It was Dellinger who read out the names, rather than Hayden, and Hoffman only permitted a handful of names to be read before he shut Dellinger down. Separately, Seale’s earlier convictions, both from this trial and from his Black Panther-related charges, were also suspended while he served his four-year sentence, and he was also released from prison in 1972. Not there. The Trial of the Chicago 7: (L-R) Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Bobby Seale, Ben Shenkman as Leonard Weinglass, Mark Rylance as William Kuntsler, Eddie Redmayne as … In The Trial of the Chicago 7, Sorkin intentionally opts for broad strokes to revisit the story of the trial and the surrounding events. The judge was not only politically hostile towards the defendants but, historians say, tone-deaf to what was happening in the country and seemingly unaware of the symbolism of chaining Seale to a chair in his courtroom. But advertising revenue helps support our journalism. or Judge Hoffman (no relation to Abbie) was so angry that he continuously cited contempt. California Do Not Sell My Info Continue Terms of Use 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. Related: The Trial of the Chicago 7 Cast: What Each Character Looks Like In Real Life. Froines and Weiner were acquitted of all charges. But when thousands, many of them college students, arrived in Chicago, they were met by the forces of Democratic Mayor Richard Daley and his law-and-order machine—a tear-gas spraying, baton-wielding army of 12,000 Chicago police officers, 5,600 members of the Illinois National Guard and 5,000 U.S. Army soldiers. Some people might have heard a little about the Chicago Seven during their years in school, while some have never heard of this infamous trial. In Sorkin’s script, Hayden and Hoffman start out antagonistic and eventually become comrades. The two lawyers representing the defendants, William Kunstler (Mark Rylance) and Leonard Weinglass (Ben Shenkman), were renowned civil rights attorneys. "What do you suppose would have happened to the working men except for these rebels all the way down through history? There were three intelligence agents who infiltrated the protesters and testified during the trial, and the closest equivalent to Daphne in real life was Robert Pierson, who became a bodyguard for Rubin. This never actually happened in the real trial, as Dellinger was extremely serious about abstaining from all violence. Here's what's true, and what was changed, in The Trial of the Chicago 7. The oldest of the Chicago defendants by 20 years, he was a leading antiwar organizer in the 1960s. As it turns out, the events from this past summer share many parallels to 1968. “Before a film can be anything else—relevant or persuasive or important—it has to be good,” says Sorkin. But the wheels of justice turned, and in 1972, all charges against the defendants were dropped. Judge Hoffman also sentenced the seven defendants and their attorney to prison for contempt of court. 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. In recent years, Seale has attempted to raise the funds to produce his own take on the story based on his autobiography, Seize the Time: The Eighth Defendant. Jeanne Dorin McDowell is a Los Angeles-based journalist and editor. The idea was tabled when both men had other projects in the works, but Sorkin wrote a draft in 2007. However, the scene is reminiscent of the moment in Dellinger's life when he decided to become a pacifist. Click the AdBlock Plus button on your browser and select Enabled on this site. As noted in The Trial of the Chicago 7, Dellinger was literally a Boy Scout leader and quite an incongruous figure alongside the students and Yippies who made up the rest of the defendants. A leader in America’s civil rights and antiwar movements, he moved into mainstream politics and served in the California State Assembly for a decade and the California State Senate for eight years. Within the movement, however, the yippies were regarded as political lightweights, adept at public relations and little else, according to Todd Gitlin, a Columbia University journalism and sociology professor who served as president of SDS in 1963 and 64. With encouragement from their attorney, William Kunstler, the defendants did everything they could to disrupt the trial by eating jelly beans, making faces, blowing kisses, wearing outré clothing and cracking jokes. We would get 30 death threats a day while on trial,” recalls Davis, who jokes that he wasn’t as nerdy as he is portrayed in the movie. Portrait of the Chicago Seven and their lawyers as they raise they’re fists in unison outside the courthouse where they were on trial for conspiracy and inciting a riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois, October 8, 1969. A number of high-profile witnesses who were put in the stand in the real trial are left out of The Trial of the Chicago 7 - among them, poet Allen Ginsberg (who is shown in the film chanting during a protest march), writer Norman Mailer, folk singers Judy Collins and Arlo Guthrie, and comedian Dick Gregory. He later recalled: ''I shall never forget the horror I felt the instant my fist struck solid flesh. 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. The go-to source for comic book and superhero movie fans. The Trial of the Chicago 7's ending has divided critics and viewers, with Eddie Redmayne's Tom Hayden defiantly beginning to read aloud the names of almost half a million American soldiers killed in the Vietnam War. Hollywood routinely tackles movies about real-life events, but dramatic storytelling and historical accuracy don’t always mix. Fifty-two years later, the movie, like the trial itself, points to the power citizens can exert through protest in the face of authoritarian rule. Smithsonian Institution. “Nixon was throwing down a marker in order to intimidate the entire anti-war movement. The court of appeals found that the judge had demonstrated a "deprecatory and often antagonistic attitude toward the defense," in a way that may have unduly biased the jury against the defendants: "Most significant, however, were remarks in the presence of the jury, deprecatory of defense counsel and their case. Her hobbies include drawing, video games, long walks in the countryside, and wasting far too much time on Twitter. A subsequent investigation and report concluded that the 1968 demonstration’s bloody turn was instigated by the police. In the movie, the tension between the two men is palpable yet understandable given their stylistic differences. .This isn’t a biopic. 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. But cumulatively, they must have telegraphed to the jury the judge's contempt for the defense.". At one point Mr. Kunstler declared "This is no longer a court of order, Your Honor, this is a medieval torture chamber" - for which he received one of his many contempt of court citations from Judge Hoffman. “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. The defendants also placed American and South Vietnamese flags on the table, which Hoffman ordered to be removed. At the trial 12 months later, the eight defendants remained united in their opposition to the war in Vietnam, but they were far from a homogenous coalition. He also served as director of a division of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration . The names were actually read much earlier on in the trial rather than during sentencing, during the Vietnam Moratorium Day of Oct. 15, 1969. 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. They were sentenced to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Massachusetts)—is a pot-smoking hippie who wears his politics on the tip of his tongue. 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 Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals declined to sentence based on the contempt charges, and reversed Hoffman's other convictions. Keep up-to-date on: © 2020 Smithsonian Magazine. Jerry Rubin: Rubin went on to work on Wall Street and hosted networking events for young professionals in Manhattan. With the tumult of the 2016 election, Sorkin was re-inspired to examine the story of defiant activists willing to stand up for their political beliefs. Five of them —Davis, Dellinger, Hayden, Hoffman and Rubin—were convicted of crossing state lines with the intent to riot. He had spent only four hours in Chicago that weekend, having travelled there to fill in as a speaker. Get the best of Smithsonian magazine by email. Froines and Weiner were ultimately acquitted on all charges while the others were convicted of inciting to riot (though the convictions were overturned on appeal). 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). You gentlemen would have been slaves. Hayden married three times, but his most high-profile union was to actress and fellow activist Jane Fonda for 17 years. Aaron Sorkin's film The Trial of the Chicago 7 makes some changes from the true story, but the real trial was already very dramatic. Along with four of the others he was convicted of crossing state lines to incite a riot, but the conviction was overturned. David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch)—literally a Boy Scout leader—was a pacifist and organizer for the Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE), which had been formed the previous year to plan large anti-war demonstrations. She has lived and studied in New York and Toronto, but ultimately returned home so that she could get a decent cup of tea. We get it: you like to have control of your own internet experience. The drama and histrionics in the courtroom were reflected in daily headlines. 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