99% Invisible - Judas and the Black Messiah, Episode 1: The Chairman

Episode Date: February 13, 2021

Proximity, 99% Invisible, and Warner Bros. present the “Judas and the Black Messiah Podcast,” an official film companion from the Radiotopia podcast network from PRX. In the “Judas and the Black Messiah Podcast,” host and critic Elvis Mitchell of KCRW is joined by Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. — son of Chairman Fred Hampton and head of the Black Panther Party Cubs — as well as the film’s actors and creative team, and by members of the Black Panther Party who knew Chairman Fred Hampton. Together, they look at the true stories behind the events portrayed in the film. In episode 1, we get the real story of how Fred Hampton became The Chairman. Watch the film and subscribe to the rest of the series here: Apple Podcasts Stitcher

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 Coopler, who is a huge podcast fan, by the way. It's literally the first thing we ever talked about when we met a couple of years ago. The different podcast series at the Prox and 99 PI teams

have been kicking around, we'll 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 and 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. You are going to flip out for the stuff that proximity has planned. Follow the link in the show notes to subscribe

for you listen to episode one right now. Thanks. Hetzup, this episode has some strong language. Here's up eyes open to fifths. Clint y'all know what this is and how we do this. It's chairman Fred Hampton, Jr. the Black Panther Party Cubs. In some sense, in eyes of the state,

I may be seen as a three-strike offender, one for somebody being African, two for being the son of chairman Fred and the Corps and Jerry, and three for continuing to fight with 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 Steves or the Black Panther Party.

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. We at the concert, we backstage packed house and Nipsey Hussle was backstage. Now, I see him from a distance, So I see the necklace he has on. And at the time, there was a big thing,

a lot of artists in the chain as they were wearing it. Jesus pinned it, Kanye wears so on and so forth. So that was my first thought when I seen it. Man, you might ask like, give him the shaky round this time. So, then I got a little closer. I said, whoa, that's Malcolm X.

Nipsey's postcard-sized medallion depicted a golden sparkling Malcolm in his classic pose. and I got a little closer, I said, whoa, that's Malcolm X. Nipsy's postcard-sized medallion depicted a golden sparkling Malcolm in his classic pose, index finger pressed to his cheek, contemplating. It's signal to Chairman Jr. that he wasn't talking to a typical rap superstar with typical taste and jewelry. Nipsy Hussle might be a fellow revolutionary.

And I said, 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? Hi, I'm Elvis Mitchell and this is the official podcast of the film, Judas and the Black Messiah. 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's happening, but I have to have a rock, though, that you can jail or revolution, but you can't jail or revolution. But when I leave, you can know my sins, with the last words on my lips, I am a revolutionary. Chairman Fred Hampton left the Black Panther Party in Illinois until his life was cut short

in 1969. What made Hampton so special that he was annoying to this 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 Shocka King and producer Ryan Cogler, who wrote and directed the 2018 blockbuster, Black Panther. I'll talk to co-stars, Daniel Calloya, a Keith Stanford, and Dominique Fishback,

also to real panthers who knew Chairman Fred, including his widow, Akua and Jerry, and Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. Around Akua and Jerry, 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's senior. In the film, we first see Chairman Seniors' 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 into the 1940s, eventually settling in Maywood, on Chicago's west side. Chairman Fred was speaking, but it's coming up, it's growing up. And he said, you know, he said, I came from an OK situation, the well, you know, our situation. And you know, area he grew up in, Maywood. People were for this written class, families, and we were references to Petty Bush, YZ. Fred was born in 1948, the youngest of three children.

Even as a boy, he was fiercely protective. He was 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. Recognizing that there's a swimming pool where the black children are not able to go swim at, and to see right across with a place

such as Melrose Park, where the white children will swim pool, and the challenge that across with them places such as Melrose Park, or you know, the White Trident, it was swimming pool. And the challenge that taking cardboard and sticks and making these poses 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 a tear gas canister and throwing it back inside the police station.

And even before he was even in school, his brother who was old in him coming home and had been attacked by some white boys at the school. And he took a wagon full of bottles and went over there and 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 of black and white students there, provide the least high school. Shuka King directed, co-wrote, and was a producer on Judas and the Black Messiah. But just because they were going to school together, it 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 fight that was going on.

It got 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. 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 broke into 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.

Think it was Leonard that said that it takes people 20 years of learning ordinary times. They can learn in two years in revolutionary times. People say, well, how was it the FBI be tapping his telephone? When he's 14, they recognize his organizing capabilities. When he's taking the junior NAACP from 7 to 300 members, 7 to have more time period. It was up front to can afford the luxury of procrastination.

["The Legend of the World"] 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 two were anti-draft and anti-war protests. The struggles for black empowerment were also intensifying, and 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 James Baldwin famously called Negro removal, devastated Chicago's black belt. Slum lords, the police, and city leaders help 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. All this changed on April 4, 1968. Ladies and gentlemen, I have some very sad news for all of you. Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Dense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Chicago, Detroit, Boston, New York. These are just a few of the cities in which the Negro language over Dr. King's murder expressed itself in violent destruction. People took to the street. A lot of businesses were burnt. Things changed in terms of atmosphere.

The political climate became more repressive. 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. People became more assertive in terms of organizing.

You go into the height of, you know, anti-war movement or the whole concept of anti-puralism, anti-capitalism, you know, anti-fascism was something that was really enfocalized as a mass movement. That was like the spring and summer of 68. And that was fertile ground for our organization here to Black Panther Party.

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 would get worried. People would tell, you need to check out this individual. You heard about Fred Hampton,

you know, servants recognize servants and leaders recognize leaders. In 1968, the party's national leadership reached out to Fred Hampton and asked him to join the Black Panthers. 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 time to 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 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 for Hampton, who had just turned 20 a few months earlier, was quickly becoming one of the party's most

prominent voices. If everything was put back in the hands of people, that's better for choosing something else. You oughta be. I'm here ever since this audience come on down and help us get back to the children program. Y'all are here coming out and help feed the children in the moment. Ah! It's not surprising that when he heard the Panthers' ideology about like free breakfast 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. Yeah, it was the perfect place for him that kind of intersection for him for his, his activist band, 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, therefore around the country, 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 push him in that direction do you think of activism? 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. Me and my sister, I was born in a so-called bourgeois community, and I found that even some of the better things are like black people. And I found it with more people stopping than it was he believed. And I made a commitment to myself that I wouldn't keep the stuff in the world. She believes that I made a commitment to myself, that I wouldn't stop doing what I'm doing into all those people, I'm free. She was so, 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, you know, see in my lifetime also, who was his grandfather, taking him as a child around in Louisiana, showing them the different trees and giving them the names of who was hung on what particular trees of her war stories of how he impacted Jimmy Fred.

I believe that he related to the Black Panther Party because it's a turn they use, and they say in church, that's your calling. The Black Panther Party, it fit for him. You know, It was natural. You know, some people can say like in relationships, they say, oh, this is this is it. Or it's almost cooking food. They can say, that's it. That's the right season. That's right. That's no more. No, no, no. Cut the stove off. That's connected with it.

Chairman Fred was a Black Panther internally externally. It was in them. And like many other Panther leaders, Chairman Senior 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 weeks before his 21st birthday. Later, like an hour and a three. Something down inside of the second box, I'm gonna get... ...acting, it's gonna be taken against me and I'm gonna be in the middle of the party, and I got out of the wild, and I'm a prisoner. Some down inside the second box, I'm gonna get... Actually, it's gonna be taken against me and the members of the party

and I don't know why I'm not scared. I've found a bit of how people... You have? I'm high off the people. I had to put my hands to the ground and when I flip my hands to the ground, I heard a beat. I was just a beat. It's a hot...

It's hot... It's a hot... You know, people say that he had charisma. Yeah. 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 Fret because 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. And he often spoke about having that commitment, undying love for the people and all. So I wasn't going to join the group that Bobby Lee Rush was in

until I met Fred, Jammy Fred, my brother, because that's how simple it was, you know, he just showed that this is who I am, this is what I wanna do, you wanna do a win. So yeah, man, we good. Till this day. Chairman had a magnetism about him, and the Chairman always showed respect. He always showed respect to people.

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. 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

going to 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. Even brother, since it's all I want to hit y'all to a new, free breakfast program over on the south side next week, free for the babies. There's a scene early on in Judas in the Black Messiah that really captures this. Chairman Fred played by Daniel Caluia and several other Black Panthers go to a pool hall. Chairman moves easily through the crowd, handing out flyers,

promoting the Panthers, smiling. In the North Black Panther Party as a man, they defeat every hunry key in Chicago. The Black Panther Party believes in progression. And what that means? Let me first you have free breaths. Then you have free health care. Then you have free education. Thanks for you know you look up.

You don't freeze your mouth, fucking say. That scene is based on the 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 then recruit, essentially recruiting in the middle of a disco. Another feat of the Illinois chapter was its ability to find common ground between Chicago street organizations. They 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, Steele, who's played by Chris Davis. The great O'Reath talk of the West Side.

Your name can ring it out, man. It was your world, brother Steve. So, what can I do for you? Well, I don't know what we can do for each other. You all do some great work mobilizing your brothers on the South Side. We are part of national organization. Dedicated to the liberation for press people everywhere. This nigga got some million dollar words don't they

wasn't alive. It's not just talk brother. Our breakfast program is over 3000 kids a week. Motherfucker, the crowns feed more babies than general meals. Now who you think employees are, they might be some dead-ends. 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 parents political platform. We can heal this whole city. And if we take care of Chicago, she, come on, man. In reality, Chairman and the Panthers work with several organizations, including the Blackstone Rangers and the Black Disciples. You know, the street organizations already had a political basis to them, which is not the way that we've been taught. Gangs, black gangs operate. You know, they've just like awesome niggas.

And meanwhile, you know, they got stores, like they're like doing things. So he's got street organizations that are already thinking along these ways that he now is coming along as really trying to organize and really get to him and turn them socialists. And then he's integrating across racial lines in them, say, I'm black. And I hate white people. I'm white, and I hate black people. I'm Latin American, and I hate heel, baby. I'm heel, baby, and I hate hip-hop. So we fight amongst each other.

When the black battle fighters did up to say that we're going to fight against our parents, we still haven't said we're not going to fight. Reaction every piece. We need another reaction, no out-faw. We're going to fight their reaction, we're all those people who get together, and have an international pull-tang revolution.

Right on the way. And that's being all power to peace. Chairman Fred led the Chicago Panthers as they pushed against the notoriously racist police department. And he encouraged others to do the same. Policemen react the same way from three-fifth and seven magnaves and shotguns that the people do. This one, a reactor same way from 357 magnum and shotguns that the people do, and anybody else. And we know how to ward these frantic fashers 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 the press people on the part of the oppressor it should be reciprocal and in plain polar-tanned workers' language, it takes two to tango as soon as these motherfuckers go we go. 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 daily machine ruled every aspect of city governance and suppressed black political independence. Daly 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 icinus, or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in their hand in Chicago. Shoot to main or cripple, anyone looting, any stores in our city. The Panthers challenge the mayor's reign, often by simply stepping around the conventional party machine and taking their political message straight to the community.

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 Case, so he would designated the path of the party. We go on to church. And I'd be like, we go on to church. He'd go and implement the size of party, we go on a church and I've been saying we're going to church, he's going to implement the size of the people. And you know that line in the movie when 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 teen, he's doing a list of the teen, he's got years ahead of him. And he's also starting to get the biggest black middle class in the country. Yes, under his tour. I mean, that's the big thing too,

because there's a young black middle class being educated who we're hearing him too. 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 business and spending grocery stores. And I shouldn't say he has to say they,

because it's really ill in our chapters, don't it? But he's just, it's the combination of great structure and organization and an incredibly charismatic leader, you know? This represents the international directed in the system, because people all over the world were talking about, man, who are these cats? I'm on the platform or politics, you know what I'm saying? And it's standing up and defending the people.

There's not just fighting back for their own personal survival, but it's standing up for the people in a serving the people, providing programs for the people, and I just give them some rhetoric. So we say, we always say the black Panther Party that they can do it, they didn't work to us. We might not be back, I might be in jail, but when I leave you can remember I said, with the last words on my lips, I am a revolutionary and you're going to have to keep on saying that, I am the people, I'm not the people and the people are going to have to stand up against the people. That's what the press is doing all over the world."

In response to the black panthers growing popularity in the U.S. 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 right about the mission of the Black Panthers. They were the Vanguard Party, fighting to achieve what Hampton call Utopia, a communist state, and to get there, armed revolutionary struggle. He was able to make revolutionary acts and revolutionary principles very logical,

and he was in a friar like 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. Ryan Cougler is one of the producers of Judas and the Black Messiah. He also spoke plainly about not fearing death, because for people to be subjugated, the fear of death has to be preded.

You know what I mean? You know, he would say things if you were afraid to die, you dead already. If you ever think about me, then it's the end you're gonna do no remedies, never ask, forget about me. I don't want my theft on your mind you did already. 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 of why they assassinated. He was so effective that he was assassinated by the most powerful government on the planet at that time. So you think about something like that. You know, you think about being, you know, so good at something that the most powerful government in the world is like, how do you have to kill this person? And they do it.

And try to snuff out everything about this part. I believe I'm going down no car, Ray. I don't believe I'm going down slipping on no ice. I don't believe I'm going down because I got a bad heart. I believe I'm going down do what was born for. I believe I'm going to die for the people. I believe I will be able to die as a revolutionary in the international revolutionary from the tear struggle.

And I think that struggle is going to come. Why don't you deal for the people? Why don't you struggle for the people? Why don't you die as a people?est trouble for the wildest bad people? The whole purpose of the movies to humanize this individual and these people and the thing is you're trying to humanize someone who is super human You know like no one would believe that if we made a straight-up story about Fred Em you wouldn't believe it He didn't sleep. He changed smoked you drank bottomless cups of coffee He didn't have vulnerability. It smoke, he drank bottomless cups of coffee. He didn't have vulnerability, so they had to kill him. FBI director Jay Edgar Hoover wrote in 1968 that one of the goals of his counterintelligence

program, known as Co-Intelpro was to prevent the rise of a Messiah who could unify and electrify the militant black naturalist movement. Nearly two years later, on December 4, 1969, before dawn, more than a dozen law enforcement officers rated Fred Hampton's wash-shakongo 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, Akouwun 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.

This podcast is brought to you by Warner Bros. Pictures, Judas and the Black Messiah. The Golden Globe, Critics' Choice, and Saga Award-nominated film, Now Plane, and 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, welcome back. This is the Judas in the Black Messiah official podcast. I'm Elvis Mitchell. Ryan Cugler and his wife and producing partner Zinzi premiered his directorial debut through Fail Station at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. That's where they met Shaka King. Trap by a blizzard, they all had dinner together. They talked and bonded. And we know we've been tight since. So, you know, Shaka and I had, in Zenzi, we all had a chance to work together.

We got close to this family and stuff. And it became kind of a ritual. Like, whenever we were in New York, we would stop by his house. And checking on his mom and dad, you know, he'd dinner. In 2017, Ryan and Zenzie 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 Chiranford Hampton's assassination told from the perspective of William O'Neill, the car thief who infiltrated the Illinois chapter and helped the FBI plan Hampton's murder. Ryan and Zinsie loved the idea, and once they finished with Black Panther, they came aboard as producers. I know we got into development, and through that process, Shocka was like, look, if we're gonna do this, we have to meet with Chairman's family.

You know, we can't make this without the blessing of his family. So Ryan, Zinzi, Shaka, and producer Charles came all went to Chicago and tried to do with other filmmakers that failed to pull off a decade. They met with Chairman Fred Jr. who now lives at the Hampton House, his father's childhood home. And we sat down, you know, let it know who wanted to make the film.

It was really like intimidating. He had a couple of former Panthers there who knew his father, you know, that it not, 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. This was the first of many negotiations with Ampens 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 got thinking about how shocked I say he didn't want to do it without him. And we didn't want the experience to be in Validate, man. Like if somebody was to watch the film, and to find out the family had condemned it for a reason I was valid.

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 sticking points that he was like, Fred Jr. looked at scripts. He talked to the filmmakers about their vision. 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 Tol Ryan,

that they wanted to have a sit down with Daniel Caluia and Dominic Fishback, the actors who 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 Pan Panther symbol in the center. It was long, I mean, we would run a table for like seven hours. Dominique and Daniel were questioned well into the night.

Jim and said, I want to go around this table and know why every single one of you want to do this movie. And he's, I'm gonna start with you. And he said, it's a damn year and I was like, oh, it loves. 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 a night well. It was just Chairman and Mama Kuhl just asking questions that really go to the core of the

way we do what we do. And then at the end, Chairman was like, y'all, I'm gonna take you to a hood, you pick one. X for someone to Google, where's neighborhood in Chicago? Cause it's arbitrary with how the town's gonna be kinda hot. And from my recollection, I was like, yo, you told me, you told me where I need to go.

And he was like, yeah, if you're gonna, if you're gonna pay the Chairman, I need to know what you're made of and I was like, yeah cool. I respect that, you know Someone pulled up the Weshikha Goneva would call K-town where just a couple days earlier 11 people were shot and two were killed and it was late It was a past midnight and I said okay. Let's go Let's go right there. We're going to continue this meeting right there. Chairman Daniel, Dominique and Charles King all drove to K-Down. Chairman showed them some sidewalk memorials he said had been defaced by the police. And for me how I, 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 was like, I understood 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 the 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. Juman Fred and Mamma Kuh had tested Daniel and Dominik's intentions and their metal and the family was impressed but the negotiations between the family and the film makers weren't over just yet. In our next episode, producer Ryan Kugler 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's senior's widow, about how they met and seeing this story brought to life in this film. This podcast is a production of 99% Invisible, proximity media, and Warner Brothers. The series is written by Christopher Johnson, our supervising producer. When the Mars is our editor, our senior producer is Delaney Hall. Avie Madan is our associate producer, special thanks also to producer Emmett Fitzgerald. Our musical is composed by Sean Riel. Graham Haysha is our fact-checker.

Bryce and Barnes is our mixed engineer. Special thanks to Laila Willes, our sync producer in Chicago. Some of the audio in this episode and in our trailers 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 copyrighted video freak 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. Radio TV.