THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION 113 minutes. Rating: NNNN
Stanley Nelson’s documentary tracing the rise and fall of black America’s most militant movement has a little bit of everything good: mercurial personalities, passion and plenty of drama.
Mining interviews with former Panther members – and the police officers who mercilessly attacked them – and a whack of stunning archival footage, the film tracks the way a community woke up and how the group found its political footing and then fell apart.
It started in 1966 when Oakland, California, black activists who knew the law, including Huey Newton, openly carried guns while monitoring police brutality. As police overreacted, African Americans were drawn to the Panthers’ dual desire for community-building via the famous free breakfast program and all-out revolution.
When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Panther numbers swelled, but a rift between Newton and Eldridge Cleaver and later Bobby Seales splintered the party.
Yet as the film makes clear, it wasn’t internal conflict that killed the party it was the FBI’s sleazy and manipulative tactics.
The film deals too lightly with the Panthers’ sexism, but otherwise, this is a superb history lesson.
