Stanley Nelson’s riveting documentary about the heyday of the black power movement in the US is a tragicomedy of fear and hope. Enraged by the racism and bullyboy tactics of the police, and inspired by revolutionary rhetoric from south-east Asia, Cuba and Africa, the Black Panthers were born in the 1960s, during a new era of anxiety brought in with the Kennedy assassination. They showed a flair for outrageous publicity stunts and gun-toting paramilitary displays, all to provoke tremulous white America and elicit coverage from saucer-eyed TV news reporters.
Nelson’s film shows this was the one time in US history that the American right considered gun control. One pundit blurts: “No one wants to attack the legitimate hunter, but how about nuts with guns?” J Edgar Hoover’s FBI was steely in its determination to infiltrate and divide the organisation and use the police for pre-emptive violent strikes.
The Black Panthers seem almost tame in comparison to jihadists, but they were a voice for outrage, before dwindling into schism, paranoia and radical chic. So much for the rise. If Nelson’s film has a fault, it is failing to analyse the fall. Why are the Black Panthers not a force today? Has radicalism collapsed? An engrossing return to a forgotten past.
