Actually, in the original Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, black people self-aligned with the apes' freedom fight, so much so that the filmmakers had to tone down the destructive ending and add a conciliatory speech by Caesar for fear of starting riots.
Yup. The radical leftists were enamored by how the worker apes slaughtered the masters.
It was a clunky re-edit to make it peaceful.
It is indeed an odd world in which we live.
I wonder if they saved the footage from the edit? The late Roddy McDowall had a good screen presence, even under all that makeup, and I bet he could do a grand St. Crispan/Crispinian speech (Henry V).
According to his bio, his performance in the Burton/Taylor Cleopatra was so good, he was accidentally nominated for best supporting actor, though he was not listed as one of the major cast, and Fox had to apologize and withdraw his name from the nomination.