Unlike many ‘60s counter-culture movements, now collectively swaddled in a haze of nostalgic commemoration, the Black Panthers stand out as a stark reminder of a tense, tumultuous period, one whose crises still reverberate today. Not as simple to sanctify as Martin Luther King’s non-violent resistance or the flower-child naiveté of equality-minded hippies, the group’s raw fusion of revolutionary philosophy with grassroots political advocacy, violent confrontation and indelible fashion sense makes for a complex, often bewildering legacy. This confusion, according to Stanley Nelson’s The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, isn’t just an issue of modern perception but a rift inherent within the organization itself. Formed in 1966 as a militant response to America’s mounting racial tensions, the group positioned itself as both a defensive society, standing up for the everyday rights of oppressed blacks, and an offensive one, strategizing methods to overturn the white-controlled power structure, particularly in its home base of Oakland.
Nelson’s sprawling history organizes itself around the internal conflicts of the Panthers, who grew from local collective to international icons as the embers of mid ‘60s radicalism burst into a blaze. As it developed, the group remained consistent about what it represented, offering a stridently youthful, pride-focused rejoinder to the moderate platforms of other black leaders, but less so about how to attain its goals. It’s confrontational politics left it prone to the fate of so many left-wing movements, torn between an extremist wing, passionate about fomenting immediate revolution, and a more judicious one, concerned with providing basic service to underprivileged communities. Represented by theory-spouting firebrands like Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, the Panthers’ militant arm got the group into trouble with American authorities, resulting in surreptitious efforts to undermine them by expanding existing fractures and targeting specific leading members.
The Panthers’ reign was short-lived but significant. The headline-grabbing flair for pageantry pushed issues of inequality onto the world stage, while the group itself pursued a fascinatingly fractured method of revolution. Responsible both for sponsoring free breakfast programs and stockpiling weapons for armed insurrection, it motivated a specific subset of the American populace, while effectively terrifying the rest of it. Such intensity got the party targeted by the FBI, whose COINTELPRO projects led to several targeted assassinations and the sowing of discord among the group’s leadership. Attempting to shape this gradual collapse into a coherent story, the film’s post-mortem analysis includes interviews with a wide cross-section of members, many of them now involved in community organizing and politics. Bobby Seale is noticeably absent, and notable affiliates like Angela Davis are never mentioned. Nelson otherwise covers most of the relevant material, adequately arranging a wealth of information into a compelling and palatable narrative, condensing complex history with admirable flair.
All this is conveyed in the now-standard cut-and-paste doc format, in which a mountain of photographs, newspaper clippings and primary source fragments appear to have been digested and spit back out by a computer program. This recognizable approach means that The Black Panthers is interesting, and intermittently enlightening, but not exactly innovative. In crafting a familiar story of ideological crisis, with a promising movement torn apart by its own hubris and the sinister influence of rival political forces, it condenses an ideologically confounding story down into a series of familiar narrative beats. With this comes an enforced air of respectability, with the movement explained and simplified into something that might resonate with middle-of-the-road PBS viewers, particularly those uncomfortable with the Panthers’ violent tendencies and radical rhetoric. Still, despite these shortcomings, Black Panthers serves as a bracing reminder of the group’s message: pride for all people, resistance against oppressors and the idea that abuse should never be taken lying down.