Revealed by “Get Out” in 2017, Briton Daniel Kaluuya now brilliantly embodies Fred Hampton, civil rights activist, communist and member of the Black Panther Party assassinated in 1969, at the age of 21. Shaka King’s “Judas and the Black Messiah” traces the fight of this forgotten figure and will undoubtedly be one of the events of the next Academy Awards.
–
December 4, 1969, 4:30 a.m. In Fred Hampton’s apartment on Monroe Street in Chicago, everyone has been sleeping for several hours. Everyone except Mark Clark, in charge of watching, armed, in front of the door. His comrade Fred, the charismatic leader of the Black Panther Party in Illinois, indeed knows he is in danger.
Spied on and harassed by the FBI, he does not however suspect the violence of the assault that he and his ten apostles are preparing to undergo. Even less suspect that one of their own betrayed them (Bill O’Neal), giving the sworn assassins the address and plans of the apartment, and ensuring that Hampton will sleep soundly (thanks to barbiturates in glass). Suddenly, there is a knock on the door. Clark grabs his rifle, shouts to warn his companions, but doesn’t even have time to move that he’s already on the ground, pierced by uninvited shots. Then the Chicago Police Department assault group smashes the door and empties its magazines. A hundred bullets cross the apartment from all sides.
Miraculously, only four Panthers are injured, including Hampton, who still sleeps soundly when his wife Deborah Johnson, nine months pregnant, is taken out military hands from the room. Without delay, a cop enters, checks the condition of the one called Chairman Fred (president or secretary general) and finishes him, coldly, with several bullets in the head. He was 21 years old. In Washington DC, the indestructible director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover celebrates the news: he has just eliminated one of the most promising American revolutionaries; the one he nicknames (in a declassified memo years later), the Black Messiah, or black messiah; one who promises to free his people, both from racism and from the capitalist yoke.
A murdered legacy
It is this outright execution, the events leading up to it, and the way Hampton got tricked, that tells Judas and the Black Messiah, the second, and excellent, feature film by Shaka King, broadcast these days on Canal + (failing to be released in theaters). This story, if we know the broad outlines as long as we are interested in the civil rights movement, is little or little taught – including in the United States. From this epic of the sixties, we have especially retained Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, possibly Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton (co-founders of the Black Panther Party), and Fred Hampton, himself, usually occupies only a marginal place. . Yet, placed in context, his action and thought were decisive – and could have been more so if he had not died prematurely.
To read also: “Judas and the Black Messiah” or the revived memory of a leader of the Black Panthers
“It was not only his body that was murdered that night, but also his legacy, affirms Daniel Kaluuya, interpreter hyper-invested of Fred Hampton, who answers us on Zoom, in front of his library. Hoover did everything to prevent Chairman Fred from becoming a national leader and more generally to demonize the Black Panther Party. And we must admit that he had some success. Our film aims, among other things, to correct this false story. ”
Even today, within white and conservative communities in America (and elsewhere), the party with the raised fist is frightening. It remains synonymous with violence, even terrorism, as opposed to the so-called soft and conciliatory Dr. King, whose radicalism has long been obstructed by (bad) history books to allow the emergence of a reconciling narrative. , dominated by a saint.
Read also : Oscars 2021: a ceremony for nothing?
Revive a hero of the African-American cause
Kaluuya himself, by his own admission, had only superficial knowledge of the character before being contacted to play him. He had heard of it but, being English, had never looked into the details. Ironically, it was Ryan Coogler who approached him, after directing him in … Black Panther.
While filming, in 2017, the reshoots of his superhero film – unrelated, if not by distant echoes, with the revolutionary movement -, the filmmaker speaks for the first time to Kaluuya about the existence of this project which he produces on behalf of his friend Shaka King. Very quickly, it appears to them that the actor revealed by Get Out (and, before that, by the series Skins and Black Mirror in the UK) is perfect for the role, despite his age (ten years older than Hampton on the day he died) and nationality.
This last aspect was not without question, since, at the announcement of the casting, some journalists and activists took umbrage at the fact that a British black had been chosen to play a hero of the African-American cause. A particularly strong form of accusation of cultural appropriation to which the actor, winner of a Golden Globe and favorite for the Oscar for best supporting role (strange for someone who occupies more than half of the shots), opposes his availability and understanding of the character: “I don’t take it personally because I know these reactions are rooted in years and years of erasure. All I can do is help create a space for African Americans to be heard, and make Chairman Fred’s voice sound as good as possible ”, he promises, invested with sudden gravity.
Chairman Fred: at the mere mention of this name, a certain deference emerges. Even his son, Fred Hampton Jr., reached by phone in Chicago, calls him that. “Chairman Fred was watched by the FBI since he was 14, do you realize? He was very precocious and had extraordinary qualities of speaker and organizer which made him dangerous for the system. This one studies us. He knows if we have potential before we even know it ”, explains the 51-year-old man who followed in his father’s footsteps and is also an activist in the Black Panther Party, perpetuating for example the charitable operations that Fred Sr. had designed in disadvantaged neighborhoods. He confesses that “It was both a blessing and a burden to be her son”.
“It’s encouraging to have a climate where such a film is possible”
On the film, Fred Hampton Jr. worked as a consultant, alongside his mother, Deborah Johnson, who changed her name to Akua Njeri after the Monroe Street massacre. Together, they ensured that the complexity of the historical figure was respected and gave advice to the actors and the director. Kaluuya explains that he sat down for eight hours with them, to soak up their memories as much as possible and reassure them of his approach.
“I read all the books I could find on the Black Panther, I immersed myself in Chairman Fred’s speeches, I did my political education. I even started listening to speeches by Martin Luther King and Malcolm X every morning, because I heard Hampton was doing it. ” As for Shaka King, he was not the first to want to tell this story, but convinced his heirs to give him the green light by promising them not to water down the activist’s incandescent word, not to drown his message. , radical, in the tremolos of the great Hollywood spectacle.
The promise is not fully kept as the ideological battles of Hampton, while present, are not at the center of the film but on its edges, giving up their screen time to more classic considerations, from moral order (all that follows traitor Bill O’Neal, played by LaKeith Stanfield), or sentimental (the love story). However, Shaka King does not hide that his hero was a communist, who sought to overthrow power and who was assassinated for this reason. Fred Jr. thus recognizes that “It is encouraging to have a climate where such a film is possible, on one of the most revolutionary organizations in this country, and among the most demonized by the authorities”.
“We are seeing a change right now in Hollywood, note for his part Kaluuya, I feel an openness, a willingness to tell stories without compromise, capable of changing the nature of the conversation. ” Without being a firebrand – but was the Warner really expected to produce a new One + One of Godard? -, Judas and the Black Messiah thus remains relatively honest with his subject. As we know, historical films always provide more information on the time that produced them than on the one they are dealing with. And, in a way, Fred Hampton is here a messiah of our era more than his own – a Black Lives Matter icon rather than Black Panther, to which Daniel Kaluuya, decidedly all the right things, perfectly embodies. .
Judas and the Black Messiah by Shaka King, with Daniel Kaluuya, LaKeith Stanfield, Jesse Plemons (USA, 2020, 2:06). On Canal + on April 24
–
