[Editor’s Note: These are from notes I took from the inspiring words spoken by Joe Wilson, Executive Director of Hospitality House in San Francisco, at a Black History Month celebration at the Coalition on Homelessness, February 26, 2026. Sarah Menefee]
I am a child of the Sixties, from the South Side of Chicago. My first meal of the day every day was breakfast provided by the Black Panthers.
A group of us youngsters were walking around, Fred Hampton just walked up to us and asked if anyone had told us we had the bloodlines of kings and pharaohs. We would have never thought of that. He said think about those things, that’s what you have your brains for.
While he’s talking to us a huge crowd of people came up. He was taking about fighting racism not with more racism but with solidarity. A bus driver stops and says, you all need to get off this bus and listen to this young man speak.
He was talking about being together with other human beings in similar situations in life – we all have it in us, the ability to strive for love and beauty. He was a warrior.
I spoke to my mother about it and she said “somebody is going to kill him.” A couple of months later they shot him in the head in bed. I had a sense of anger and outrage and loss. And so..
He’s here. In the kinds of struggles we’re confronted with now. We’ve faced some hard things in our lives, here and in so many places. How much heartbreak, damage and suffering is being felt. How hard the struggle will be if we sacrifice love for each other. When that happens we see the worst.
Forty years ago I was sleeping on a mat on a floor, and there were plenty of nights when I was hoping I wouldn’t see another day. Lots of people were needed to lift me out of my feeling of being unloved. That is the essence. That is the essence of Black history, of human history.
In the book of days, how much we have triumphed over, risen above. It is possible to triumph and stand in the face of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia. We can build a better world than that.
Struggle to hold onto your soul and your soulfulness. That is what we can do for ourselves, no matter who is in office. We have a choice how we live each day, that’s what will save us. The law will not save us – we will have to forge our own way forward.
Our first calling is our capacity to love. That’s the beauty to life. I’m grateful for my capacity to get angry about shit, about injustice, but not to pass on pain, but lift up in love.
Remember there is some of Fred Hampton in all of us.
Joe Wilson is the Executive Director of the Hospitality House in San Francisco's Tenderloin and one of the original founders of the Coalition on Homelessness. Formerly homeless, he was honored for his community work by the SF Board of Supervisors in 2014.
