The Murder of Fred Hampton

Restored 35mm Print

  • Introduction

    Melissa Charles is the assistant director for African American Student Development at UC Berkeley.

It’s the rare film that decades later can seem as timely as it was the day it came out. The searing documentary The Murder of Fred Hampton is such a film.

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

Intending to chronicle the newly formed Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party, Michael Gray and Howard Alk documented founder Fred Hampton interacting with the Black community for nearly a year. The dynamic twenty-one-year-old inspired with his rallying cry, “I am a revolutionary,” but his statement “I believe I will be able to die as a revolutionary” proved disturbingly prescient. He was shot dead in his bed during a police raid in which another Panther also died on December 4, 1969. Drawing on footage of the shot-up apartment and interviews with Black Panthers, the filmmakers created an incendiary exposé of the Chicago police force’s role in Hampton’s murder, rebutting the arguments of the Illinois State Attorney and the official police version of events. Fifty years later, The Murder of Fred Hampton remains an urgent and powerful political documentary.

Kathy Geritz
FILM DETAILS 
Cinematographer
  • Howard Alk
  • Michael Gray
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 35mm
  • 88 mins
Source
  • UCLA Film & Television Archive
Additional Info
  • Provided courtesy of Carol Gray, William Cottle, and The Chicago Film Archives