Start­ing with a pre­mière at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val, Stan­ley Nel­son, Lau­rens Grant, Aljer­non Tun­sil, and Fire­light Media’s made-for-PBS doc­u­men­tary on the his­to­ry of the Black Pan­ther Par­ty has been tour­ing the coun­try. The fea­ture length film — named, not with­out a touch of irony, The Black Pan­thers, Van­guard of the Rev­o­lu­tion—has attract­ed large audi­ences, much acclaim, and some crit­i­cism, most notably from for­mer Black Pan­ther leader Elaine Brown, who called it ​“a two-dimen­sion­al pal­lia­tive for white peo­ple and Negroes who are com­fort­able in America’s oppres­sive sta­tus quo.”

The Panthers courageously made people's history.

Nel­son, Grant and Tun­sil are African-Amer­i­can doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers of note, hav­ing to their col­lec­tive cred­it doc­u­men­taries on Emmet Till, Free­dom Sum­mer, Jesse Owens and the Free­dom Rid­ers. In his director’s state­ment, Nel­son describes his mis­sion in mak­ing the film:

Sev­en years ago, I set out to tell the sto­ry of the rise and fall of the Black Pan­ther Par­ty, a lit­tle known his­to­ry that hadn’t been told in its entire­ty. In par­tic­u­lar, I want­ed to offer a unique and engag­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to exam­ine a very com­plex moment in time that chal­lenges the cold, over­sim­pli­fied nar­ra­tive of a Pan­ther who is prone to vio­lence and con­sumed with anger. Thor­ough­ly exam­in­ing the his­to­ry of the Black Pan­ther Par­ty allowed me to sift through the frag­ment­ed per­cep­tions and find the core dri­ver of the move­ment: the Black Pan­ther Par­ty emerged out of a love for their peo­ple and a devo­tion to empow­er­ing them. This pow­er­ful dis­play of the human spir­it, root­ed in heart, is what com­pelled me to com­mu­ni­cate this sto­ry accurately.

Sev­er­al pow­er­ful doc­u­men­taries paved the way for Firelight’s film. In 1969, rad­i­cal film­mak­ers Mike Gray and Howard Alk made a black-and-white 16 mil­lime­ter film called Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion II, which chron­i­cled the Chica­go Black Pan­ther Party’s efforts in forg­ing a Rain­bow Coali­tion among white, Puer­to Rican and African-Amer­i­can organizations.

Dur­ing their film­ing, Gray and Alk were inspired by a 21-year-old mes­sian­ic Black Pan­ther Par­ty leader, Chair­man Fred Hamp­ton, and set out mak­ing a sequel to Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion II. They shot some remark­able footage of Hamp­ton and the Chica­go Pan­thers, but before they had fin­ished the film, Hamp­ton was mur­dered in his bed, the vic­tim of a con­spir­a­cy hatched as part of the FBI’s then-secret COIN­TEL­PRO pro­gram and exe­cut­ed by the Chica­go police and the State’s Attor­ney of Cook Coun­ty, Edward V. Hanrahan.

Sum­moned to the apart­ment to film the mur­der scene, Gray and Alk then trans­formed their film into The Mur­der of Fred Hamp­ton, which pow­er­ful­ly proved Hanrahan’s claim that the Pan­thers shot it out with the police to be a bold-faced lie, and that the raid was in fact a pre-planned police mur­der. The movie pre­miered at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, but was not wide­ly viewed in this coun­try. It was, how­ev­er, seen in New York City by a young man named Stan­ley Nelson.

In 1987, African-Amer­i­can film pro­duc­er Hen­ry Hampton’s series Eyes on the Prize aired on PBS. The six-part series doc­u­ment­ed the ear­ly civ­il rights strug­gle, and three years lat­er, PBS aired Eyes on the Prize II. This eight-part sequel chron­i­cled the evo­lu­tion of the civ­il rights strug­gle dur­ing the last half of the 1960s and through the 1970s as it moved north, became rad­i­cal­ized while also enter­ing the realm of elec­toral politics.

One episode, enti­tled ​“Pow­er” and nar­rat­ed by Julian Bond, described the rise of the Black Pan­ther Par­ty in Oak­land Cal­i­for­nia and fea­tured inter­views with for­mer nation­al BPP lead­ers Huey P. New­ton and Bob­by Seale. A few weeks lat­er, Hen­ry Hamp­ton, his direc­tor, Ter­ry Rock­e­feller, and their film com­pa­ny, Black­side, pre­sent­ed an episode called ​“A Nation of Laws?” In this episode, the film­mak­ers, armed with evi­dence unearthed by Fred Hampton’s lawyers over a decade of lit­i­ga­tion, and the inves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed by Sen­a­tor Frank Church’s Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, made out a com­pelling case that Fred Hamp­ton was a charis­mat­ic young leader of a dynam­ic rev­o­lu­tion­ary orga­ni­za­tion who was the vic­tim of a nation­wide FBI con­spir­a­cy to destroy the Black Pan­ther Par­ty, a con­spir­a­cy that was part and par­cel of FBI Direc­tor J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO.

This episode fea­tured the only known inter­view with FBI infor­mant-provo­ca­teur William O’Neal, who drew the floor­plan that the police used in their mur­der­ous raid, and who received a $300 bonus for his inte­gral role in the con­spir­a­cy. ​“A Nation of Laws?” also made an ear­ly link between police repres­sion and the issue of mass incar­cer­a­tion through Angela Y. Davis, who pro­vid­ed a bridge from the Hamp­ton assas­si­na­tion to the sec­ond half of the episode which doc­u­ment­ed the 1971 Atti­ca prison rebel­lion and its bloody sup­pres­sion, on orders from Gov­er­nor Nel­son Rock­e­feller, by the New York State Police.

Near­ly two decades passed before anoth­er doc­u­men­tary treat­ed the BPP, Fred Hamp­ton and the FBI’s pro­gram to destroy the Par­ty. This time it was BET, odd­ly enough, in its series called Amer­i­can Gang­ster. In an hour-long episode that aired in 2008, BET crowned J. Edgar Hoover as an all-pow­er­ful law enforce­ment gang­ster and traced his decades-long war against all man­ner of black orga­ni­za­tions and lead­ers. Hon­ing in on COIN­TEL­PRO and its attempt to destroy Mar­tin Luther King, the show con­demned Hoover and the FBI as vir­u­lent racists who, after King’s assas­si­na­tion, joined hands with the new­ly elect­ed Richard Nixon to con­tin­ue its war on the black lib­er­a­tion move­ment, cloaked as a war on crime. The show cli­maxed by doc­u­ment­ing in detail how the mur­der of Fred Hamp­ton was COINTELRPO’s racist end game in the FBI’s plot to destroy the Black Pan­ther Party.

So it was with this his­tor­i­cal back­drop that Nel­son and Grant set out to recount the short but com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry of the Black Pan­ther Par­ty, start­ing in Cal­i­for­nia in 1966 with the Party’s found­ing and its burst­ing on the nation­al scene with its dra­mat­ic march into the Cal­i­for­nia state leg­is­la­ture, legal­ly hold­ing guns while Gov­er­nor Ronald Rea­gan was hold­ing a press con­fer­ence on the Capitol’s steps. Using remark­able black-and-white archival footage, the cur­rent voic­es of more than twen­ty for­mer Pan­thers, a for­mer FBI agent, sev­er­al retired police offi­cers, a num­ber of Pan­ther lawyers and com­mu­ni­ty activists, and a col­lec­tion of his­to­ri­ans (rather than a nar­ra­tor), and accom­pa­nied by some soul stir­ring peri­od music , the fast-paced movie opens with the Chi-Lites belt­ing out ​“Give More Pow­er to the Peo­ple” and takes the view­er through the police slay­ing of lit­tle Bob­by Hut­ton, Huey Newton’s shootout with the Oak­land police and the world-wide move­ment to ​“Free Huey.”

It shines a light on the many BPP com­mu­ni­ty pro­grams, from serv­ing break­fast to thou­sands of chil­dren to pub­lish­ing a week­ly paper best known for its dis­sem­i­na­tion of the BPP’s 10-Point pro­gram and the art of Emory Dou­glas, which most often dis­played his almost lim­it­less capac­i­ty to depict police as all man­ner of pigs. It also shows the vital impor­tance that young women played in the day-to-day oper­a­tions of the Par­ty — sev­er­al of the Party’s female lead­ers, most notably Eri­ca Hug­gins, Kath­leen Cleaver, Elaine Brown and Phyl­lis Jack­son have impor­tant roles in nar­rat­ing the Party’s history.

Van­guard of the Rev­o­lu­tion also takes a seri­ous look at the devel­op­ing divi­sion with­in the par­ty between the impris­oned New­ton and Eldridge Cleaver, who had risen to promi­nence in Newton’s absence and had lat­er fled to Alge­ria and opened up an inter­na­tion­al sec­tion of the Par­ty. The film also shows how the FBI took glee in attempt­ing to foment and fur­ther exac­er­bate that con­flict and oth­er polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences that arose between the Pan­thers and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions. But the heart of the film is the recount­ing of a num­ber of events that reflect the government’s unremit­ting repres­sion of the Par­ty and how the Par­ty attempt­ed to resist, yet ulti­mate­ly suc­cumbed, to this onslaught.

One such method was the arrest and pros­e­cu­tion of Pan­ther lead­er­ship. Beyond the arrest and pros­e­cu­tion of Huey New­ton, the film also deals at length with the jail­ing of the New York Pan­ther lead­er­ship, in a case that became known as the Pan­ther 21. Through the voice on Jamal Joseph, who, at the age of 16 was round­ed up as one of the 21, and one of his lawyers, the view­er is famil­iar­ized with their trumped-up and polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed arrest, pros­e­cu­tion and, in one of the few joy­ous moments in the film, their acquit­tal and vic­to­ry cel­e­bra­tion. The film also doc­u­ments the tar­get­ing of Bob­by Seale as one of the alleged co-con­spir­a­tors in the noto­ri­ous Con­spir­a­cy 8 tri­al in Chica­go in 1969, and his being vicious­ly bound and gagged by Judge Julius Hoff­man when Seale attempt­ed to rep­re­sent himself.

The sec­ond form of repres­sion, which we now know was coor­di­nat­ed and orches­trat­ed nation­al­ly by the FBI, was police vio­lence — most com­mon­ly in the form of raids on Pan­ther offices and homes that lead to injury, death and the mass arrests of Pan­thers who defend­ed them­selves against police. Most infa­mous of these attacks was the police assas­si­na­tion of Fred Hamp­ton and Mark Clark on Decem­ber 4, 1969. While Van­guard of the Rev­o­lu­tion does not plow ground not cov­ered in pri­or films, it does accu­rate­ly por­tray Hamp­ton as the remark­able young leader that he was, show­ing numer­ous clips from The Mur­der of Fred Hamp­ton, begin­ning with Hampton’s stir­ring speech at the Fed­er­al Cour­t­house (after Seale was gagged and jailed) in which he pro­claimed that ​“you can jail a rev­o­lu­tion­ary, but you can’t jail a revolution.”

The film also gives appro­pri­ate promi­nence to Hampton’s assas­si­na­tion in the his­to­ry of the Black Pan­ther Par­ty. Using much of Mike Gray’s footage, as well as por­tions of infor­mant O’Neal’s inter­view from Eyes on the Prize II, this seg­ment also relies on the voic­es, then and now, of raid sur­vivor Akua Njeri (Deb­o­rah John­son), sev­er­al for­mer Chica­go Pan­thers, two of Hampton’s lawyers and an African-Amer­i­can police offi­cer to retell the chill­ing tale. Notably absent is the voice of long­time U.S. Con­gress­man Bob­by Rush, who was the very promi­nent Min­is­ter of Defense of the Chica­go Chap­ter who mirac­u­lous­ly avoid­ed a fate sim­i­lar to Hampton’s on Decem­ber 4. But Mike Gray is an impor­tant voice in the re-telling and gives a unique per­spec­tive as a film­mak­er who chron­i­cled the events in real time.

Book­end­ed with the Hamp­ton assas­si­na­tion in the film is the police raid on the Los Ange­les Black Pan­ther offices only four days lat­er. Unlike the pre-dawn raid on Hampton’s apart­ment, this raid was met with armed Pan­ther resis­tance. Through the eyes of three of the men who were present — Wayne Pharr, Roland Free­man and Gil Park­er — we expe­ri­ence first­hand the gun bat­tle that took place for many hours and the Pan­thers’ ulti­mate sur­ren­der. In one of the film’s most pow­er­ful moments, when Pharr, who has since died, was asked how he felt as he fired back at the police, he respond­ed, ​“I felt free, I felt absolute­ly free.”

As the film heads to its con­clu­sion, we see the results of the repres­sion on the Pan­thers and the divi­sions with­in the Par­ty as the Oak­land Chap­ter turns to elec­toral pol­i­tics and Bob­by Seale runs for May­or of Oak­land. What we do not see is the emer­gence of an under­ground iter­a­tion of the Pan­thers known as the Black Lib­er­a­tion Army, which ded­i­cat­ed itself to armed actions and armed strug­gle and which engaged in some high-pro­file con­fronta­tions with police that left sev­er­al police offi­cers dead and numer­ous BLA mem­bers, includ­ing Assa­ta Shakur and Sun­di­a­ta Acoli, charged with cap­i­tal crimes.

The film is not a com­plete his­to­ry. The nar­ra­tion favors Kath­leen Cleaver and her view of the his­to­ry over that of Elaine Brown; George Jackson’s role in the Party’s evolv­ing ide­ol­o­gy is omit­ted, as is Angela Davis, Geron­i­mo Pratt and the BLA; and Bob­by Seale has with­held his very impor­tant cur­rent voice from the film. It could also be said that it gloss­es over the very real issue of male chau­vin­ism in the Par­ty, although Elaine Brown does briefly acknowl­edge that it was a prob­lem. The doc­u­men­tary con­cludes on a down note, depict­ing Huey in his post-prison years as a vio­lent, dope-addled, under­world king­pin — one for­mer Pan­ther called him a ​“fuck­ing mani­ac” — while not­ing that Eldridge Cleaver went on to be a born-again Chris­t­ian and polit­i­cal sup­port­er of Ronald Reagan.

With Gil Scott Heron’s mourn­ful ​“Win­ter in Amer­i­ca” as the back­drop, those blows are soft­ened some­what by the film’s final act: the sep­a­rate read­ing of each of the points in the Panther’s 10 Point Pro­gram by sev­er­al of those for­mer Pan­thers whose voic­es have become famil­iar dur­ing the movie, and by Jamal Joseph’s procla­ma­tion that, for all its youth­ful mis­takes and over-exu­ber­ance, the Black Pan­ther Par­ty was moti­vat­ed, at bot­tom, by an ​“undy­ing love for the people.”

As one of the lawyers who fought to trans­form the nar­ra­tive about the Black Pan­ther Par­ty and the assas­si­na­tion of Fred Hamp­ton both through court­room lit­i­ga­tion and by work­ing with var­i­ous com­mit­ted film­mak­ers over the years — includ­ing those at Black­side and Fire­light — these omis­sions and crit­i­cisms, in my view, pale in com­par­i­son to what Fire­light has suc­ceed­ed in telling, pri­mar­i­ly through the voic­es of those now-grey­ing Black Pan­thers who lived through it. In their youth, these and many more Pan­thers coura­geous­ly made people’s his­to­ry. That his­to­ry is some­what imper­fect­ly, but most pow­er­ful­ly, nar­rat­ed in this film, and the lessons to those engaged in today’s strug­gles against racism and for jus­tice are there for all to see. Can we ask for more from a doc­u­men­tary filmmaker?