"I Arrived the Day Fred Hampton Died": If Jay Z Met Fred Hampton

"I Arrived the Day Fred Hampton Died": If Jay Z MetFred Hamptonby Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan
Inthe early morning of  December 4,1969, before dawn, the Chicago Police Department in conjunction with theFederal Bureau of Investigation—The FBI—riddled the residence of Black PantherParty leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, killing them both.  Hampton, who was sleeping in the backof the house with his pregnant girlfriend was unable to defend himself (he hadbeen drugged by an informant), leading poet and Third World Press founder HakiMadhubuti (then Don L. Lee) to describe the incident as a "One SidedShootout."  On that same day, ShawnCorey Carter—the maverick hip-hop mogul and artist—was born in theBedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, NY.   I can't helpbut wonder what might have happened if these two—icons for two distinctgeneration of Black youth—might have ever had the chance to meet.
Forthose familiar with the legacy of Fred Hampton, simply known as Chairman Fredfor many, Jay Z might seem the very antithesis of what Hamptonrepresented.  At the time of hisassassination, Hampton was being prepared for national leadership within TheBlack Panther Party, which was decimated by incarceration (Huey P. Newton and BobbySeale) and exile (Eldridge Cleaver). Hampton was 21-years-old, five years younger than Martin Luther King,Jr. was when he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the same age of MalcolmLittle when he was when he began the prison sentence that transformed him intoMalcolm X. Hampton was no ordinary young Black man.
Specificallythe Black Panther Party was targeted by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover'scounter-intelligence program, known by the acronym COINTELPRO.  The year before Hampton's death, Hooverpublically announced that the Black Panther Party was the "greatest threat tothe internal security of the country." Part of the FBI's strategy was to killoff the local leadership of the Black Panther Party, before it could ascend tonational leadership. In that vein Hoover targeted the Black Panther Party'sbreakfast program, because it was one of the most tangible ways theorganization impacted their communities.
Accordingto historian Craig Ciccione, author of the forthcoming  IfI Die Before I Wake: The Assassination of Fred Hampton,  "The threat was on the local levelbecause on the local level the organizing was most effective."  Ciccone suggests that killing off localleadership could be achieved on a much quieter level—he notes that virtuallynone of the Panthers killed in the late 1960s were part of the nationalleadership.
Ofthose local leaders, Fred Hampton was perhaps the most significant—The FBIcreated a file on Hampton when he was just an 18-year-old high school student,who would shortly become leader of the Illinois Chapter of the Black PantherParty.  Fred Hampton was acompelling figure because of his skills as an organizer—he was instrumental inthe creation of the Rainbow Coalition (a term later appropriated by JesseJackson) which included the Black Panther Party,  young White activist known as The Young Patriots and TheYoung Lords, a national organization of Puerto Rican activists co-founded byFelipe Luciano, who was also a member of the original Last Poets.
Combinedwith his accomplished skills as an orator and his willingness to organizebeyond the Black community, Hampton was the prototype for the next generationof Black activist, a possibility that was literally killed in the early hoursof December 4, 1969.
Oneof the tragedies of Fred Hampton's death is that his presence would not be feltin the Marcy Houses that Jay Z came of age in, or in any of the likecommunities across this country were young Black Americans lacked examples ofpolitical agency and activism that were in sync with their lives at the dawn of1980s.  The period, best known asthe Reagan era, was marked by the child murders in Atlanta, the explosion of crackcocaine in Black communities, the emergence of AIDS and the collapse of the kindsof social and cultural infrastructures that helped Black Americans survivesegregation and racial violence throughout the 20th Century.
Hip-Hopinitially filled that void and though early hip-hop was little more than the"party and bullshit" that seems so normative today, it ability to allow youngBlack Americans a voice and alternative ways to view the world may have been itmost potent political achievement. For example, Chuck D would have been Chuck Dregardless of Hip-Hop, but how many young Blacks became politically engagedbecause Chuck D had Hip-Hop.  Indeed as Jay Z details throughout his memoir Decoded (written with Dream Hampton),the possibilities that Hip-hop offered were compelling enough to take him fromthe street life.
Theeasy part of this story is to suggest that Jay Z, as emblematic of a Blackgenerational ethos, has squandered Hip-Hop's political potential on the spoilsof crass materialism, middle-management wealth and a politics of pragmatism (asembodied by his man Obama).  The feel good move is to imagine a 61-year-old Hampton and a 41-year-oldCarter sitting down in conversation with Sonia Sanchez to discuss the legacy ofthe Black Panther Party on Hip-Hop and Carter's funding of the Fred Hampton andShirley Chisholm Institute for Black Leadership Development (which by the wayMr. Carter, need not be a dream). Unfortunately the history of Black politicalengagement is not as simple as one of those Staples "easy" buttons.
Whathappened on that morning on December 4, 1969 in many ways is not even about theman Fred Hampton.  Who knows whatHampton's political trajectory might have been—COINTELPRO guaranteed a mixedlegacy for so many of that generation of Black radicals whether they became theseasoned and spirited intellectuals that Kathleen Cleaver and Elaine Brown havebecome or a cracked-out Huey P Newton, Ph.D.  who was shot to death by a drug dealer in 1989 or thecard-carrying conservative Republican that the late Eldridge Cleaver became inthe 1980s.
Whatwas murdered in the early morning of December 4, 1969 was the idea of FredHampton—an idea that some hip-hop artists, notably Dead Prez have triedvaliantly to resuscitate.  HadHampton been allowed to more fully mature as a leader, thinker and human, hewould reproduced others who found value in his political passions and hissingular skills. 
Hadthe idea of Fred Hampton been allowed to survive and flourish, perhaps a16-year-old Shawn Carter wouldn't have needed Hip-hop or the street game andwould have lived in a world where his brilliance could have been amply displayedand reproduced long before Decoded becamea New York Times Bestseller.