SPEAKER_10: New, immune-supporting Emergen-C crystals brings you the goodness of Emergen-C and a fun new popping experience. There is no water needed so it's super convenient, just throw it back in your mouth. Feel the pop, hear the fizz, and taste the delicious natural fruit flavors. Emergen-C crystals orange vitality and strawberry burst flavors for ages 9 and up have 500 mg of vitamin C per stick pack. Look for Emergen-C crystals wherever you shop. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Every kid learns differently, so it's really important that your children have the educational support that they need to help them keep up and excel. If your child needs homework help, check out iXcel, the online learning platform for kids. iXcel covers math, language arts, science, and social studies through interactive practice problems from pre-K to 12th grade. As kids practice, they get positive feedback and even awards. With the school year ramping up, now is the best time to get iXcel. Our listeners can get an exclusive 20% off iXcel membership when they sign up today at ixcel.com slash invisible. That's the letters ixcel.com slash invisible. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. Stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything. Your products, content you create, and even your time. You can easily display posts from your social profiles on your website or share new blogs or videos to social media. Automatically push website content to your favorite channels so your followers can share it too. Go to squarespace.com slash invisible for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code invisible to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hi everybody. This is Roman Mars. The following is a new podcast series that the 99% invisible team led by supervising producer Christopher Johnson produced with Proximity Media in partnership with Warner Brothers. It's a companion to the new film Judas and the Black Messiah, and it's unlike anything we've ever worked on and unlike any other movie podcast in scope and ambition. I'm so glad we're making it in conjunction with such an important and truly excellent film. This is the first in a series of podcasts that I've been cooking up with my friend, the filmmaker Ryan Coogler, who is a huge podcast fan, by the way. That's literally the first thing we ever talked about when we met a couple of years ago. The different podcast series that the Prox and 99PI teams have been kicking around will tell stories based on Proximity Media film productions, as well as audio first podcast originals. So give this a listen, watch the movie and go subscribe to the Judas and the Black Messiah podcast in its own feed to hear the rest of the episodes over the next five weeks. And if you all subscribe, we'll get to produce a bunch more stuff together. Trust me, you want that to happen. We were going to flip out for the stuff that Proximity has planned. Follow the link in the show notes to subscribe or you listen to episode one right now. Thanks.
SPEAKER_07: Heads up, this episode has some strong language.
SPEAKER_12: Heads up, eyes open to fix clench. Y'all know who this is. Now we do this as Chairman Fred Hampton Jr., the Black Panther Party Cubs. In some sense, in the eyes of the state, I may be seen as a three strike offender. One for simply being African, two for being the son of Chairman Fred and Nicole and Jerry and three for continuing to fight for liberation of my people. I'm honored and humbled to be the International Chairman of the Black Panther Party Cubs, the organization that, as we say, not walking in its footsteps, but the Panther Paul steps of the Black Panther Party.
SPEAKER_07: Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. is based in Chicago. As a working activist, he travels almost constantly for protests, rallies and speaking engagements. In 2012, he was in Northern California visiting a chapter of the Black Panther Party Cubs, an organization he founded to carry on the legacy of the Black Panther Party. Chairman and the Cubs heard that Nipsey Hussle was performing in Sacramento.
SPEAKER_12: We at the concert, we backstage, packed house and Nipsey Hussle was backstage. And I see him from a distance, so I see the necklace he has on. And at the time, there was a big thing, you know, a lot of artists, entertainers, they were wearing it. Jesus pinned it, Kanye wear so on and so forth. So that was my first thought when I seen it. Mind you, my eyes like getting a little shaky around this time. So then I got a little closer. I said, whoa, that's Malcolm X.
SPEAKER_07: Nipsey's postcard sized medallion depicted a golden, sparkling Malcolm in his classic pose, index finger pressed to his cheek, contemplating. It signaled to Chairman Jr. that he wasn't talking to a typical rap superstar with typical taste in jewelry. Nipsey Hussle might be a fellow revolutionary.
SPEAKER_12: And I asked, are you familiar with Chairman Fred Hampton? And he said, Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. What type of man would I be if I didn't know who Chairman Fred Hampton was?
SPEAKER_07: Hi, I'm Elvis Mitchell, and this is the official podcast for the film Judas and the Black Messiah. You can murder a liberator, but you can't murder liberation.
SPEAKER_13: You can murder a revolutionary, but you can't murder revolution. And you can murder a freedom fighter, but you can't murder freedom.
SPEAKER_07: In this series, we're looking at the Black Messiah at the center of this film, the real story of Fred Hampton. We're going to say it after this, after I'm locked up, that you can jail a revolutionary,
SPEAKER_02: but you can't deal a revolution. But when I leave, you remember I said with the last words on my lips, I am a revolutionary.
SPEAKER_07: Chairman Fred Hampton led the Black Panther Party in Illinois until his life was cut short in 1969. What made Hampton so special that he was anointed as a leader at such a young age, and then targeted in a federal assassination? We'll go behind the scenes with the film's creators, including director Shaka King and producer Ryan Coogler, who wrote and directed the 2018 blockbuster Black Panther. I'll talk to co-stars Daniel Kaluuya, LaKeith Stanfield, and Dominique Fishback. Also to real Panthers who knew Chairman Fred, including his widow Akua Njeri and Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. Around here, we just call him Chairman. He was born three weeks after the assassination and has spent his life protecting his father's legacy. Chairman Jr. was a cultural expert who consulted on Judas and the Black Messiah. He's going to help set the record straight about the Chicago Panthers and Chairman Fred Hampton Sr. In the film, we first see Chairman Sr.'s character when he's about 20 years old and moving at full speed. He's leading the Panthers' Illinois chapter. He's also building Chicago's original Rainbow Coalition, a political alliance of poor Southern whites, Puerto Ricans, and Black youth activists. Chairman Fred Sr. is a force. But in this episode, we're first going to take a step back and look at how Fred Hampton became Chairman Fred. Hampton's parents were from Louisiana. They moved north in the 1940s, eventually settling in Maywood on Chicago's west side.
SPEAKER_12: Chairman Fred was speaking about his coming up, his growing up, and he said, you know, he said, I came from an okay situation, well, you know, an all right situation. And you know, area he grew up in, Maywood, people referred to as working class families and what we reference as the petty bourgeoisie.
SPEAKER_07: Fred was born in 1948, the youngest of three children. Even as a boy, he was fiercely protective of his family and his community. Chairman Jr. tells the story of his father at 11 or 12 years old, leading a protest complete with homemade picket signs.
SPEAKER_12: Recognizing that there's a swimming pool where the Black children are not able to go swim at and to see right across with them places such as Melrose Park or, you know, the white children that go swimming pool. And the challenge that taking cardboard and sticks and making these posters and we demand a swimming pool and going up around the police station and police throwing a tear gas canister out there at them and him taking that tear gas canister and throwing it back inside the police station and even before he was even in school. His brother who was older than him coming home and had been attacked by some white boys at the school. And, you know, he took a wagon full of bottles and went over there and, you know, he dealt with it. Even in high school, Proviso East, countless cases where he would speak up for others. Fred Hampton went to a school that was surprisingly integrated in the sense of there were a lot
SPEAKER_06: of Black and white students there at Proviso East High School.
SPEAKER_07: Shaka King directed, co-wrote and was a producer on Judas and the Black Messiah.
SPEAKER_06: But just because they were going to school together didn't mean that they got along. And there was a lot of fighting. And Fred Hampton, you know, he created an interracial coalition between Black and white students to sort of address a lot of the hostility and the fighting that was going on. You know, it got him on the radar of the FBI at a very young age. I believe his phone was tapped when he was 14 years old just because he was involved in politics incredibly early on.
SPEAKER_07: Fred wasn't just involved. In his early teens, he was elected president of the local NAACP Youth Chapter. As a high school student, he spearheaded a fight to bring in more Black teachers. He brokered a meeting between the NAACP and school administrators to address a list of concerns, including the way Black students were disciplined. It was clear to everyone around him that young Fred Hampton was a gifted leader. I think it was Lenin that said that what takes people 20 years to learn in ordinary times,
SPEAKER_12: they can learn in two years in revolutionary times. People say, well, how is it the FBI be tapping his telephone when he's 14? They recognize his organizing capabilities. We've taken the junior NAACP from seven to 300 members, seven and a half month time period. It was upfront can afford the luxury of procrastination.
SPEAKER_07: By the time Fred Hampton graduated high school in 1966, there was a real sense of urgency in the air. The Vietnam War was escalating. So too were anti-draft and anti-war protests. The struggles for Black empowerment were also intensifying. In Chicago, the Black population had been rising steadily for almost six decades. Nearly one in three Chicagoans was Black, and most of them were segregated into neighborhoods on the South or West side of the city. Urban Renewal, or what James Baldwin famously called Negro Removal, devastated Chicago's Black Belt. Slumlords, the police, and city leaders helped create and reinforce some of the worst slums in the country. Activist groups emerged to fight this and other anti-poverty, anti-racist struggles throughout Chicago. Fred Hampton was coming into his own as his youth-driven activist ferment was blooming.
SPEAKER_03: All this changed on April 4th, 1968.
SPEAKER_08: Ladies and gentlemen, I have some very sad news for all of you. Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
SPEAKER_01: Chicago, Detroit, Boston, New York, these are just a few of the cities in which the Negro anguished over Dr. King's murder expressed itself in violent destruction.
SPEAKER_03: People took to the street. A lot of businesses were burnt. Things changed in terms of atmosphere. The political climate became more repressive.
SPEAKER_07: Billy Che Brooks grew up in Chicago and later became Deputy Minister of Education for the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party. After King was killed, Che witnessed a shift among his peers towards more radical activism.
SPEAKER_03: People became more assertive in terms of organizing. You going into the height of, you know, anti-war movement, the whole concept of anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, you know, anti-fascism was something that was really being focalized as a mass movement. That was like the spring and summer of 68. And that was fertile ground for our organization here, the Black Panther Party.
SPEAKER_07: Bobby Seale and Huey Newton founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, California in 1966. Two years later, the party had expanded to 5,000 members in 49 chapters across the country. Fred Hampton was still in the NAACP when he first encountered the Black Panthers in 1968. The Panthers' national leadership was already talking about the powerful, charismatic young leader in Chicago. They were getting word. People would tell them, you need to check out this individual.
SPEAKER_12: You heard about Fred Hampton? You know, servants recognize servants and leaders recognize leaders.
SPEAKER_07: In 1968, the party's national leadership reached out to Fred Hampton and asked him to join the Black Panthers.
SPEAKER_06: For Fred Hampton, I know for him specifically, the assassination of Martin Luther King, and I think just some of his dissatisfaction with not feeling like he was able to have the kind of impact he wanted with the NAACP. I mean, even at Proviso East, one of the things he was leading was the need for there to be
SPEAKER_07: better lunch. Fred Hampton, along with another Panther named Bobby Rush and several other party members formed the Illinois chapter. They opened their office in West Chicago in November 1968, and Chairman Fred Hampton, who had just turned 20 a few months earlier, was quickly becoming one of the party's most prominent voices. Everything would be all right if everything was put back in the hands of the people.
SPEAKER_02: That's the purpose of the children is something else. You ought to dig on it. Every system is all right. Come on down and help us with that breakfast for children program. You ought to help come down and help feed them children in the morning. It's not surprising that when he heard the Panthers ideology about like free breakfast
SPEAKER_06: programs, he was like, I'm already thinking in this way. And so it was a natural fit for the way he was already progressing.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it was the perfect place for him, that kind of intersection for him for his activist side, but why do you think he made that move into that kind of selflessness because he was on this track to become probably part of that thriving, successful Chicago middle class, which drew people to there from around the country. What pushed him in that direction, do you think, of activism?
SPEAKER_06: Honestly, it really feels like he was kind of born like that. That's the thing that's really crazy. You know, in my conversations with Fred Hampton Jr., he would be like, you have to understand that he kind of came here like that.
SPEAKER_02: Me myself, I was born in a so-called bourgeois community. And I found that even some of the better things are like black people, what, too. And I found it was more people starving than it was people eating. And I made a commitment to myself that I wouldn't stop doing what I'm doing until all those people are free.
SPEAKER_12: And I said, well, what do you attribute that to? Others have told me, but my mother, I recall telling me about the impact of my great grandfather, who I was fortunate to see in my lifetime also, who was his grandfather, taking him as a child around Louisiana, showing them the different trees and giving them the names of who was hung on what particular trees and I've heard war stories of how he impacted Chairman Fred. I believe that he related to the Black Panther Party because it's a term they use. They say in church, that's your calling. The Black Panther Party, it fit for him. It was natural. I guess some people say like in relationships, they say, oh, this is it. Or someone's cooking food. They can say, that's it. That's the right season. That's right. No more. Cut the stove off. That's connected with it. Chairman Fred was a Black Panther internally, externally. It was in him.
SPEAKER_07: And like many other Panther leaders, Chairman Sr. was a constant target for law enforcement. In the spring of 69, he was convicted of robbing a good humor truck and handing out free ice cream. His sentence was two to five years. He was released on bail later that summer, just a couple of weeks before his 21st birthday. Learned a lot when I was in prison.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes I'm inside thinking about something that's actually going to be taken against me and the members of the party. And I said, I don't know why I'm not scared. I decided to be high off the people. You high? I'm high off the people. I had to put my end to the ground and I said, I don't know why I'm not scared. I decided to be high off the people. You high? I'm high off the people. I had to put my end to the ground and when I put my end to the ground, I heard a beat.
SPEAKER_13: Ain't you high? Ain't you high?
SPEAKER_02: Ain't you high? I'm high. I'm high. You know, people say that he had charisma.
SPEAKER_03: I was attracted to him because of his commitment, his willingness to lead by example. He never talked about things that he hadn't done or was not in the process of doing. I love John Fred because of the love that not only he showed me, but he showed other comrades. He showed people in the community. And to me, that's not charisma. That's commitment. He often spoke about having that commitment, undying love for the people. So I wasn't going to join the group that Bobby Lee Rush was in until I met Fred, John Fred, my brother, because that's how simple it was. He just showed that this is who I am. What I want to do. You want to do it with me. So yeah, man, we're good. To this day, Chairman had a magnetism about him and the chairman always showed respect.
SPEAKER_04: He always showed respect to people.
SPEAKER_07: Stan McKinney was a rank and file member of the Illinois Panthers. He was Bobby Rush's bodyguard. He also worked security for Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party.
SPEAKER_04: I think the vehicle of the party was one thing, but having a chairman that was so dynamic and so reachable to all people from all walks of life. I mean, chairman could get out, go into the pool halls, anywhere he went, you know, he galvanized, mesmerized people. So he had that magnetism that drew you to him. And the key thing, it was genuine. You could feel that.
SPEAKER_15: Evening brother, resistance. I wanted to hip you all to a new, free breakfast program over on the South Side next week.
SPEAKER_15: Free for the babies.
SPEAKER_07: There's a scene early on in Judas and the Black Messiah that really captures this. Chairman Fred, played by Daniel Kaluuya and several other Black Panthers go to a pool hall. Chairman moves easily through the crowd, handing out flyers, promoting the Panthers, smiling.
SPEAKER_15: The Illinois Black Panther Party has a mandate to feed every hungry kid in Chicago. The Black Panther Party believes in progression. And what that mean? That mean first you have free breakfast. Then you have free health care. Then you have free education. Next thing you know, you look up, you done freed your motherfucking cell.
SPEAKER_06: That scene is based on a scene I read or heard about him going into a nightclub and telling the DJ to stop the music and then getting up and talking to people. And he spoke for a while. People didn't say, oh, what are you doing? They listened. Then the party went back on. The fact that he could stop a party and talk about ideas, talk about duties, activities, actions that the Panthers were doing locally and wanting to get people involved and recruit, essentially recruiting in the middle of a disco.
SPEAKER_07: Another feat of the Illinois chapter was its ability to find common ground between Chicago street organizations. They're represented in Judas as a single fictional gang called the Crowns. In the film, Chairman Fred Sr. hopes to unite the Crowns and the Black Panthers. So he goes to visit their leader, Steel, who's played by Chris Davis.
SPEAKER_13: Fred Ham, the great orator of the West Side.
SPEAKER_05: Your name's been ringing out, man. It was your world, brother Steel. So what can I do for you? Well, I want to know what we can do for each other. Y'all are doing some great work mobilizing young brothers on the South Side. We are part of a national organization dedicated to the liberation of oppressed people everywhere.
SPEAKER_13: This nigga got some million dollar words, don't he?
SPEAKER_15: They wouldn't laugh. It's not just talk, brother. I'll prep this program for peace over 2,000 kids a week.
SPEAKER_05: Motherfucker. The Crowns feed more babies than general males. Now who you think employs all their mommies and daddies? Well, right on, brother. Right on. The question is, can you do even more? There's over 5,000 Crowns in Chicago. Between your manpower and the Panthers' political platform, we can heal this whole city. And if we take care of Chicago, shit.
SPEAKER_07: Come on, man. In reality, Chairman and the Panthers work with several organizations, including the Blackstone Rangers and the Black Disciples.
SPEAKER_06: The street organizations already had a political basis to them, which is not the way that we've been taught gangs, Black gangs operate. They just are like, y'all some niggas. And meanwhile, yo, they got stores. They're doing things. So he's got street organizations that are already thinking along these ways. He now is coming along and is really trying to organize and really get them hip and turn them socialist. And then he's integrating across racial lines in Chicago, which is so deeply segregated. And these people in this class have divided themselves.
SPEAKER_02: They say I'm black and I hate white people. I'm white and I hate black people. I'm Latin American and I hate hillbilly. I'm hillbilly and I hate Indians. So we fight amongst each other. When the Black Panther Party stood up and said that we're going to fight in solidarity, we still understand we're not going to fight reactionary pigs with any other reactions on our part. We're going to fight their reactions while all of us people are getting together and having an international political revolution. Right on. And that's saying all power to the people.
SPEAKER_07: Chairman Fred led the Chicago Panthers as they pushed against the notoriously racist police department, and he encouraged others to do the same.
SPEAKER_02: The policemen react the same way from 357 magnums and shotguns that the people do, or anybody else. And we know how to ward these frantic fascists off. That we have to defend ourselves because only through this proper example of the self-defense and the proper example of retaliation and by letting these people know that we move from some basic laws, that anything that goes down on oppressed people on the part of the oppressor, it should be reciprocal. And in plain, proletarian, workers' language, it takes two to tango. As soon as these motherfuckers go, we go.
SPEAKER_07: The Chicago Panthers also took on the city's leadership, especially Mayor Richard J. Daley. As the king of Chicago's Democratic Party, Mayor Daley was the picture of a political boss. His infamous Daley machine ruled every aspect of city governance and suppressed Black political independence. Daley championed urban renewal. He claimed there are no ghettos in Chicago, and he sanctioned a broad use of lethal force during the protests that followed Dr. King's assassination. Shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in their hand in Chicago.
SPEAKER_08: Shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting any stores in our city.
SPEAKER_07: The Panthers challenged the mayor's reign, often by simply stepping around the conventional party machine and taking their political message straight to the community.
SPEAKER_12: They were up in the ante, they were crossing the confines of conventional fighting. They were crossing the confines of, you know, this is how you address this, you know, you vote, you talk to this designated spokesperson for your leadership. Chairman Fred Casel, he would designate the Panther Party. We going to church. And a lot of people said, we're going to church. He going and politicizing the people.
SPEAKER_06: And you know, that line in the movie where he's like, we take care of Chicago. Imagine not only is it a big city Chicago, but it's the Midwest, it's the connection to everything. So the danger, I think, in having someone that young and that powerful, he's young too. So he's got years. He has a team. He's doing all this as a team. He's got years ahead of him.
SPEAKER_07: And he's also starting to get the biggest black middle class in the country. Yes. Under his throat. I mean, that's the big thing too, because there's a young black middle class being educated who are hearing him too.
SPEAKER_06: They're also not just young either. They're old. He's got the older folks. He's got white Catholic priests engaged. He's getting free milk from white businessmen in grocery stores. And I shouldn't say he, I should say they, because it's really Eleanor chapters doing this. But he's just, it's the combination of great structure and organization and an incredibly charismatic leader. You know?
SPEAKER_12: This represents an international threat to this system because people all over the world were talking about, man, who are these cats? I'm on a platform, a politic, you know what I'm saying? They stand up and defending the people. Not just fighting back for their own personal survival, but standing up for the people and they're serving the people, providing programs for the people and not just giving some rhetoric.
SPEAKER_02: So we say, we always say the Black Panther Party, that they can do anything they want to do. We might not be back. I might be in jail, but when I leave, you remember I said with the last words on my lips that I am a revolutionary. And you're going to have to keep on saying that. I am the people. I'm not the pig. And the people are going to have to stand up against the pig. That's what the Panthers do all over the world.
SPEAKER_07: In response to the Black Panthers growing popularity in the US and globally, the FBI declared war on the organization. But the Panther Party stood firm. Chairman Fred Hampton was an unapologetic socialist. He was clear-eyed about the mission of the Black Panthers. They were the vanguard party, fighting to achieve what Hampton called utopia, a communist state. To get there, armed revolutionary struggle.
SPEAKER_14: He was able to make revolutionary acts and revolutionary principles very logical. And he wasn't afraid of the necessity of violence. He had no fear in terms of talking about the reality of defending yourself against fascism and speaking about it plainly.
SPEAKER_07: Ryan Coogler is one of the producers of Judas and the Black Messiah.
SPEAKER_14: He also spoke plainly about not fearing death. Because for people to be subjugated, the fear of death has to be preyed. You know what I mean? You know, he would say things, if you were afraid to die, you're dead already. If you ever think about me, then you ain't going to do no revolutionary acts.
SPEAKER_02: Forget about me. I don't want myself on your mind if you're not going to work for the people. Like we always did, if you actually make a commitment at the age of 20 and you say, I don't want to make that commitment on the cause for several reasons that I'm too young to die, I want to live a little bit longer. What you did, you did it already.
SPEAKER_14: If you listen to that from the lens of an oppressor, that's a very terrifying thing to hear. So I think he made oppressors afraid. There's a truth to why they assassinated him. He was so effective that he was assassinated by the most powerful government on the planet at that time. So when you think about something like that, you know, you think about being so good at something that the most powerful government in the world is like, hey, we have to kill this person. We have to do it and try to snuff out everything about this person.
SPEAKER_13: I believe I'm going to die no car, Ray. I don't believe I'm going to die slipping on no ice. I don't believe I'm going to die because I got a bad heart. I believe I'm going to die doing what I was born for. I believe I'm going to die high off the people.
SPEAKER_02: I believe I will be able to die as a revolutionary in the international revolutionary folktale struggle. And I think that struggle is going to come. Why don't you live for the people? Why don't you struggle for the people?
SPEAKER_06: Why don't you die for the people? The whole purpose of the movie is to humanize this individual and these people. And the thing is you're trying to humanize someone who is superhuman, you know, like no one would believe that if we made a straight up story about Fred M, you wouldn't believe it. He didn't sleep. He chain smoked. He drank bottomless cups of coffee. He didn't have vulnerability. That's why they had to kill him.
SPEAKER_07: FBI director J. Edgar Hoover wrote in 1968 that one of the goals of his counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO was to prevent the rise of a Messiah who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement. Nearly two years later on December 4th, 1969, before dawn, more than a dozen law enforcement officers raided Fred Hampton's West Chicago apartment. Hampton was shot to death in his bed. He was 21 years old. Black Panther Mark Clark was also killed. In the decades since Hampton's death, writers, filmmakers, and playwrights have all approached Chairman Jr. and his mother Akuan Jerry asking for their help or their blessing in telling the senior chairman's story. And for decades, they've declined. So why now? We'll be right back.
SPEAKER_10: This podcast is brought to you by Warner Brothers Pictures, Judas and the Black Messiah, the Golden Globe Critics Choice and SAG Award nominated film now playing in theaters and streaming exclusively on HBO Max for 31 days. It's time the world knows the truth about Chairman Fred Hampton. Watch the film, know his name, share his legacy. Judas and the Black Messiah, rated R. Hi, welcome back.
SPEAKER_07: This is the Judas and the Black Messiah official podcast. I'm Elvis Mitchell. Ryan Coogler and his wife and producing partner Zinzi premiered his directorial debut Fruit Fail Station at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. That's where they met Shaka King. Trapped by a blizzard, they all had dinner together. They talked and bonded. We've been tight since.
SPEAKER_14: So Shaka and I and Zinzi, we all had a chance to work together. We got close to his family and stuff and it became kind of a ritual. After we were in New York, we would stop by his house, checking on his mom and dad, you know, eat dinner.
SPEAKER_07: In 2017, Ryan and Zinzi took a break from their film Black Panther and went to visit Shaka. He told the couple about a script he was working on. It was based on an idea that the comic duo, the Lucas Brothers had originally brought to Shaka. The story of Chairman Fred Hampton's assassination told from the perspective of William O'Neill, a car thief who infiltrated the Illinois chapter and helped the FBI plan Hampton's murder. Ryan and Zinzi loved the idea. And once they finished with Black Panther, they came aboard as producers. And then we got into development and through that process, Shaka was like, look, if we're
SPEAKER_14: going to do this, we have to meet with Chairman's family. You know, we can't make this without the blessing of his family.
SPEAKER_07: So Ryan, Zinzi, Shaka and producer Charles King all went to Chicago and tried to do what other filmmakers had failed to pull off for decades. They met with Chairman Fred Jr., who now lives at the Hampton house, his father's childhood home.
SPEAKER_14: And we sat down, you know, letting know we wanted to make the film. It was really like intimidating. He had a couple of former Panthers there who knew his father, you know.
SPEAKER_07: This was the first of many negotiations with Hampton's family. They were skeptical. It became Ryan's job to do most of the convincing. From the beginning, he and Fred Jr. had formed a bond. So Ryan made several trips to Chairman's place in West Chicago. I kept thinking about how Shaka said he didn't want to do it without him.
SPEAKER_14: And we didn't want the experience to be invalidated, man. Like if somebody was to watch the film and to find out like the family had like condemned it for like a reason that was like valid.
SPEAKER_07: So they kept negotiating. Fred Jr. looked at scripts. He talked to the filmmakers about their vision. And he still was like, nah, it was several like sticking points that he was like, yo,
SPEAKER_14: you guys can't adjust this. I can't come on board.
SPEAKER_07: For about a year and a half, it went like this. Fred Jr., several former Panthers, and his mother Akua and Jerry, or Mama Akua, pushing back on the film's title or how the Panthers were dressed or how much the Panthers smoked. At one point early in the process, Chairman Fred told Ryan that they wanted to have a sit down with Daniel Kaluuya and Dominique Fishback. The actors would be playing his father and mother. Shaka King and producer Charles King came too. The meeting was at the Hampton House. Everyone gathered around a big table with a black and blue panther symbol in the center. It was long.
SPEAKER_11: I mean, we were around a table for like seven hours.
SPEAKER_07: Dominique and Daniel were questioned well into the night.
SPEAKER_11: Chairman said, I want to go around this table and know why every single one of you want to do this movie. And he's like, I'm going to start with you. And he said it to Daniel and I was like, oh lord.
SPEAKER_15: He was just kind of speaking to us about what's our intentions for telling the story and what do we stand for. Daniel remembers the night well. It was just Chairman and Mama Akua just asking questions that really go to the core of the why we do what we do. And then at the end, Chairman was like, yeah, I'm going to take you, take it to a hood. You pick one.
SPEAKER_12: And then asked for someone to Google worst neighborhood in Chicago because it's arbitrary. What side of town is going to be kind of hot?
SPEAKER_15: And from my recollection, I was like, yo, you tell me. You tell me where I need to go. And he was like, yeah, if you're going to play the Chairman, I need to know what you're made of. And I was like, yeah, cool. I respect that. You know?
SPEAKER_07: Someone pulls up the West Chicago neighborhood called K-Town where just a couple of days earlier, 11 people were shot and two were killed. And it was late, it was past midnight.
SPEAKER_12: And I said, okay, let's go. Let's go right there. We're going to continue this meeting right there.
SPEAKER_07: Chairman, Daniel, Dominique and Charles King all drove to K-Town. Chairman showed them some sidewalk memorials he said had been defaced by the police.
SPEAKER_15: For me, how I took that in, I think Chairman was looking at me, seeing how I was. I think at that moment, something shifted. But for me, it was like, I understood. I don't have fear in that sense because I understand the gravity of what I'm stepping into and the gravity of what that means to Chairman. And it's the least I can do, how I saw it. I'm from the real world. I'm not from the industry. And I understand there's certain things you need to go through for someone to see what you're about and feel that you are going to carry a man that means so much to them.
SPEAKER_07: Chairman Fred and Mama Kua had tested Daniel and Dominique's intentions and their mettle, and the family was impressed. But the negotiations between the family and the filmmakers weren't over just yet. In our next episode, producer Ryan Coogler and Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. talk about some of those sticking points early in production and how their friendship helped keep Chairman from just walking away. And I'll talk to Mother Akua, Chairman Sr.'s widow, about how they met and seeing the story brought to life in this film. This podcast is a production of 99% Invisible, Proximity Media, and Warner Bros. The series is written by Christopher Johnson, our supervising producer. Roman Mars is our editor. Our senior producer is Delaney Hall. Abby Madon is our associate producer. Special thanks also to producer Emmett Fitzgerald. Our music was composed by Sean Rial. Graham Haysha is our fact checker. Bryson Barnes is our mix engineer. Special thanks to Layla Wills, our sync producer in Chicago. Some of the audio on this episode and in our trailer is from the film and the trailer for The Murder of Fred Hampton, which come to us courtesy of the Chicago Film Archives. Footage from Fred Hampton, Black Panthers in Chicago, is a copyright of Video Freaks, courtesy of Video Data Bank at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Thanks also to CBS News and the AP Archive for their footage. I'm your host, Elvis Mitchell. See you next time.
SPEAKER_10: Great sleep can be hard to come by these days, and finding the right mattress feels totally overwhelming. Serta's new and improved Perfect Sleeper is a simple solution designed to support all sleep positions. With zoned comfort, memory foam, and a cool to the touch cover, the Serta Perfect Sleeper means more restful nights and more rested days. Find your comfort at Serta.com.
SPEAKER_00: At Discount Tire, we know your time is valuable. Get 30% shorter average wait time when you buy and book online. Did you know Discount Tire now sells wiper blades? Check out our current deals at DiscountTire.com or stop in and talk to an associate today. Discount Tire.
SPEAKER_09: Let's get you taken care of. With the McDonald's app, you can get your favorite thing delivered to your door so you can eat your favorite thing while you watch your favorite thing at home. Order McDelivery in the McDonald's app. Ba da ba ba ba. By participating in McDonald's, delivery prices may be higher than at restaurants.
SPEAKER_10: Th metric.
