The Wife and I watched "Judas and the Black Messiah" last night on HBO Max. It was awesome. And historically, I would say that it was as close to reality as I have ever seen in what may be called a bio-pic from start to finish. The cinematography is beautifully rendered, the acting performances stellar, and the story should be enough to show us another "what-if" besides RFK. This is a must-see film.
Historically, the film nailed the FBI (yeah, a puffed up Martin Sheen playing J. Edgar Hoover was amusing) and its active role in stopping Hampton from doing well by fellow citizens, black, white and Puerto Rican, in Chicago. The film also nails the murder of Hampton at the hands of the FBI and Chicago police, while giving truth to the "Judas"'s position (Bill O'Neal) that he did not spike Hampton's drink on the night of the murders, when there are others who believe he did spike the drink. In other words, there was a subtlety I respected very much. The two shots from the police or FBI that killed Hampton follows what his common law wife has said for decades--and which I had personally heard a year ago when meeting (through my greatest friend in New Mexico, Alan Wagman) the lawyer who represented her. That lawyer is now retired and living in Santa Fe, I believe.
The film's only material historical license I saw is making it clearer than it is whether George Sams of the New Haven, Connecticut Panthers was an in fact an FBI informant. The whole Sams-Rickey sub-story remains convoluted, but the FBI's hands there are undeniable, too--especially with the FBI's frame up of Bobby Seale for the Rickey murder. The FBI got what they wanted, which was to neutralize Seale, just as they did Newton, Cleaver, and others. The FBI really feared Hampton and that is why they murdered him.
I should add here how, in my RFK lives novel, released nearly twenty years ago (!), I have Dave Dellinger, Tom Hayden and Mayor Daley's DA Tom Foran (representing Daley), in the summer of 1968, cutting a deal RFK brokers that includes Fred Hampton being left to run his clinic and day care, and how later, in an RFK administration Justice Department, the FBI's COINTELPRO is told in no uncertain terms to leave Hampton alone. Still, it is legendary educator Marva Collins who becomes Chicago's first black mayor.
