50 years later, still a controversy
Dense, emotionally engaging ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ captures the death of Fred Hampton
The dense, emotionally engaging “Judas and the Black Messiah” captures the death of Fred Hampton.
When it comes to telling Chicago stories, big or small, it’s no secret that we Chicagoans can be hard to win over, particularly in television and movies. But the usual host of small Chicago-centric nitpicks about street names and neighborhoods takes a back seat when the subject is Fred Hampton and the climax is one of Chicago’s most notorious police raids.
Thankfully the creators of “Judas and the Black Messiah,” which premieres Feb. 12 in theaters and on HBO Max, have succeeded in telling a dense, emotionally engaging story that doesn’t try too hard to feel authentically Chicago — though its subject remains controversial more than 50 years later.
The film, directed by Shaka King, isn’t likely to settle any old debates about the deadly raid at 2337 W. Monroe St. in December 1969, but it offers a glimpse that’s favorable to Hampton, then the chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party and the target an undercover government operation under the control of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
In the age of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Hampton’s story resonates.
Hampton’s rise amid his group’s push for community resources and violent clash with police continues to loom large, certainly here in Chicago, which has always served as a political flash point, but also for our nation when feelings around race, class and policing remain raw.
To many youth of the era, Hampton, a Maywood native, was a rising star — a hip, young revolutionary pushing for black empowerment, free medical clinics and free breakfast programs for kids.
Beyond being able to verbally engage young people, the loquacious Hampton became a regular voice on national television news broadcasts, making his case for revolutionary socialist policies to middle America. While it was former Black Panther Party spokesman Bobby Rush who would later rise through politics, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine Hampton as an elected official had he lived.
Pro-police groups have long pushed back against community efforts to martyr Hampton, calling the Black Panthers a violent militant organization that killed police.
“Judas and the Black Messiah” does not shy away from Hampton’s antipolice rhetoric or the violence, including a deadly shootout in November 1969 that left 19-year-old Black Panther Party member Spurgeon “Jake” Winters and two Chicago police officers dead.
The film centers on not only Hampton, the magnetic young ‘Black Messiah’ of the title played by Daniel Kaluuya, but petty-criminal-turned-FBI-informant William O’Neal, with LaKeith Stanfield cast as the film’s Judas. Dominique Fishback gives a powerfully subtle performance as Deborah Johnson, Hampton’s fiancee who was pregnant and present when he was shot dead by police.
The climax depicts Hampton’s death as Johnson, now known as Akua Njeri, has been telling it since the raid: Officers enter a room where an unarmed Hampton lays on a bed alive after the group has already surrendered. He is shot dead.
“Judas and the Black Messiah”’ is fairly true to the official record of the FBI’s infiltration into Chicago’s Black Panther Party and chapters around the country, though it employs some stylish re-imaginings. Hoover’s memo calling Hampton the titular messiah, for example, became a literal call to action to federal agents by Hoover (played by an unrecognizable Martin Sheen).
It would be years after Hampton’s death before the FBI would publicly admit its role in the raid and Hoover’s dirty COINTELPRO tactics, including O’Neal’s role as an informant and attempts to turn street gangs against the Black Panthers, according to a senate committee report.
My one gripe about the film is that the maturity of leads — Kaluuya, 32, and Stanfield, 29 — distracts from perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of the historical events: that the real players — Hampton, O’Neal, Johnson and other party members — were teens and young adults steering their lives toward an uncertain future during the city’s waning days of rage.
Hampton died three months after his 21st birthday, and Johnson, then 18, gave birth to his son, Fred Hampton Jr., less than a month after his death. O’Neal was a skinny 17-yearold when he was first approached by FBI Agent Roy Mitchell, a man in his 30s.
O’Neal’s age and vulnerability was key in both real life and the film: At the same time as the Black youth began to see the older white Mitchell as a role model, he grew closer to Hampton. A Tribune story following Mitchell’s death in 2000 noted that he had as many as nine informants in the Black Panther Party before the fatal raid. O’Neal, however, was the one who gave the FBI a floorplan for Hampton’s apartment.
Despite publicly standing behind his role in the raid, family members believed it haunted O’Neal the rest of his life.
On Jan. 15, 1990, not long after he’d given an interview to the “Eyes On the Prize” documentary series, O’Neal, 40, ran from his uncle’s West Side home and into the path of a vehicle on the Eisenhower Expressway. His family said it was the second time he’d done such a thing; this time, he was killed.