Rosenfeld’s story was provocative, and arguably sensationalistic. But he seemed to raise the issue by paying significant attention to the way that Aoki died (something few others have dwelled upon). Could Aoki have committed suicide out of fear that Rosenfeld would expose him? Rosenfeld didn’t speculate overtly about Aoki’s decision. And Rosenfeld twice mentioned in his story that Aoki committed suicide in 2009. Having chosen not to share his research with activists or historians beforehand, he announced that “unbeknownst to his fellow activists, Aoki had served as an FBI intelligence informant, covertly filing reports on a wide range of Bay Area political groups.” Rosenfeld described asking Aoki directly, during an oral history interview, whether he had been an informant (Aoki denied it). Rosenfeld tread gently on the revered figure’s memory. Only four months after the publication of Samurai Among Panthers, Rosenfeld alleged in an August 20 news article that “ the man who armed the Black Panthers was FBI informant, records show.” And in April, 2012, University of Minnesota Press published a scholarly, 496 page biography of Aoki titled Samurai Among Panthers: Richard Aoki on Race, Resistance, and a Paradoxical Life. In November of that year, activist filmmakers released a history of his work with documentary film, Aoki. Rosenfeld’s allegations were surprising in part because they followed on the heels of the creation of two recent celebratory histories of Richard Aoki’s life. In the process, Rosenfeld raised important questions about what it is that informants do and what it means when an ally in struggles against government racism and police repression turns out to be an informant for the government. He also sought to shake up how we tell black freedom movement history by playing up the fact that Aoki provided the founders of the Black Panther Party (BPP) with their first guns. So when the journalist Seth Rosenfeld alleged in August 2012 that Aoki was an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Rosenfeld shocked Aoki’s family, friends, and allies. (Photo: oso / flickr)Richard Aoki was a well-known activist in the San Francisco Bay Area – celebrated for his role as one of only a handful of Asian American members of the Black Panther Party, a leader in UC Berkeley’s Third World Liberation Front in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and a mentor to a generation of left-leaning activists. Simultaneously a taut crime thriller, a visceral emotional drama and an immersive piece of important American history, Judas and the Black Messiah is one of the most compelling and essential films you will see this year.Civil rights activist and Black Panther Party member Richard Aoki. At the centre of it all, pulsing through the film is a trilogy of exceptional and electrifying performances from Daniel Kaluuya (who won the Golden Globe, BAFTA and Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Fred Hampton), LaKeith Stanfield as William O’Neal and Dominique Fishback in a heart-breaking turn as Hampton’s partner Deborah Johnson. Shaka King, in his big-screen directorial debut, tells both their stories with complexity and careful precision, in this fast-paced and hard-hitting drama, fused together with gripping editing and stunning cinematography. And even lesser known is the role that petty criminal and FBI informant William O’Neal played in his downfall. The real-life story of Fred Hampton, the gifted civil rights leader who rose through the Black Panther party to became chairman of the Chicago chapter, is often missing from history.