‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ True Story: How Accurate is Aaron Sorkin’s Netflix Film?

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The Trial of the Chicago 7

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The Trial of Chicago 7—a new courtroom drama from writer/director Aaron Sorkin that began streaming on Netflix today—tells a story that will be new to many. The court case that put seven anti-Vietnam War protestors on trial for supposedly intentionally starting a riot was high-profile in 1969 but hasn’t been talked about much since. Movies aren’t always the best history lesson, of course, but in the case of The Trial of the Chicago 7, Sorkin sticks pretty closely to the truth—with a little editorializing. This is the guy who wrote The West Wing and The Social Network, after all. Here’s everything you need to know about The Trial of the Chicago 7 true story.

Is The Trial of the Chicago 7 based on a true story?

Yes. The Trial of the Chicago 7 is based on the true story of the Chicago Seven—originally called the Chicago 8—a group of anti-Vietnam War protestors who were charged with conspiracy in 1969 on the basis that they had traveled across state lines with the intention of starting a riot at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

What is the Trial of the Chicago 7 true story?

On March 20, 1969 eight defendants were brought before a grand jury, charged under the anti-riot provisions of Title X of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Those defendants were Abbie Hoffman (played by Sacha Baron Cohen in the film), Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), John Froines (Daniel Flaherty), Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins), and Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II).

Seale, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party, was denied his request to have the trial postponed while his attorney underwent surgery, and was also denied his request to represent himself. The other seven defendants were represented by civil rights lawyer William Kunstler (played by Mark Rylance in the film) and Leonard Weinglass (Ben Shenkman) of the Center for Constitutional Rights, as well as Michael Kennedy, Michael Tigar, Charles Garry, Gerald Lefcourt, and Dennis Roberts. The prosecutors were Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the film) and Tom Foran (J. C. MacKenzie), and the presiding judge was Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella). Judge Hoffman had no relation to Abbie Hoffman, and, as we see in the film, rumor has it that when the judge stated for the record, “He is not my son,” Hoffman called out in reply, “Dad, have you forsaken me?”

Closeups of the Chicago Eight: (top L-R) Jerry Rubin (1938 - 1998), Abbie Hoffman (1936 - 1989),Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Bobby Seale, Lee Weiner, John Froines and David Dellinger (1915 - 2004), circa 1968
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The Chicago 8 became the Chicago 7 on November 5, 1969, when Seale’s cases was severed from the others. After he disrupted the trial by protesting his right to have a lawyer of his choice, Judge Hoffman first had Seale bound and gagged for several days in the courtroom. Seale was then severed from the case and instead sentenced to 4 years in prison for 16 counts of contempt of court. Those charges were eventually overturned.

The trial stretched on until a verdict on February 18, 1970, when five of the defendants were found guilty of crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot. Two, Froines and Weiner, were acquitted. A U.S. appeals court later overturned the guilty convictions in 1972.

From left: Abbie Hoffman, John Froines, Lee Weiner, Jerry Rubin, Rennie Davis, and Tom Hayden, outside the Dirksen Federal Building, Chicago, Illinois, 1969.
From left: Abbie Hoffman, John Froines, Lee Weiner, Jerry Rubin, Rennie Davis, and Tom Hayden, outside the Dirksen Federal Building, Chicago, Illinois, 1969.Photo: Paul Sequeira/Getty Images

Who are Abbie Hoffman and Tom Hayden?

Abbie Hoffman was a social activist in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s best known for co-founding the Youth International Party, also known as Yippies. His anti-war and pro-civil rights protest methods often involved humor or theatrics—like when he led a group of protestors in throwing fistfuls of real and fake dollar bills down to the traders at the New York Stock Exchange, causing some of the professionals to scramble to pick up the money. After the Chicago 7 trial, Hoffman continued protesting, including interrupting The Who’s set at Woodstock to protest the jailing of John Sinclair of the White Panther Party (which, despite the name, was an organization of anti-racist white allies, not a white supremacist group). In 1971, Hoffman published Steal This Book, a counterculture guidebook for youth on how to live for free. In 1989, Hoffman died by suicide. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder nine years earlier.

Tom Hayden was a political activist and politician. After the Chicago 7 trial, he ran for political office several times, winning seats in both the California Assembly and California Senate. He founded the Indochina Peace Campaign (IPC), and published many books and articles. Hayden met actress Jane Fonda at a protest in 1971, and the two were married for 17 years. Their son is actor Troy Garity. Hayden died in 2016 of natural causes at the age of 76.

How accurate is The Trial of the Chicago 7?

Like most films based on a true story, things were condensed or cut for the sake of good storytelling in The Trial of Chicago 7. Most notably, though Seale is only bound and gagged for a few moments in the film, in actuality he spent several days in court that way, only able to communicate through muffled noises. I also could find little evidence that Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character, Richard Schultz, was as sympathetic to the defendants as he appeared in the film. Indeed, some suggest the real Schultz was not nearly as composed as his boss, Foran, and was harsh on the defendants as “the government’s pit bull.” I also cannot find any evidence that one of the few female characters in the film, the undercover FBI agent Daphne O’Connor (played by Caitlin FitzGerald), was real.

However, most of the events of the film are true, including the gag pulled by Hoffman and Rubin of wearing judges robes to mock Judge Hoffman. Much of the dialogue is taken from courtroom transcripts. In an interview with The Guardian, one of the defendants, Rennie Davis, now 80, confirmed that while it wasn’t the climactic closing statement that Sorkin made it in the film, all of the names of the people who lost their lives in Vietnam were read aloud at one point in the trial. (However, the real Davis does object to his depiction as “a complete nerd who’s afraid of his own shadow” in the movie.)

Clearly, Sorkin sides with the protestors, but overall, The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a mostly accurate and entertaining account of a court case that encapsulated two opposing sides of the ’60s: The U.S. government, and the counterculture movement.

Watch The Trial of the Chicago 7 on Netflix