The Black Panthers - 2015, Stanley Nelson

The Black Panthers - Vanguard of the Revolution 

2015 - Stanley Nelson

I was just on time for the 8PM show in Chicago on the 26th.  The director, Stanley Nelson, was not going to be on hand for tonight's showing, that was the next night.  Two wonderful black ladies came and sat in a couple of the only seats left right next to me. I was one of only a couple of Anglos in the audience. There were moments of recognition, head nodding all around, chuckles and real laughter at many of the comments of the interviewees. This film had a non-stop type of feel, an urgency, and didn't let up.

The movement of the militarization of inner city black youth in 1967 through 1971, emanating from Oakland CA and quickly catching fire on both coasts and most cities, was short-lived, as could have been predicted by all historical markers, and also could not have come to a good end considering the climate of the times, and the methods employed by its leaders.  The Black Panthers - Vanguard of the Revolution film succinctly, within its 2 hours, gives an accurate timeline of the development of this movement, stunningly real and telling interviews with actual participants and commentators that were involved with it, and overall the best historical overview to date.  It is biased in its viewpoint, as along with every documentary that claims to be a documentary of course must be, but that bias does not really interfere with itself in the telling.  While it is sympathetic bias, yes, it is also real, and self-effacing, and telling all, despite the obvious pain it brings its maker. While there is a sense that this is black "cheerleading" and playing to the dark audience, it cannot be simply dismissed as sentimental reminiscing. This is good filmmaking. 

In example: The truth of the breakfast program’s good was juxtaposed against words later in the film, “just another breakfast program club”, spoken by the critic Eldridge Cleaver from Algeria, but a well-spoken and inside critic that was making a valid point.  The breaking apart of the Panthers, the split, is revealed in just the same stripe as the coming together.  Well-balanced.

What was most revealing to me in this rendition of the Panther story, and a part that had not stood out to me before, was the motivation of J. Edgar Hoover in creating the Cointelpro and the intelligence to infiltrate the Panthers to destroy them.  That motivation was fear.  The same fear that was behind the plantation owner’s eyes when he saw the slave quarters going up in flames with unshackled black bodies dancing all around it in the night was the same look behind the eyes of the administration in the creation of the program to douse those flames being born in Oakland.  And not without reason.  Black men with guns, in the open, loaded, and even marching into the State house with those same weapons.

But at this critical juncture, there could have been another way, another approach, other than subterfuge, other than the “war-like” tactic of counterintelligence, surveillance, undermining, oppressive police tactics, outright lies and deceiving of the public.  

The Panthers had a righteous cause, and rightly supported, and it was the failure of the administration and others in a position to provide adequate rhetorical and active response, and activation of law to bring about peace, that was the cause of the disruptive actions that ensued in the first place.  However, it must be also noted that the Panthers did not help their own cause in many ways, aligning themselves with the Vietnamese north, the concurrently hated and feared enemy of an ongoing war.  This alignment is what piqued the interest of the national government power more than anything, to believe that an internal organization was possibly providing sanctuary and assistance to a foreign power that was seen as a direct threat and an enemy of the state, and outspokenly communist.  The Panthers adopted the language of communism, Mao’s little red book, and violent communism, “by any means necessary”, and this was in equivalent terms rhetorically and realistically a physically active threat against the constitutional government. That’s why the gloves came off.

IF…and this is a big if that I draw from the subject….if the language of the movement had stayed closer to home and dealt with the most pressing and true problem of domestic violence and oppression of black people by the police, and other authoritative figures of power, and had combined their efforts earlier with WASP sensitivities, and while blandishing weapons also sought a political solution, the whole picture might have looked very different.  It also might have looked differently if concurrently the white-led governmental system would not have resorted to fear and intimidation, and ruinous underhanded spying, the FBI being the weapon of choice.

If if if…….IF Huey had not done drugs….IF MLK had not been assassinated, IF we would only listen….IF….as Rodney King has said, “Why can’t we all just get along?”