TY - JOUR
AU - Greene, Larry
AB - In the early morning of December 4, 1969, Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther party (Bpp), was assassinated by a joint operation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Fbi) and the Chicago Police Department while he, his girlfriend, Deborah Johnson, and other members of the Bpp were asleep in their apartment. Hampton's death was part of the Fbi Counterintelligence Program (Cointelpro) to disrupt Black nationalist and leftist organizations. Judas and the Black Messiah tells this well-known story with dramatic poignancy and sensitivity to a new younger audience. Hampton (played effectively by Daniel Kaluuya, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance) joined earlier martyred African American leaders murdered in the civil rights struggle in the 1960s such as Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and four young African American girls killed in the Ku Klux Klan bombing of a Black church in Birmingham. The second full feature film directed by Shaka King, after his acclaimed Newlyweeds (2013), this metaphorical movie explores the issues of betrayal and collaboration in the assassination of Hampton by a paid Black Fbi informant, William O'Neal (played by Lakeith Stanfield, who was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor). For too long Americans have ignored the nobility of those enslaved who revolted, planned revolts, or took flight on the Underground Railroad. Yet, it is prudent to note that not all were resistance fighters. Just as some Europeans collaborated with Nazis in occupied countries, many slave revolts were betrayed by someone enslaved. What are the lived experiences and perceptions of a society that makes a resistance fighter, and how do they differ from the events and outlook of those molding a collaborator? This fundamental question is explored in this soon-to-be-classic film in African American cinema. Other questions are raised if an avowed democratic state allows systematic inequalities in policing and engages in political assassination to squash dissent from both self-identified revolutionaries and reformers. Does that nation deserve to be considered a democratic state and retain the respect and loyalty of its citizens? Part of the film's opening is footage from the highly acclaimed documentary Eyes on the Prize (1987–1990) containing statements by radical “New Left” advocates affiliated with the Bpp and other activist movements, such as H. “Rap” Brown condemning racism, economic exploitation of minorities, and political repression. The film cuts to Fbi director J. Edgar Hoover, played by Martin Sheen, asserting to his national security audience that the Bpp constituted “the single greatest threat to our national security” and that Hampton was the new “Black Messiah,” because he had the charisma and leadership skills to unite the communists, the antiwar movement, and the New Left, which would threaten America liberty. With the assassination of King in April 1968 and three years earlier of Malcolm X, Hoover had identified Black political movements and organizations as charismatic-leader type organizations that would collapse from the elimination of their leadership. The film moves to Chicago in 1968 with Hampton speaking effectively to a Black student audience. But during the event, he mocks a student's Afro-centric dress as irrelevant to the necessary political consciousness and militancy. In the audience was his future soon-to- be girlfriend and confidant, Deborah Johnson, played by Dominque Fishback with great love and personal commitment to Hampton and the movement. It was she who advised him against criticism of a “brother” for exhibiting cultural pride. It is a moment that demonstrates Hampton's willingness to take advice from a woman when some in other parts of civil rights and Black power movements envisioned a subordinate role for women. Gender equality in the movement is asserted in one of Hampton's community classes when a male student makes a sexist remark and Hampton requires him to do push-ups as a penalty for not knowing the proper treatment of women within the movement. Another teachable moment for educators involves noting that the armed conflict in Los Angeles between cultural nationalists such as Maulana “Ron” Karenga's U.S. organization and the local chapter of the Bpp was instigated by the Fbi's local office, which used informants in a West Coast version of the bureau's Cointelpro operation. Hampton wanted to move beyond these internecine divisions and bring together the disparate organizations into a united multiracial, multicultural, and socialist movement that challenged the capitalist politics he perceived as the enemy of Black and poor people. One scene in particular exhibits his willingness to form a “Rainbow Coalition,” when he and a few Bpp members show up at a meeting of the Young Patriots, a militant organization of disaffected white migrants to Chicago from Appalachia. Against the backdrop of a Confederate flag, his proposal for an alliance between his party and the Young Patriots to combat police oppression, poverty, and the indifference of elected officials included a historical “what if”: What could slaves and poor whites have accomplished in the antebellum South if they had formed an alliance? The message apparently resonated with other ethnic groups, and in a subsequent scene, his followers show up as an act of support at a funeral of a Puerto Rican youth murdered by the police and to support their Puerto Rican organizational counterpart, the Young Lords. Chicago's Rainbow Coalition was a beginning of, and perhaps a precursor to, what could be accomplished, but the difficulties of expanding it to a national level have been formidable, as evidenced by the last fifty years of struggle. O'Neal's career as a paid Fbi informant is tied to his previous career and arrest as a petty car thief armed with a fake Fbi identification, but Stanfield plays O'Neal as a more complicated character. Facing state charges for car theft and federal charges for impersonating a federal agent, he agrees to become an informant on the Fbi payroll. Later, his Fbi handler, agent Roy Mitchell, becomes impatient and asks what he needs to get closer to Hampton. Stanfield assures him, ironically, that if he had a car he could become Hampton's driver and could get closer. There are episodes in the movie where Stanfield plays O'Neal as both fearful of being discovered and executed by the Bpp and, at the same time, liking the camaraderie and their cause. His facial expressions reflect this fear and inner conflict. After surveillance of Bpp meetings, agent Mitchell noted: “Either this guy deserves an Academy Award or he believes this shit.” In an earlier period, Mitchell is portrayed as something of a father figure, telling O'Neal that spying on the Panthers is a patriotic duty since there is no difference between them and the Ku Klux Klan, based on Mitchell's experience spying on the Klan in the South. Of course, this is a highly distorted take on the Fbi's actual role. A shoot-out with police at Chicago Panther headquarters, while Hampton is under arrest for allegedly robbing an ice cream truck, leads O'Neal to make a frantic call to Mitchell to say that he wants out since he almost got killed while trying to flee the headquarters. Mitchell's response is that he has the “goods” on him and will “hunt” him down. Hampton's incarceration, however, does not placate Hoover. Even the Illinois Supreme Court's denial of Hampton's appeal from prison is only a “temporary solution,” and, indeed, it makes a hero of him. The only permanent solution is the death of Hampton. Mitchell meets with O'Neal and wants him to provide a map of the apartment where Hampton lives with Johnson and a couple of other Panthers. During the raid, approximately ninety-nine shots are fired into the apartment by the Chicago police with only one fired by a Panther. Hampton was only twenty-one and Mark Clark only twenty-two. Despite these circumstances, the police avoided trial and the justice system. The film narrative ends with a meeting between O'Neal's Fbi handler, Mitchell, and a despondent looking O'Neal, who receives money and a deed to a “legitimate” business, a gas station. O'Neal received the equivalent of over $200,000 in today's money. Informative intertitles add a postscript that brings forward the lives of Deborah Johnson and Hampton's son, born only twenty-five days after the murder of his father. They remain committed to Hampton's vision of struggle as evidenced in their involvement in the Black Panther Party Cubs. A most impactful postnarrative is given by O'Neal himself in an interview in the Eyes on the Prize documentary in which he claimed that he was involved in the “struggle” and that he would let history judge him. On January 15, 1990, the evening that the second half of the documentary premiered, William O'Neal committed suicide. In the interview, he appeared simultaneously defiant and yet unclear about his role. A special feature, “Unexpected Betrayal,” includes brief interviews with the director, writers, and lead actors. Together, they reflect on the film's binary theme of betrayal and revolution. As a biopic, Judas and the Black Messiah succeeds in showing police disrespect and brutality toward the Black community, which, along with systemic racism and poverty, fuels the radicalization of Hampton. In a number of scenes, Hampton's oratorical skills are on full display. The influence of King is invoked early on through the concept of “beloved communities,” but Hampton's main ideological orientation as it evolved owed more to the influence of Malcolm X, along with Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, and Karl Marx. Hampton's attempt to build a multiracial working-class coalition with other oppressed communities is laudable. Historically, however, betrayals of radical and revolutionary movements from within are historically commonplace. Governments have relied on African American informants since the antebellum era. The architects of the film said they hoped to speak to the many people who would potentially be like O'Neal and convince them to be “more like Fred.” The film's exploration of the roles of the collaborator and the revolutionary is its great strength, but questions remain concerning the links between ideology, tactics, and potential success and failure of the Bpp and any movement. The tactical difficulty of building such a movement is obvious when one considers the power differential in the late 1960s and even today in armed struggle between radical sociopolitical movements and local, state, and national governments. Members of the white working class remain highly unstable allies, especially given the reduced power of labor unions and the prevalence of white privilege and racist ideas, even though this group of white people are also disserved by the economy. Hampton and the Bpp sought valiantly to bring “power to the people” of their communities, but the obstacles they faced were great and remain so today. Yet there are glimmers of hope that interracial coalitions can bring positive change. Inevitably, this change will need to address the issues raised by Fred Hampton and the Chicago chapter of the Bpp, but perhaps they will be tackled from new ideological or tactical perspectives. © The Author 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Judas and the Black Messiah
JF - Journal of American History
DO - 10.1093/jahist/jaab342
DA - 2021-12-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/judas-and-the-black-messiah-QuadG780V1
SP - 672
EP - 675
VL - 108
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -