The great revolutionary and freedom fighter, Fred Hampton, was born August 30, 1948. A leader of the Black Panthers he was murdered by Chicago police and the FBI in December, 1969 at the age of just 21.
"I believe that I’m going to do my job and I believe that I was born not to die in a car wreck; I don’t believe that I’m going to die in a car wreck. I don’t believe I’m going to die slipping on a piece of ice; I don’t believe I’m going to die because I got a bad heart; I don’t believe I’m going to die because of lung cancer.
I believe that I’m going to be able to die doing the things I was born for. I believe that I’m going be able to die high off the people. I believe that I will be able to die as a revolutionary in the international revolutionary proletarian struggle. And I hope that each one of you will be able to die in the international proletarian revolutionary struggle or you’ll be able to live in it. And I think that struggle’s going to come.
Why don’t you live for the people?
Why don’t you struggle for the people?
Why don’t you die for the people?" - from Why don’t you die for the people?, transcribed from an audio recording.
"First of all, we say primarily that the priority of this struggle is class. That Marx, and Lenin, and Che Guevara end Mao Tse-Tung and anybody else that has ever said or knew or practiced anything about revolution, always said that revolution is a class struggle. It was one class—the oppressed—those other class—the oppressor. And it’s got to be a universal fact." - from It’s a Class Struggle, Godamnit!, November, 1969
"The difference between the people and the vanguard is very important. You got to understand that the people follow the vanguard. You got to understand that the Black Panther Party IS the vanguard. If you are about going to the people you got to understand that the vanguard leads the people. After the social revolution, the vanguard party, through our educational programs—and that program is overwhelming—the people are educated to the point that they can run things themselves. That’s what you call educating the people, organizing the people, arming the people and bringing them revolutionary political power. That means people’s power. That means the people’s revolution. And if you’re not about being involved in a people’s revolution then you got to do something. You got to support the people’s revolution...
...you can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail the revolution. You can run a freedom fighter around the country but you can’t run freedom fighting around the country. You can murder a liberator, but you can’t murder liberation." from You Can Murder a Liberator, but You Can’t Murder Liberation, speech April 1969
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