The letter was signed by 19 people, including Noam Chomsky, Susan Sontag, Benjamin Spock, Judy Collins and Norman Mailer (Collins and Mailer would also testify at the trial). This time around he would also direct. Terms of Use A subsequent investigation and report concluded that the 1968 demonstration’s bloody turn was instigated. It even heard testimony from Country Joe McDonald, a musician newly famous for singing the “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” at Woodstock just a month before the trial began. [72] or Everyone (including the lawyers) already had prison sentences for contempt of court; and in addition to this, Judge Hoffman sentenced the five convicted men to five years in prison and gave each a $5,000 fine. This has to be appealed.’”. None were convicted of conspiracy, and although five of them were convicted of inciting a riot, an appellate court dismissed the charges because it found that the judge had been biased against them. Hayden married three times, but his most high-profile union was to actress and fellow activist Jane Fonda for 17 years. A subsequent investigation and report concluded that the 1968 demonstration’s bloody turn was instigated by the police. Get the best of Smithsonian magazine by email. Seale had chosen lawyer Charles Garry to represent him in court, and because Garry needed gallbladder surgery, he asked Judge Hoffman to postpone the trial. David Dellinger: Dellinger died in 2004 at 88. Vote Now! At the time, a lot of prominent writers and performers were involved with the anti-war movement, and the witness list reflected this. Soon riots began, primarily in black urban areas. Married, he lives in Boerthoud, Colorado and also does personal growth coaching. The author of 17 books, he was also director of the Peace and Justice Resource Center in Los Angeles County. He also declared a mistrial in Seale’s case and removed him from the trial, turning the Chicago Eight into the Chicago Seven. In The Trial of the Chicago 7, Sorkin intentionally opts for broad strokes to revisit the story of the trial and the surrounding events. Professors John Froines and Lee Weiner (Danny Flaherty and Noah Robbins), who were only peripherally involved in planning the Chicago demonstrations (sitting at the defense table, one of them likens their presence to the Academy Awards. Rather than being happy with his acquittal, Froines says, “I was very upset by that because I wanted to be with my friends, of course. Give a Gift. On one occasion which, of course, is included in the movie, the two yippies arrive in court wearing judicial robes, which they removed on the judge’s orders to reveal blue policeman’s uniforms underneath. Now that "The Trial of the Chicago 7" finally has been released, the writer and director told a National Press Club Headliners Virtual Newsmaker audience, it is unsettling to note parallels between what was happening in 1968 … “Rennie Davis and I were hit on the head with night sticks.”. From the day the trial began on September 24, 1969, it captivated the media. Keep up-to-date on: © 2021 Smithsonian Magazine. During the trial, the defendants argued that the anti-war demonstrations had been peaceful, and that the violence was instigated by the police. Fifty years later, here’s why the Chicago Eight trial that opened on September 24, 1969 was such a big deal. To its credit, the movie includes, if only suggests, some of these undercurrents. Sorkin’s introduction to the Chicago 7 began more than a decade ago when director Steven Spielberg contacted him to talk about a movie on the trial. The image of a black man in shackles, rendered by courtroom artists because cameras weren’t allowed in the courtroom, was circulated by media around the world. Rennie Davis: Now 80, Davis founded the Foundation for a New Humanity, a Colorado-based project to develop a comprehensive plan for a new way of living. The seven defendants and their attorneys also received prison sentences for the more than 170 contempt citations levelled at them by Judge Hoffman—which ranged from two-and-a-half months (for Weiner) to four years and 18 days (for Kuntsler). We didn’t think there was any chance that McCarthy would be nominated. Franklin McMahon/Chicago History Museum/Getty Images. Underneath, they were wearing Chicago police uniforms. However, he thinks it’s important to understand these incidents in the context of the judge’s behavior toward the defendants. Froines and Weiner were acquitted of all charges. Can You Spread Covid-19 After Getting Vaccinated? “His whole face was basically covered with a pressure band-aid, but he could still be heard through it trying to talk to the jury,” recalls Rennie Davis, a co-defendant in what became known as the Chicago 8 trial (later Chicago 7 when Seale was legally severed from the group and was tried separately. “It has to tend to the rules of drama and filmmaking, so I’m thinking about the audience experience . The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago is most-remembered for what happened on the streets outside of it. In the courtroom, both the cinematic and the real-life versions, the defendants exhibited solidarity. “Nixon was throwing down a marker in order to intimidate the entire anti-war movement. “SDS saw them as clowns with a following that had to be accommodated, but they weren’t part of strategic planning for what should happen,” says Gitlin, who also wrote The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. [71] The 2010 documentary Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune features interviews with a variety of Ochs' associates, including Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, and Abbie Hoffman. After the appeal, most of the Chicago Eight continued their activist work, with Rubin standing out as the infamous yippie who became a yuppie in the 1980s. Based on a true story, the period film follows the infamous case of … You will get the essence of these real-life people and the kernel of who they are as human beings, not the historical facts.”. Organizers were planning a non-violent demonstration. “[Sorkin] shows that Abbie is willing to sacrifice his life. The next year, Richard Nixon took office and appointed John Mitchell as the new attorney general. In the 2007 Brett Morgen film Chicago 10, archival footage, including Chicago in August 1968, is mixed with animated scenes based on the trial transcript. 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Hayden is depicted as a clean-cut anti-war activist who stands up when the judge walks into the courtroom (he reflexively forgets that the defendants all agreed to stay seated) and gets a haircut for his first day in court. From the beginning, many observers found Judge Julius Hoffman to be far short of impartial toward the defendants. The 1968 Chicago riots, in the United States, were sparked in part by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Sharman says the media tended to emphasize moments like these because they were so unusual. Even Kunstler received a four-year sentence, in part for calling Hoffman’s courtroom a “medieval torture chamber.”, “There was a lot of electricity in the air,” recalls Charles Henry, professor emeritus of African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, who attended the trial while in college. Photo: Niko Tavernise/Netflix. The Trial of the Chicago 7 directed by aaron sorkin netflix. On February 18, 1970, the seven defendants were acquitted of conspiracy charges but fined $5,000 each. Another time, Hoffman unfurled a National Liberation Front (aka “Viet Cong”) flag on the defense table, and engaged in a tug-of-war over it with a court marshal who tried to remove it. Seale hadn’t been involved in organizing the anti-Vietnam War demonstration, which began peacefully before turning into a bloody confrontation with police that resulted in nearly 700 arrests. “The effect of this ‘anti-riot’ act is to subvert the first Amendment guarantee of free assembly by equating organized political protest with organized violence,” it read. The protests turned to bloodshed. The evidence against the Chicago Eight, as they became known, was always slim. The following year, the new Government of Richard Nixon – thanks to a hardline attorney general and a new administration keen to demonstrate its ‘law and order’ credentials – rounded up a smorgasbord of protestors and charged them with crossing state lines to incite a riot. Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, A Few Good Men), the movie dramatizes the infamous, at times farcical, trial of eight men accused by President Nixon’s Justice Department of criminal conspiracy and crossing state lines to incite a riot. Dragging on for almost five months—at times devolving into chaos and political theater—the trial illuminated the deepening schisms in a country torn apart by the Vietnam War, tectonic cultural shifts and attempts by the Nixon Administration to quash peaceful antiwar dissent and protest. He soon grew tired of politics and turned to writing, producing A Lonely Rage in 1978 and a cookbook titled Barbeque'n with Bobby in 1987. Hollywood routinely tackles movies about real-life events, but dramatic storytelling and historical accuracy don’t always mix. Mitchell—who was later convicted for his role in the Watergate conspiracy—was much more receptive to Daley, and decided to prosecute the Chicago Eight under the new federal anti-riot law. Abbie Hoffman: After spending years underground, Hoffman resurfaced in 1980, lectured at colleges and worked as a comedian and community organizer, He died in 1989 at 52 from a self-inflicted overdose of barbituates due to manic depression. The oldest of the Chicago defendants by 20 years, he was a leading antiwar organizer in the 1960s. It was inspiring to play someone so courageous.”. The scene resembled a war zone, and it was broadcast into American homes via the nightly news. Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and Davis (Alex Sharp), founders of SDS, lead a campus coalition of 150 organizations bent on changing the system and ending the war. Charges against Seale were also dropped. In the movie, the tension between the two men is palpable yet understandable given their stylistic differences. image of a black man in shackles, rendered by courtroom artists, Amateur Treasure Hunter Finds Trove of 1,000-Year-Old Viking Jewelry, Archaeologists Discover 12th-Century Bathhouse Hidden in Spanish Tapas Bar, The Pitfalls and Promise of America's Founding Myths, The Once-Classified Tale of Juanita Moody: The Women Who Helped Avert a Nuclear War. From a left-wing point of view, the conflict between the “revolutionaries” and the Chicago establishment was a straightforward story of good vs. evil. To make this point, the defense called over 100 witnesses, many of whom had been in Chicago during the protests. Judge Hoffman (no relation to Abbie) was so angry that he continuously cited contempt. Froines, who is now a professor emeritus of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, wasn’t arrested that day. “Had the government not brought them together at a conspiracy trial, I don’t think Hayden and Hoffman would have had much to do with each other,” says Gitlin. The two lawyers representing the defendants, William Kunstler (Mark Rylance) and Leonard Weinglass (Ben Shenkman), were renowned civil rights attorneys. McDonald tried to sing the anti-war song in court, and when the judge forbid it, he recited the lyrics out loud. After violence erupted at the Chicago DNC, Mayor Daley wanted the government to prosecute some of the demonstrators under the new act. “Myself and others in [the antiwar group Students for a Democratic Society] (SDS)] went to Chicago to convince the kids in their teens and early 20s who had been campaigning for McCarthy to give up their illusions about getting change within the system,” says Michael Kazin, a history professor at Georgetown University who is currently writing a history of the Democratic party. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! (The incident inspired the Graham Nash song “Chicago” released a year and a half later. He later became an unlikely spokesman for a teenage guru. He resides in Connecticut. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. ), “It was a horrendous thing that occurred,” Froines says. When the judge demanded they remove their robes, they took them off and stomped on them. The idea was tabled when both men had other projects in the works, but Sorkin wrote a draft in 2007. The Trial of the Chicago 7: Plodding and pedantic reading of the 1968 riots Review: The film fails to engage with the radicalism of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. The trial of the Chicago 7 was a court case that concerned the antiwar protests and rioting surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which was held in Chicago. The drama and histrionics in the courtroom were reflected in daily headlines. Three months before the Chicago Eight trial began, a group of prominent writers and thinkers published a letter to the editors of The New York Review of Booksarguing that the Bobby Seale: At 83, Seale resides in Liberty, Texas. Rioting and looting followed, with people flooding out onto the streets of major cities. Before the convention began on August 26, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley refused protest permits to most anti-war demonstrators and deployed 12,000 police officers, 5,600 members of the Illinois National Guard and 5,000 Army soldiers on the streets to meet any who showed up. In Sorkin’s script, Hayden and Hoffman start out antagonistic and eventually become comrades. 17th Annual Photo Contest Finalists Announced. How could this happen? “He thought that there was more evidence against the police, who had violated the civil rights of the protesters in Chicago.”. The trial of the “Chicago Seven” became a defining event in public debates about the Vietnam War, On October 29, 1969, Bobby Seale, a co-founder of the Black Panther Party and one of eight co-defendants standing trial for inciting the riots that erupted at Chicago's 1968 Democratic National Convention, was gagged and chained to his chair for refusing to obey Judge Julius Hoffman’s contempt citations. Through carefully crafted production, the film blurs the lines between 1968 and 2020, rightfully so. The Chicago Eight: (top L-R) Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman,Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Bobby Seale, Lee Weiner, John Froines and David Dellinger, circa 1968. Fifteen years ago, Aaron Sorkin began laying the groundwork for a film based on one of the most compelling legal showdowns of the late 1960s. California Do Not Sell My Info It was one of the most shocking scenes to ever take place in an American courtroom. The Trial of the Chicago 7 is the latest movie directed by Aaron Sorkin, with a scheduled release date in mid-October. Privacy Statement We wanted to give up the illusion of change through the existing electoral system.”. CHICAGO (WLS) -- 1968 will forever be remembered as a year of conflict and heartbreak. They represented different factions of “the movement” and had distinctly different styles, strategies and political agendas. "It was a watershed year," said Laurie Rubin, who photographed trial evidence. Charges against Seale were also dropped. “What becomes clear is that in the end, Abbie is willing to challenge the injustice of the time,” says Cohen. Seale in turn rejected the court-appointed lawyer and asserted his right to defend himself. Protesters outside the courthouse each day chanted the iconic mantra: “The whole world is watching!”. Three months before the Chicago Eight trial began, a group of prominent writers and thinkers published a letter to the editors of The New York Review of Books arguing that the anti-riot law set a dangerous precedent. Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) was head of the Chicago Panthers, which leaned towards more militant methods. A week after Judge Hoffman first chained and gagged Seale in court, the judge sentenced Seale to four years in prison for contempt of court. 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