Judas and the Black Messiah: Inside the story of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton

Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was just 21 when he was murdered. Now his incendiary story is being told in a new movie
Jochan Embley5 February 2021

In the winter of 1969, when a heavily armed, FBI-backed team of police officers stormed an apartment on the West Side of Chicago and killed one of its sleeping inhabitants, it was the latest case of a black visionary being assassinated for their beliefs. Little more than a year and a half earlier, Martin Luther King Jr had been shot dead in Tennessee, and three years before that, Malcolm X was murdered in New York. And now, after the raid in the early hours of December 3, Fred Hampton was gone, too.

The story of this prodigious revolutionary — a potent force within the Black Panther Party, a fearless champion of the black community whose galvanising leadership transcended racial divides, but who was still only 21 years old — has remained lesser known compared to others from the era. That is set to change with the release of Judas and the Black Messiah, an extraordinary new film that tells of the story of Hampton’s ascendancy (Daniel Kaluuya's magnetic portrayal has rightly been nominated for a Golden Globe), but also delves into the murky hypocrisy of William O’Neal, the young man who, caught in the grip of the FBI, infiltrated Hampton’s inner circle and ended up committing the ultimate betrayal. 

Born in Chicago in 1948, to parents who had relocated there during the Great Migration in a bid to escape the horrors of Jim Crow in Louisiana, Hampton’s potential for greatness was clear from an early age. Excelling both academically and athletically, he joined a local college to study law, while also becoming an effective youth organiser within his local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It wasn’t long before his skill as a charismatic orator and persuasive teacher began to shine through.

Kaluuya has picked up a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of Hampton
Glen Wilson

For Shaka King, director and co-writer of the upcoming film, the initial pull towards telling Hampton’s story was simply “his words. Reading his words, they were incredibly profound and always relevant.” Talking at a promotional event for the film earlier this week, King describes Hampton’s “incredible ability to take very complex ideas and put them in plain English, but in a very clever way, and draw parallels to things that are incredibly relatable.

“He was a very relatable person, but at the same time, he had a gift that no-one else has,” King adds. “It’s rare that you see that combination — someone who’s both relatable and almost feels superhuman.”

But King also wanted to explore Hampton’s deep humanity, something detached from the perpetuated caricature of the Panthers as gun-toting militants. One of Hampton’s most extraordinary achievements as a member of the Panthers’ Illinois chapter was the brokering of a peace deal between some of Chicago’s warning street factions — a move which led to the birth of the Rainbow Coalition, a multiracial socialist alliance focused on tackling everything from poverty and poor housing to police brutality. He also pioneered a free breakfast programme for impoverished school kids in multiple parts of Chicago, and helped set up a free medical centre and other community health services.

Director Shaka King wanted to explore Hampton's humanity
Glen Wilson

“The Panthers really led with love,” King says. “They weren’t a terrorist organisation, but rather, they were community organisers, and philosophers and thinkers — people who did the work. [In the film I’m] putting forward the message of love being at the heart of all that they were trying to accomplish.”

It’s something that was mirrored by Kaluuya in his portrayal. “The power of loving yourself, and loving the people that look like you, and loving your own community — that’s something that really resonated with me,” the actor says.

But while this was all happening, a nefarious counter force was also taking stock. Alarmed by the rise of the Panthers and, crucially, Hampton’s ability to bring people together regardless of their race, the FBI started searching for ways to tear them apart. The ruling powers of the time didn’t perceive the Panthers as a force for social improvement, but rather as a radical threat that, if left to grow, could feasibly overthrow the current order.

Those fears crystallised into COINTELPRO, the shady counter-intelligence arm of the FBI, which acted secretly and, in some cases, illegally to quell what it saw as domestic political uprisings. It had been operating since the mid-1950s, taking aim at everything from the feminist and civil rights movements to communists and anti-Vietnam protestors, and now it had its eyes set on Hampton.

LaKeith Stanfield and Jesse Plemons in Judas and the Black Messiah
Glen Wilson

They found their man — or their Judas — in O’Neal, a black teenager who, months after stealing a car and joy-riding it across state boundaries, was cornered by the FBI and given an ultimatum: either face prison time for what you did, or work for us as a double agent within the Black Panther Party.

O’Neal opted for the latter, and that choice is explored as a central theme of the film, both in terms of his manipulation at the hands of the FBI, but also how O’Neal justified it to himself (LaKeith Stanfield plays the role with nuanced brilliance). In a notorious interview given as part of the Eyes on the Prize television series some 20 years after Hampton’s death, the real-life O’Neal said he had “no idea of anything about [the Panthers’] politics” when he joined. For King, the role of the fictionalised O’Neal is to stand testament to “the dangers of being apolitical”. “The old expression, ‘If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything’ applies here,” he adds.

O’Neal gained entry to the Illinois chapter and soon rose through the ranks to become Hampton’s head of security. With his unrivalled access, and at the behest of his FBI handlers, O’Neal drew a detailed floorplan of Hampton’s apartment, including in which room Hampton slept beside his heavily pregnant fiancée Deborah Johnson. On the night before the fatal raid, O’Neal secretly spiked Hampton’s drink with a barbiturate, so that when the officers stormed in, he would be nothing more than a sitting duck.

JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH – Trailer 2
Stanfield had "internal conflict" while playing O'Neal
Warner Bros

For Stanfield, acting out such a thing was immensely difficult. “I had internal conflict the whole time,” he says, adding: “When I was in the apartment, having to poison Fred, I was literally sick that day. I couldn’t stop compulsively crying.”

In real-life, the plan for the raid worked, and Hampton was shot twice through the head. Various police cover-ups followed, in which the Panthers were wrongly painted as the aggressors, but a 12-year court battle eventually led to a settlement of $1.18m, paid out to survivors of the raid, as well the relatives of Hampton and Mark Clark, a Panther also killed during the attack. That said, the picture is still evolving today — in January this year, previously unseen FBI documents were released and provided evidence the bureau’s director at the time, J Edgar Hoover, was fully aware of the raid.

Another mystery remains, though: did O’Neal regret his actions? In that Eyes on the Prize interview, he admits that he “felt bad” afterwards, but also goes on to say that he “didn’t feel guilty”. We’ll never know for sure; on January 15 1990 — Martin Luther King Day — O’Neal took his own life.

“He was a cipher in a lot of ways,” Shaka King says. “I think he was constantly shapeshifting, and I think he died unsure of who he was. And I can’t say I have a clear certainty of who he was either.”

Judas and the Black Messiah is released on February 26

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