The Judas to Fred Hampton’s Messiah: the tragic tale of teen car thief turned FBI mole Bill O’Neal
As seen in the Oscar-tipped film, O Neal spied on the Black Panthers and was an accomplice to murder – but was he also a victim?
12 March 2021 • 3:35pm
Who is the true O’Neal?: Lakeith Stanfield in Judas the Black Messiah and William O Neal
Credit: Warner Bros/Wikipedia
Hollywood loves dividing the world up into heroes and villains. This awards season, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, more contenders than usual feature characters whose good or evil is defined by the nature of their involvement in America’s historic civil rights movement.