Talk:Fred Hampton

Initial description

The initial line describes him as "American activist, Marxist-Leninist and revolutionary socialist." I feel that the second 2 descriptions are redunant. But also, they don't seem to be his main motivation. Nothing in there about race and what his focus was. For many whose main focus was racial equality or justice during the Cold War, they'd come across Marxist or socialist writings that seemed more in line with their thinking than contemporaneous American political discourse. They were not first a Marxist, then came to the conclusion for racial equality, but started looking for racial equality and found sympathetic voices in those writings (though where that writing came from wasn't necessarily beacons of racial diversity, and there may have been some pushing those aspects of it to help disrupt things in the West). I don't think the references should be taken away, but more emphasis up from on his focus on race in America in the 1960s should be more prominent at the start.

Initial Incident

In the Raid Section under Assassination, the article mentions "An alternative account said that Clark answered the door and police immediately shot him." I was looking through some of the other sources to see if I could source this. In this article, it mentions

Survivors described a far more frightening scene: Officers armed with shotguns and rifles opening fire on sleeping Black Panther members inside, among them Hampton’s pregnant fiancee. A special federal grand jury determined that police sprayed 82 to 99 gunshots through doors, walls and windows while just one shot appeared to have been fired by someone inside.

— William Lee, In 1969, charismatic Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton was killed in a hail of gunfire. 50 years later, the fight against police brutality continues

However, it doesn't mention the details of the initial incident. This article mentions:

About 4:45 a.m., Sgt. Daniel Groth knocked on the front door. When there was no answer, he knocked with his gun. The next seven minutes of gunfire became one of the most hotly disputed incidents of the turbulent 1960s. After the shooting stopped, Illinois Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, 21, and a party leader from Peoria, Mark Clark, 22, were dead.

— Ted Gregory, The Black Panther Raid and the death of Fred Hampton

This source details the initial incident between Sgt. Daniel Groth and Mark Clark.

Records of the Shots

In the introduction to the article it mentions "Law enforcement sprayed more than 100 gunshots throughout the apartment; the occupants fired once." The quote earlier that I used from the source they used, indicates a range of 82-99, rather than above 100. In the Raid Section it mentions "This was the only shot fired by the Panthers." with four sources.

Edits

It might be more accurate to replace the mention of alternate accounts with the summary provided by the Chicago Tribune, or add a cite to the alternate version of events. I am not able to find evidence or sources for the specific version of events where Mark answered the door when the police knocked then opened fire.

Not to downplay the severity of the assassination and raid by any means, but from what sources I can find, there was an estimated 82-99 bullets used in the raid, not over 100.

That introduction and raid section sentences mentioned earlier both mention only one shot being fired - specifically from Mark Clark as a death reflex. It might be better to sync the sources for these two sentences since they reference the same incident. For the sake of historical context, it might be worth adding this photo after the raid from this article. It shows the officers right after the raid outside of 2337 W. Monroe St., Chicago. I'm not familiar with the copyright status of the image.

KawaiiAmber (talk) 05:54, 2 November 2023 (UTC)