132: Telling the Story of Fred Hampton

The new Hollywood film “Judas and the Black Messiah” is based on the lives of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and the person who betrayed him, FBI informant William O’Neal. The film’s director Shaka King has credited documentaries for playing a key role in his research. One of his main influences was “Eyes on the Prize II” (1990) that scored the journalistic feat of interviewing O’Neal after he had gone into a federal witness protection program. Pure Nonfiction host Thom Powers interviews four members of the “Eyes” team - directors Louis Massiah and Terry Kay Rockefeller along with researchers Noland Walker and co-director Bennett Singer. They describe how they got O’Neal to talk, why questions still linger about his reported suicide, and the legacy of the Black Panthers.

Further resources:

- Learn more about our guests: Louis Massiah (executive director, Scribe Video Center), Terry Kay Rockefeller, Bennett Singer (co-director, Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin and Cured), Noland Walker (co-programmer, ITVS’s Independent Lens)

- Watch all 14 episodes of Eyes on the Prize on Kanopy This podcast conversation touches upon episode 9 “Power!” about the Black Panthers and especially focuses on episode 12 “A Nation of Law?” both co-directed by Louis Massiah and Terry Kay Rockefeller. Read the book Voices of Freedom, an oral history based on interviews from "Eyes on the Prize,” edited in part by Bennett Singer.

- Watch the raw footage of William O’Neal’s interview on Vimeo or read the transcript from the "Eyes on the Prize" archives at Washington University. Browse the full collection.

- Watch The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971), directed by Howard Alk and Michael Gray, on Vimeo from the Chicago Film Archives.

- Read the TruthOut article by Fred Hampton’s attorney Flint Taylor on recent revelations about J. Edgar Hoover’s connection to William O’Neal.

- Read articles from 1990 about the death of William O’Neal in the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Reader.

- Listen to the Pure Nonfiction interview with Jon Else discussing his book True South about the making of "Eyes on the Prize.”

- For more on COINTELPRO, watch Sam Pollard’s MLK/FBI about surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr; Johanna Hamilton’s 1971 about the break-in to a FBI office that revealed the counter intelligence program.

- Watch Stanley Nelson’s Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution.

- In the podcast, Noland Walker mentions the COINTELPRO plan to disrupt the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana. Watch William Greaves’ recently restored film Nationtime covering that event.

- For further viewing related to this era, watch Shola Lynch's Free Angela and All Political Prisoners and Sam Green and Bill Siegel’s Weather Underground.

- For more recent documentaries on FBI surveillance and informants, see Lyric Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe’s (T)ERROR, Assia Boundaoui’s The Feeling of Being Watched, Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega’s Better This World and Jamie Meltzer’s Informant.