PrimeWire

Betrayed and drugged by an FBI informer before being assassinated by the police while he slept, Fred Hampton was the one Black Panther who fit FBI director Hoover’s fear of the appearance of a ‘black messiah’ - someone who could unite all the races and saw class not racism as the key organising principle of revolution with his concept of the Rainbow Coalition that embraced grassroots working class groups like the Young Patriots, composed of poor displaced white youth.
Unfortunately the prevailing historical view of the Black Panthers is of gun-toting macho male revolutionaries even though the majority of the membership was young black women and I can’t help but feel that the vision of Fred Hampton was lost because of this distorted view of the Black Panthers.
One of the most essential documents of the radical seventies, the film and the message of Fred Hampton is more needed than ever.