Fred Hampton Speech Transcript on Revolution and Racism

Fred Hampton: (00:59)
Power anywhere where there’s people. Power anywhere where there’s people.

A lot of people get the word revolution mixed up, and they think revolution is a bad word. Revolution is nothing but like having a sore on your body and then you put something on that sore to cure that infection. I’m telling you that we’re living in an infectious society right now. I’m telling you that we’re living in a sick society right now. I’m telling you that we’re living in a sick society and anybody that endorses integrating into a sick society before it’s cleaned up is a man who’s committing a crime against the people.

If you walk past a hospital room and you see a sign that says contaminated, and then you try to lead people into that room, either those people are mighty dumb. You understand me? Because if they weren’t, they’d tell you that you were an unfair and unjust leader that does not have your follows interests in mind. What we’re simply saying is that the leaders have to become more responsible and accountable for their actions. I’m saying that any program that’s brought into our community should be analyzed by the people of that community. It should be analyzed. It should be analyzed to see that it meets the relevant needs of that community.

I mean, honestly, people, we’ve got to face some facts, that the masses are poor. The masses belong to what you call the lower class. When I talk about the masses, I’m talking about the white masses. I’m talking about the black masses. I’m talking about the brown masses, and the yellow masses too. We’ve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire. But we say you put out fires best with water. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We’re going to fight racism with solidarity. We say you don’t fight capitalism with no black capitalism. You fight capitalism with socialism.

We ain’t going to fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary. We’re going to organize, dedicate ourselves to the revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the structure of that power. Arm ourselves. All right, we have to arm ourselves and we’re going to fight reactionary pigs with the international proletarian revolution. Excuse me, let me say that one more time. I said we’re going to fight reactionary pigs with the international proletarian revolution, that’s what it’s got to be. The people have to have the power. The people belong with the power.

A lot of people will tell you, “Well, the people ain’t got no theory.” They need some theory. They need some theory, even though they don’t have any practice. And the Black Panther Party tells you that if you listen to what the pig says, you’ll be walking outside when the sun is shining with an umbrella over your head. That’s right. And when it’s raining, you’ll be going outside, leaving an umbrella inside. Look, you got to get it together. That’s what I’m saying, niggers. That’s what they going to have you doing.

Now, what do we do? We say that the Breakfast For Children program is a socialistic program. It teaches the people that basically by practice we thought up and let them practice that theory and inspect that theory. What’s more important? You learn something just like everybody else. Let me try to break that down for you.

You see this brother here, right? He go to school eight years to be an auto mechanic and that teacher, who used to be an auto mechanic, tells him, “Well, nigger, you got to go on what we call on-the-job training.” And he says, “Damn, with all this theory I got, why do I need on-the-job training? What for?” He said, “On-the-job training, he works with me. I’ve been here 20 years and when I started working there was no auto mechanics. I ain’t got no theory. I just got a whole bunch of practice.”

Well what happened? A car came in making a whole lot of funny noise and this brother here go get his book. He on page one, he didn’t even get to page 200 yet. I’m sitting there listening to the car and he says, “What you think it is?” I said, “I think it’s the carburetor.”

He says, “Nah, I don’t see nowhere in this book it says the carburetor make that funny noise. How do you know it’s the carburetor?” I said, “Well, nigger, with all them degrees, as many as the thermometer, around 20 years ago, 19 to be exact, I was listening to that same kind of noise and what I did was I took apart the voltage regulator and it wasn’t that. Then I took apart the alternator and it wasn’t that. I took apart the generator brushes and it wasn’t that. I took apart the generator, and it wasn’t even that. I took apart the generator, and it wasn’t even that. After I took apart, all that, I finally got to the carburetor and when I got to the carburetor, I found out that that’s what it was. And I told myself, ‘Fool, next time you here that funny nose, you take apart the carburetor first.'”

How did he learn? He learned through practice. I say, how did he learn? He learned through practice. Say it with me. How did he learn? He learned through practice.

I don’t care how much theory you got, if you don’t got any practice applied to it, then that theory happens to be irrelevant, right? Any theory you get, you practice it. When you practice, you make some mistakes. When you make some mistakes, you correct that theory. And now what you got? You got a corrected theory that will be able to be applied and used in any situation. That’s what we’ve got to be able to do here.

Every time I speak in church, I always try to say something nice about Martin Luther King. I got a lot of respect for Martin Luther King. I mean, I think he was one of the greatest orators that the country ever produced. I listen to anyone who speaks well because that’s what I just like to listen to. Martin Luther King said that it might look dark sometime, and it might look dark over here on the North Side, but we’re not afraid about being in the dark. He said that the arm of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards heaven.

We got Huey P. Newton in jail and Eldridge Cleaver underground. We got Alprentice “Bunch” Carter has been murdered. Bobby Hutton and John Higgins been murdered. A lot of people think that the Black Panther Party in a sense has given up. But let us say this, that we’ve made the kind of commitment to the people that hardly no one else has ever made. We’ve decided that although some of us come from what some of you call “Petty bougie families,” though some of us could be called in a sense what you call them the mountaintop. We could be integrated into the society, working with people that we may have never had a chance to work with, maybe we could be on that same mountaintop, and maybe we wouldn’t have to be hiding when we go to places like this and we speak, maybe we wouldn’t have to worry about court cases or going to jail, being sick. When we say that even though all those luxuries exist on the mountaintop, we understand that you people and your problems are right here in the valley.

We, the Black Panther Party because of our dedication and understanding went into the valley knowing that the people are here in the valley, knowing that our plight is the same plight as the people in the valley, knowing that our enemies on the mountain and our friends are in the valley. And even though it’s nice to be on the mountaintop, we’re going to go back to the valley because we understand that there’s work to be done in the valley. And when we get through with this work in the valley, we’re going to go to that mountaintop. We’re going to go to that mountaintop because there’s a motherfucker on that mountaintop that’s playing king. And he’s been bullshitting us. And we’ve got to go on that mountaintop, not for the purpose of living like he lives, living his lifestyle. That’s not it. We got to go up on that mountain to make that motherfucker understand that, goddammit, we are coming from the valley.

Yo, rest in peace, Fred Hampton. He died at 21 years old in his sleep next to his woman.

Fred Hampton Speech Transcript on Revolution and Racism

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