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.
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Deborah was later interviewed about the raid and said: “I believe Fred Hampton was drugged. The reason why is because when he woke up when the person [Truelock] said, Chairman, chairman, he was shaking Fred s arm, you know, Fred s arm was folded across the head of the bed.
“And Fred he just raised his head up real slow. It was like watching a slow motion. He raised. His eyes were open.
“He raised his head up real slow, you know, with his eyes toward the entranceway, toward the bedroom and laid his head back down. That was the only movement he made.”
The mysterious and once perilous life of William O`Neal, 40, a key federal government informant who infiltrated the Black Panthers in the late 1960s, ended in
SNCC); and the Congress for Racial Equality (
CORE). While these associations generally pursued their goals through civil disobedience and the courts, it was the Black Panther Party that eschewed the establishment in favor of leftist community organizing, a focus on Black power, and military tactics.
New film
Judas and the Black Messiah, in theaters and on HBO Max Feb 12, follows the rise of Black Panther Chairman Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), the head of the Illinois chapter of the party. Filmmaker Shaka King tells the true story of Hampton and Bill O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield), the car thief turned FBI informant forced to undermine the organization from the inside and participate in Hampton’s assassination. The movie is blistering in its portrayal of the conspiracy between the federal government and the local police department to silence Hampton.