Police Brutality, Misconduct and Shootings

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      ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’: What to Know About the HBO Max Film

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Judas and the Black Messiah’: What to Know About the HBO Max FilmThe Shaka King movie dramatizes the life and death of Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party. Here’s a guide to the people and the issues of the day.Daniel Kaluuya, top, as Fred Hampton, and below him Lakeith Steinfeld as the informant William O’Neal  in “Judas and the Black Messiah.”Credit…Glen Wilson/Warner BrosFeb. 12, 2021, 12:18 p.m. ETTo Black Americans in the 1960s who were targeted and harassed by the police, 21-year-old Fred Hampton was an empowering figure.To the F.B.I. and its director, J. Edgar Hoover, Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party, was a radical threat.Hampton was killed by Chicago police officers early on the morning of Dec. 4, 1969, during a raid on his West Side apartment, which was a block south of the Black Panther Party’s Chicago headquarters. The ambush, and the months of F.B.I. surveillance of Hampton and the Panthers that preceded it, are dramatized in Shaka King’s film “Judas and the Black Messiah,” which begins streaming Friday on HBO Max.At the time of Hampton’s death, Chicago was the site of political protests and violent clashes with law enforcement. The infamous trial of the Chicago 7, a court battle that involved seven Vietnam War protesters charged with conspiring to incite riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention (a saga chronicled in Aaron Sorkin’s recent film “The Trial of the Chicago 7”), had been underway for a little over two months.King, who co-wrote the script with Will Berson, drew mostly from fact while taking viewers inside the Black Panther Party in the months leading up to Hampton’s death, though they took a few dramatic liberties. For instance, the film’s star, Daniel Kaluuya, is a decade older than the 21-year-old Hampton was when he was killed.Here is a guide to the real-life people, groups and events that feature in “Judas and the Black Messiah.” Be warned, there are spoilers, if such a thing is possible when speaking of history.Who were the Black Panthers?Bobby Seale, left, and Huey P. Newton at the Black Panther Party headquarters in San Francisco.Credit…Ted Streshinsky/Corbis via Getty ImagesThe Black Panther Party was founded in 1966 in Oakland, Calif., by a pair of Black college students, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, to oppose police brutality and racism in local neighborhoods. The Panthers, who were known for their military-style black berets, leather jackets and raised-fist salute, believed in removing abusive officers from communities by any means necessary, including armed resistance.The F.B.I. viewed the Panthers as a radical group capable of galvanizing a militant Black nationalist movement. (Hoover, the bureau’s first director, called the Black Panther Party “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country”). But the Panthers also launched a number of social initiatives: Members ran medical clinics, provided free transportation to prisons for family members of inmates, and started a free breakfast program that fed thousands of schoolchildren.Who was Fred Hampton?Fred Hampton at the “Days of Rage” rally in Chicago, less than two months before he was killed.Credit…David Fenton/Getty ImagesThe charismatic community organizer enjoyed a meteoric rise that took him from campaigning for an integrated community pool and recreational center in his hometown, Maywood, Ill., to preaching to thousands as the chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party.In 1969, a few months after helping to found the party’s Illinois chapter, the 20-year-old Hampton brokered an alliance he called the Rainbow Coalition, which united the Black Panthers, the Young Patriots (Southern white leftists) and the Young Lords (a Puerto Rican civil and human rights organization) in an effort to combat poverty and racism in their Chicago communities.Hampton’s rapid ascent through the ranks of the Black Panther Party landed him in the cross hairs of a secret F.B.I. counterintelligence program, known as Cointelpro, that Hoover formed to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize the activities of Black nationalist, hate-type organizations.” Targets included both the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Ku Klux Klan. Hoover declared in an internal memo that he sought to prevent the “rise of a ‘messiah’ who could unify and electrify the militant Black nationalist movement.”Under Cointelpro, the F.B.I. tried a number of tactics to sow discord within the Black Panther Party at the national and local levels, including sending bogus letters to two of its leaders, Eldridge Cleaver and Huey P. Newton, which claimed that each sought to depose the other. Authorities also arrested Hampton and several other Panthers in an effort to publicly discredit the group. In the months before the raid on Hampton’s apartment, the Panthers and the police also faced off in two gun battles: One in July 1969 at the party’s West Side headquarters in which five police officers and three Panthers were injured, and a South Side fight that November that left two officers and one Panther dead.Who was William O’Neal?At 17, O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield) already had a criminal record when the F.B.I. agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) tracked him down after he stole a car in 1966. But O’Neal soon took on a new role: F.B.I. informant. Given the choice between facing felony charges or agreeing to infiltrate the Panthers, he opted for the latter: as a security captain in the Illinois Black Panther Party, he infiltrated Hampton’s inner circle.In 1969, O’Neal sketched a floor plan of Hampton’s West Side apartment, including where everyone slept, which the F.B.I. then shared with the Chicago Police Department, the agency that conducted the fatal raid. But unlike the character in “Judas and the Black Messiah,” the real O’Neal did not see his actions as a betrayal of Hampton or the Panthers. “I had no allegiance to the Panthers,” he recalled in an interview for the PBS docuseries “Eyes on the Prize,” which chronicled the history of the civil rights movement in the United States.What happened the morning Fred Hampton was killed?Demonstrators in Boston in 1970 protested the killing of Fred Hampton. Credit…Spencer Grant/Getty ImagesFourteen Chicago police officers showed up before dawn on Dec. 4, 1969, at Hampton’s apartment, acting on the orders of Edward V. Hanrahan, the Cook County state’s attorney. Over the course of about 10 minutes, more than 80 shots were fired. When the smoke cleared, Hampton, 21, and another party leader, Mark Clark, 22, were dead, and four other Panthers and two police officers were wounded.At first, the police claimed they killed Hampton in self-defense after people in the apartment began firing shotguns at them as they tried to execute a search warrant for illegal weapons. But ballistics experts determined that only one of the bullets was probably discharged from a weapon belonging to an occupant of the apartment. A federal grand jury investigation also revealed that the “bullet holes” in the apartment’s front door, which officers had cited as evidence that the Panthers had shot at them, were in fact nail holes created by police.Though the Chicago Police Department had led the raid, the grand jury concluded that it had been coordinated by the F.B.I. as part of Hoover’s mission to cripple the Black Panther Party — and an F.B.I. memo later revealed that the bureau had authorized a bonus payment to O’Neal.The first federal grand jury declined to indict anyone involved in the raid, and though a subsequent grand jury indicted Hanrahan and the police officers who participated in the shootings, all the charges were dismissed. In 1982, without admitting any wrongdoing, the federal government, the City of Chicago and Cook County agreed to pay $1.85 million to the families of Hampton and Clark and to survivors of the raid.Clarence M. Kelley, who succeeded Hoover as head of the F.B.I. in 1973, issued a public apology three years later for the bureau’s abuse of power in the “twilight” of Hoover’s career. “Some of those activities were clearly wrong and quite indefensible,” Kelley said. “We most certainly must never allow them to be repeated.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Jimmie Rodgers, Who Sang ‘Honeycomb’ and Other Hits, Dies at 87

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJimmie Rodgers, Who Sang ‘Honeycomb’ and Other Hits, Dies at 87His crossover appeal landed him on the charts often in the 1950s and ’60s, but a violent incident in 1967 derailed his career.The singer Jimmie Rodgers in a 1958 publicity photo. He was was a regular presence on the pop, country, R&B and easy listening charts for a decade.Credit…Bettmann ArchiveJan. 22, 2021, 5:21 p.m. ETJimmie Rodgers, whose smooth voice straddled the line between pop and country and brought him a string of hits — none bigger than his first record, “Honeycomb,” in 1957 — died on Monday in Palm Desert, Calif. He was 87.His daughter Michele Rodgers said that the cause was kidney disease and that he had also tested positive for Covid-19.Mr. Rodgers was a regular presence on the pop, country, R&B and easy listening charts for a decade after “Honeycomb,” with records that included “Oh-Oh, I’m Falling in Love Again” (1958) and “Child of Clay” (1967), both of which were nominated for Grammy Awards.He might have continued that run of success but for an ugly incident in December 1967, when he was pulled over by a man who, he later said, was an off-duty Los Angeles police officer and beat him severely.Three brain surgeries followed, and he was left with a metal plate in his head. He eventually resumed performing, and even briefly had his own television show, but he faced constant difficulties. For a time he was sidelined because he started having seizures during concerts.“Once word gets out that you’re having seizures onstage, you can’t work,” he told The News Sentinel of Knoxville, Tenn., in 1998. “People won’t hire you.”Mr. Rodgers was found to have spasmodic dysphonia, a disorder characterized by spasms in the muscles of the voice box, a condition he attributed to his brain injury. Yet he later settled into a comfortable niche as a performer and producer in Branson, Mo., the country music mecca, where he had his own theater for several years before retiring to California in 2002.James Frederick Rodgers was born on Sept. 18, 1933, in Camas, Wash., in the southwest part of the state. (Four months earlier, a more famous Jimmie Rodgers, the singer known as the father of country music, had died; the two were unrelated.) His mother, Mary (Schick) Rodgers, was a piano teacher, and his father, Archie, worked in a paper mill. Jimmie started out singing in church and school groups.After graduating from high school, he briefly attended Clark College in Washington State but left to enlist in the Air Force, serving in Korea during the Korean War. In a 2016 interview with The Spectrum, a Utah newspaper, he recalled one particular evening near Christmas 1953.“I bought a beat-up old guitar from a guy for $10 and started playing and singing one night and all the guys joined in,” he said. “We were sitting on the floor with only candles for light, and these tough soldiers had tears running down their cheeks. I realized if my music could have that effect, that’s what I wanted to do with my life.”Back in the States and stationed near Nashville, he started performing in a nightclub for $10 a night and free drinks before returning to Washington after mustering out. In 1957 he traveled to New York to perform on a TV talent show and also snagged an audition for Roulette Records, singing “Honeycomb,” a Bob Merrill song he had learned off a recording by Georgie Shaw and had been performing in the Nashville club.“They basically said, ‘Don’t go any further, that’s great,’” he said in an interview with Gary James for classicbands.com.Mr. Rodgers in performance in 1969, two years after a violent incident in Los Angeles temporarily ended his career.Credit…Jim McCrary/RedfernsMr. Rodgers was taken to a studio to record what he thought would be a demo with musicians he had only just met.“They brought in four players and three singers and we recorded it in about two hours — no charts, no music,” he said in a 2010 oral history for the National Spasmodic Dysphonia Association.A week or two later, he was surprised to hear the song on the radio. It reached the top of the Billboard pop and R&B charts.Later that year he had another success with his version of a song that had been a hit for the Weavers, “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,” giving it an up-tempo kick and injecting key changes similar to what he had used in “Honeycomb.”“I was told that they won’t sell — records that change keys, people can’t sing along with them,” Mr. Rodgers recalled in an oral history recorded in 2002 for the National Association of Music Merchants. The public disagreed.His early songs, released as Elvis Presley was shaking up the music scene, were a sort of comfort food, jaunty yet melodic and not too earthshaking. In 1959 his quick popularity earned him his own television variety show, which ran for one season.“If his singing style calls for more emphasis on beat than lilt,” Jack Gould wrote of its premiere in The New York Times, “at least it has the virtue of being well this side of rock ’n’ roll.”Mr. Rodgers’s short-lived acting career included a lead role in the 1964 war movie “Back Door to Hell.” Also in the cast was a young Jack Nicholson.Credit…ImdbMr. Rodgers in concert in 2012. He had his own theater in Branson, Mo., the country music mecca, for several years before retiring to California in 2002.Credit…John Atashian/Getty ImagesMr. Rodgers dabbled in acting in the 1960s, including a leading role in “Back Door to Hell,” a 1964 war movie whose cast also included Jack Nicholson. In 1965, “Honeycomb” found new life when Post introduced a cereal by that name, repurposing the song to advertise it, the jingle sung by Mr. Rodgers. He also sang a SpaghettiOs jingle that riffed on his “Oh-Oh, I’m Falling in Love Again.”Mr. Rodgers said he was under consideration for a featured role in the 1968 movie musical “Finian’s Rainbow” when the encounter on the freeway derailed his career. In his telling, he was driving home late at night when the driver behind him flashed his lights. He thought it was his conductor, who was also driving to Mr. Rodgers’s house, and pulled over.“I rolled the window down to ask what was the matter,” he told The Toronto Star in 1987. “That’s the last thing I remember.”He ended up with a fractured skull and broken arm. He said the off-duty officer who had pulled him over called two on-duty officers to the scene, but all three scattered when his conductor, who went looking for Mr. Rodgers when he hadn’t arrived home, drove up.The police told a different story: They said Mr. Rodgers had been drunk and had injured himself when he fell. Mr. Rodgers sued the Los Angeles Police Department, prompting a countersuit; the matter was settled out of court in his favor to the tune of $200,000.During his long recovery Mr. Rodgers got another shot at a TV series, a summer replacement variety show in 1969.“I looked like a ghost,” he admitted in a 2004 interview.His marriages to Colleen McClatchy and Trudy Ann Buck ended in divorce. In 1978, he married Mary Louise Biggerstaff. She survives him.In addition to her and his daughter Michele, he is survived by a son, Michael, from his first marriage; two sons from his second marriage, Casey and Logan; a daughter from his third marriage, Katrine Rodgers; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More