By Tom Siebert
“You can’t shoot your way to equality,” FBI special agent Roy Mitchell tells car thief turned informant William “Wild Bill” O'Neal, who reluctantly agrees to infiltrate the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party and its leader Fred Hampton, in the jarringly brilliant new movie “Judas and the Black Messiah.”
It is late 1968 and civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King Jr. have all been shot to death in the cause of Black inequality, leaving some justifiably impatient young African Americans with no seeming alternative but to resort to the revolutionary tactics of the Panthers and other militia groups.
But FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, law enforcement writ large, and most of America feared these revolutionaries as a mortal threat to the nation, in the wake of so-called race riots in more than 100 U.S. cities, even though only a small minority of the Black minority population participated in the civil unrest over two summers.
In “Judas and the Black Messiah,” a scintillating dramatization of this real––and really disturbing–– American history, 17-year-old O’Neal is portrayed with astonishing dimension by LaKeith Stanfield (“Atlanta,” “Sorry to Bother You”).
The likeable undercover “snitch” learns quickly that his get-out-of-jail card is not so free. In fact it nearly costs him his life during practically every interaction with the heavily armed Panthers, headquartered on Chicago’s West Side.
O'Neal grows close, scarily close, as security chief to the charismatic Hampton, who leads the Panthers with his soaring speeches, alliances with multicultural “rainbow coalition” groups, and free breakfasts for underprivileged children, feeding their stomachs with nutrition and seasoning their minds with a bittersweet mixture of “police are pigs” propaganda and Black pride.
When O’Neal is not being propositioned and paid off by agent Mitchell, he is in the bloody midst of the Panthers’ shootouts, standoffs, and burn-downs of their headquarters by the overreaching Chicago police.
British actor Daniel Kaluuya (“Get Out,” “Black Panther”) plays Hampton with power and presence, revealing vulnerability only when he falls in love with fellow Panther Deborah Johnson, portrayed smartly and endearingly by the scene-stealing Dominque Fishback.
The rest of the incandescent cast in this searing docudrama, directed by Shaka King, includes Jesse Plemons as Mitchell, Ashton Sandors, Algee Smith, Lil’ Rey Howery, Dominique Thorne, Amari Cheatom, Darrel Britt-Gibson as then-Panther and now-U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Chicago), and screen legend Martin Sheen, whose keen social conscience no doubt led him to a cameo role as the controversial Hoover, who headed the FBI from 1924 until his death in 1972.
The infamous denouement of “Judas and the Black Messiah” occurs on Dec. 4, 1969, when the FBI, Chicago police, and Cook County state attorney’s office coordinate a raid on Hampton’s apartment, killing the Panther leader, 21, and defense captain Mark Clark, 22.
No law enforcement officer was charged in the killings. (“Some things will never change,” as Bruce Hornsby would later sing.) But a Chicago Sun-Times investigation shortly after the deadly raid revealed that police and FBI bullets outnumbered Panthers’ by more than 90–1, notwithstanding the nail holes in the apartment walls that were vainly used by the state attorney’s office to prove otherwise.
In 1970 the Hampton and Clark families were awarded $1.85 million in a lawsuit settlement with the city of Chicago, Cook County, and Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The mind-piercing movie concludes with news footage of Hampton's speeches, his funeral procession, and O’Neal being interviewed in 1989 for the second part of the acclaimed PBS documentary about the civil rights movement, “Eyes on the Prize.”
A closing title card states that O'Neal continued to work as an informant within the state Black Panther Party before committing suicide. (He actually ran out into the car-crowded Eisenhower Expressway after a night of drinking on January 15, 1990, ironically, Martin Luther King’s birthday.)
Today, Fred Hampton Jr. and his mother Akua Njeri (the former Deborah Johnson) serve as chairman and board member of the Black Panther Party Cubs, a nonviolent social-change group.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nominated “Judas and the Black Messiah” for best film, director, cinematography, original screenplay––and curiously––supporting actor awards for each of its leading stars.
Both gifted performers are worthy of best-acting accolades but Stanfield’s role was the more nuanced, complicated, and challenging. The life of the uneasy informant was always in peril, so Stanfield plays him with eyes darting around every room, twitching fearfully, laughing nervously, and mustering up fake fervor for the Panthers' cause.
This historical movie has already made history for being the first film nominated for Best Picture with all-Black producers: Shaka King, Charles D. King, and Ryan Coogler.
That award milestone hopefully foreshadows the sometime soon when all African Americans are awarded equality in housing, healthcare, employment, and treatment by law enforcement.
