The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution

Stanley Nelson, the award-winning chronicler of African American life, history and social movements, shines a light on the iconic Black Panther Party (BPP), charting its meteoric rise in the 1960s and its disintegration several years later. Fed up with racial discrimination, poverty and police brutality, urban Black youth in Oakland, CA, were ready for radical change. For them, the BPP was the vehicle. While the flame of revolution the Panthers ignited engendered national and international support, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover sought to snuff the group out labeling it, “The greatest Internal threat to the nation.” Raids and killings by police, mass arrests, infiltration, repression, exile and expensive trials followed. Former leader Ericka Huggins acknowledges, “We were making history and it wasn’t nice and clean; it wasn’t easy. ” The film offers candid accounts by lesser known rank-and-file members—many of them women—who did the Black Panthers’ daily work. Packed with anecdotes and new revelations, the documentary captures the excitement of a time filled with idealism, internationalism and impatience. Beyond explicating the party’s compelling political program, archival footage also reveals the members’ swaggering image, seductive style and sex appeal. With police brutality, the militarization of police departments and government surveillance,once again at the forefront of the American conversation, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is not just timely, but profoundly resonant. —Cornelius Moore