One of the most jarring notes in the 2018 Marvel film Black Panther is the character of Everett Ross, a white CIA operative who fights alongside Wakandans to defeat the Black militant Killmonger. Never mind that for decades, the real CIA surveilled and murdered many African revolutionaries and Black Panthers. Spike Leeâs BlacKkKlansman (also 2018) features a similar sugar coat, making Ron Stallworth, the Black cop who infiltrated the KKK, into a hero, while papering over his role in counter-intelligence programmes targeting Black radical organisations.Â
Even in the most politically engaged Hollywood movies, the thoroughly racist legacies of American law enforcement are rarely shown unvarnished. So the fact that Judas and the Black Messiah even exists â a major studio film about the assassination in 1969 of the 21-year-old Fred Hampton, charismatic deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party â is in itself remarkable. Writer-director Shaka Kingâs film lays bare the dirty war that the FBI and American police have waged for years against Black Americans.Â