an organization for White southerners. As depicted in the movie, at times they would even display the confederate flags at meetings as a recruiting tool. While this reflected the political confusion of the group, and stirred distrust among some Panthers, it was to Fred Hampton’s great credit that he did not allow this important political difference to rule out efforts to unite in common struggle. Some groups today, like the anti-capitalist Redneck Revolt, take inspiration from the YPO and try to appeal to working people in the South with a left-wing political program.
The Black Panther Party used their Ten-Point Program to build their organization and underpin the Rainbow Coalition. This program stated, “We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine The Destiny Of Our Black Community.” Also they stated, “We Want An End To The Robbery By The Capitalists Of Our Black Community.” Furthermore, the program included demands like guaranteed jobs, income, housing, and an end to police brutality.
The Young Patriots Organization, inspired by the Panthers and the coalition, created their own political program and set up their own community programs. Their program took up many of the Panthers demands including ending police repression, housing for all, and ending capitalist exploitation.
One weakness of the movie was not paying more attention to the Ten-Point Program of the Panthers. They linked the fight against racist oppression with universalist programs for jobs and housing for all working class people, while connecting these to the struggle for a socialist society. This was a key part of the rapid growth and spread of the Black Panthers around the United States.
While organizing against the ongoing attacks against their respective organizations Fred Hampton sought to bring other groups together to expand their support. Along with the YPO and Young Lords they had the support of the American Indian Movement, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and countless other local community groups. Despite this leading to the persecution and jailing of local leaders, Hampton and the Chicago Black Panther Party were a national model for effective organizing.
As Hampton said, “Power anywhere where there’s people.” The fears of the FBI were well-founded. Without the murderous repression by law-enforcement, it’s not hard to imagine how strong that type of coalition led by revolutionary politics could become, especially if it became more rooted in organized workplaces. The strike wave of the 1970s, with revolutionary Black workers playing an important role in the revitalized labor movement, could have been a powerful force for challenging the racist capitalist system if a strong socialist party had been rooted in the multi-racial working class – but unfortunately the huge surge of leftist organizing in the 1960s and 1970s failed at accomplishing exactly this task.
When the Panthers went beyond providing free food to children to uniting local gangs, community groups, and organizations across cultural and racial lines, the FBI’s priority became disrupting this unity by any means.
This movie could not have come out at a more important moment. Coming on the heels of the biggest rebellion against racism and police violence in a generation, millions are wondering how we can unite against our common exploitation without glossing over specific oppression. To answer these questions, there is no better starting point than studying Fred Hampton’s political ideas and the Rainbow Coalition he died trying to build.
Fear of the “Black Messiah”
Not long after Fred Hampton and the Illinois Black Panther Party started to bring these groups together under common causes, the government ramped up their repression. The Black Panther Party became a victim of the infamous FBI program COINTELPRO across the country. The FBI used informants like William O’Neal (the main character of the movie) to conduct surveillance and gather information which the FBI used in assassinations, office raids, and framing Panthers.
Using William O’Neal’s information and getting him to drug Fred Hampton, the FBI were able to carry out a raid to assassinate Hampton on December 4th, 1969. The Cook County State’s Attorney’s office organized the raid and provided a unit of 14 heavily armed officers to kill Hampton. Initially police said it was a shoot-out, but Panthers secured the house and proved with forensic evidence that all the shots were coming into the apartment. After years in the courts, Hampton’s family eventually won the largest settlement in history, up to that point, for a police murder case.
As recently as December of 2020, journalist Aaron J. Leonard received documents from a freedom of information filing. These documents directly link former FBI Director Hoover to the raid against Fred Hampton, showing just how scared the FBI was of the effectiveness of Hampton’s organizing and the Rainbow Coalition. Hoover had ramped up the COINTELPRO program to suppress, destroy and neutralize Black power, anti-war, socialist, and other leftist organizations that were gaining support in the 60s, perhaps none more so than the Black Panther Party.
The US government spent decades infiltrating and destroying working class organizations. The Panthers were one of their greatest victims. The FBI and ruling class feared the growth of radicalizing workers especially those inspired by revolutionary Marxist ideas. Many movies nowadays are pointing to the problems of capitalism, but this movie stands out for highlighting the socialist solutions that guided activists like Fred Hampton. A movie like Judas and the Black Messiah can play an important role in educating new people about the Black Panthers and Fred Hampton, and hopefully give millions a taste for Marxist ideas.
More than ever Hollywood is producing new shows and movies about the struggle of Black America in historical and current contexts. In the past few years we have seen movies like Greenbook, 12 Years a Slave, BlaKkKlansmen, One Night in Miami, Moonlight, Fruitvale Station, and Get Out, to name a few, rise in popularity as people seek to learn more and bring to light the conditions of the Black community. Where Judas and the Black Messiah stands out is not only how it shows the political brutality of capitalist state repression, but how it offers solutions in the strategies of The Black Panthers and the Rainbow Coalition.
Link the Chains of Struggle
“We’ve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don’t fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism”
Over the Spring and Summer of 2020 the Black Lives Matter movement came back to the forefront of struggle after the murder of George Floyd. This was an important test for the Democratic Socialists of America, and brought up many important organizational and political questions. The Black Lives Matter movement is not immune from ruling class forces co-opting the movement to fit inside their own political agenda, and the need for a bold Black socialist leadership is more needed today than ever. DSA will have many opportunities in the years ahead to strengthen its ties and influence within the wider BLM movement and, especially if we can learn from the confident revolutionary working class approach of figures like Hampton. With a clear anti-racist working class approach, DSA can link up our program for Medicare for All, de-funding the police, taxing the rich and a $15 dollar minimum wage to the struggle for Black Freedom.
Fred Hampton and the Black Panther Party made clear what their intentions were and the program they were building. This became obvious when Fred Hampton denounced the tactics of the The Weathermen which he called, ”adventuristic, masochistic and Custeristic.” They used terror as a form of strategy. Fred Hampton believed in the building of a broad banner for socialist change with any organization willing to fight for similar ideas in a method that brought workers into the struggle. Despite the FBI’s attempt to snuff out the Black Panthers and their leaders their ideas live on today.
The capitalist system feeds off of racial divides and polarization. We see the ruling class blame and disenfranchise immigrants, people of color, the LGBTQ community, and other groups still today. When we can build movements across these divides our power will really demonstrate itself. This is the solidarity that Hoover and the FBI feared.
