February 24, 2021
Page 19
Illuminating the Black
Power Movement
C ontinued from P age 17
as--and arguably is--un-Amer-
ican. “Power to the People”
could only be treasonous when
viewed from a dominant Amer-
ican culture lens.
The film’s focus on Bill
O’Neal--the Judas of the title-
-is just as complicated. O’Neal
as a person was more opaque
than Hampton--a petty crimi-
nal, he became an easy target
for the FBI. He was evident-
ly lured by money that, while
modest by some standards,
was far beyond what he could
acquire by other legal means,
and he no doubt lacked the
principled vision of the stakes
that drove those he spied on.
But as played by LaKeith Stan-
field, he is not exactly a fool or
a sociopathic, and he is almost
sympathetic. As I’ve read other
reviews critiquing the film on
that score, I’ve paused to won-
der if part of the problem is our
reluctance to see ourselves in
O’Neal. Most of us are much
more like him than Hampton-
-and the culture we all partic-
ipate in and don’t find ways
to disrupt creates people like
O’Neal who powered the FBI’s
counterintelligence program,
known as COINTELPRO. If
we really want to understand
this Judas, we would do best to
look at ourselves.
The curiosity this film awak-
ened in me sent me to two oth-
er films that make good com-
panion pieces. “MLK/FBI”
is a new documentary by the
venerable Sam Pollard (whose
“Two Trains Runnin’” topped
my list of the best films of
2016) and explores the FBI’s
obsession with King. It offers
some further unpacking of the
dirty methods that were used
without any real danger of
pushback, and notes that in the
1960s, FBI director J. Edgar
Hoover garnered much higher
public approval ratings than
the hated and feared King. Pol-
lard, too, means to awaken our
curiosity--not to what those
long-buried tapes of King’s
private activities might reveal
but to what it reveals about us
that we are so prone to identi-
fying black visionaries as pub-
lic enemy number one.
The other is episode 6 of
“Eyes on the Prize II,” which
features not only an interview
with Bill O’Neal, but also some
good context for the Black
Power movement and how the
black community in Chicago
responded to the government
lies told after Hampton’s as-
sassination. There is also a
chilling account of the upris-
ing in Attica prison, another
shameful episode that most of
us know too little about.
We’ve got work to do. I’m
grateful for the work of these
artists to assist us in undertak-
ing it. “Judas and the Black
Messiah” is enjoying a limited
theatrical release and is stream-
ing on HBO Max; “MLK/FBI”
is streaming on Amazon Prime;
and you can find “Eyes on the
Prize II,” which originally
aired in 1990, on YouTube,
though it is (tellingly) harder to
find than season 1 of the series.
Back to work.
Darleen Ortega is a judge
on the Oregon Court of Ap-
peals and the first woman of
color to serve in that capacity.
Her movie and theater review
column Opinionated Judge
appears regularly in The Port-
land Observer. Find her review
blog at opinionatedjudge.blog-
spot.com.
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