The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution

The Black Panthers were formed from a simple premise: the woman or man who is, without cause, attacked/oppressed/threatened with death has the right to defend her or himself. But simple premises become unyieldingly and unnecessarily complex when the bodies in question are black. It’s not uncommon, even now, to hear all manner of people – including tragically misguided black folks – insist that the Panthers were or are the black equivalent of the KKK (false equivalency for the win!), that groups like the Panthers are the reason racism still exists, and that they are, in fact, the real racists.

The Panthers, one of the most important equal rights / civil rights organizations and movements in American history, is also one of its most misunderstood. They’re shrouded in myth, propaganda, and nationalistic romanticizing. Director Stanley Nelson’s documentary The Black Panthers: Vanguard of Revolution audaciously attempts to set the record straight, warts (in-house misogyny; egos run amok; drug use that toppled the organization from the top) and all: the Free Breakfast for Schoolchildren program that is the unacknowledged model for American public school breakfast programs; community outreach programs around health and education; establishing models of indomitable black strength and self-reliance that were conveyed with PR prescience. Their shrewd image consciousness and ability to work the press foreshadowed today’s dictate that everyone – celebrity, academic, or activist – be skilled at branding themselves. No other political group has been as effortlessly cool and stylish while seriously agitating for revolution.

In charting the organization’s rise and fall, including their tactical influence on and coalitions with groups fighting for the rights of Asians, Latinos, poor whites, and LGBT folks (the late Huey P. Newton’s pro-gay politic, groundbreaking in its day, is still a stunning model of progressive, all-inclusive community building), Nelson is a thorough researcher and reporter. He threads together archival footage with original interviews, news clips with home movies and rare still photos. His camera cuts from former Panthers to white cops who went toe-to-toe with them, to historians who contextualize it all in accessible language. It’s a lean but dense film, leavened with unexpected humor, as when former Young Lords member Felipe Luciano talks about Eldridge Cleaver with the timing and sharp eye for detail of a master hood comedian.

Those moments are necessary as the film, almost from the start, underscores just how far the country has not come regarding race and racial equality. Old ‘60s clips of black people under brutal assault are chillingly similar to Vines and Youtube clips that now pollinate social media platforms. When a 1966 newscaster intones over a clip of police beating black protestors, “Relations between police and Negros around the country are getting worse,” the viewer feels as though they’re caught in some time machine looping malfunction.

Charles Bursey hands out breakfast to school kids

The film has drawn the ire of controversial ex-Panther Elaine Brown, who demanded that original interview footage of her be cut from the film. (Nelson declined.) And it’s likely that many other Panthers and some historians will take umbrage at the sometimes sordid, unflattering revelations that unfold alongside celebrations of the heroic, as well as who gets the most camera time. But the film is pointedly not hagiographic. It simultaneously inspires and enrages, uplifts and deflates the viewer – not only for underscoring the constant state of terrorism that black Americans have lived and are living under, but for making it clear that those on the frontlines of battling the terror are merely human after all, and the costs of engaging that terror head-on can lead to despair, self-medication, and staggering ego trips.

As one ex-Panther says right at the start of the film, “We were making history, and it wasn’t nice and clean. It wasn’t east. It was complex.”

Huey P. Newton

This weekend in Los Angeles, director Stanley Nelson will appear for post-screening Q&A sessions in Los Angeles, at the Nuart. Those times are as follows: