1/17/2024 0 Comments Huey p. newton shot![]() At that time, the FBI had infiltrated the organisation and fear of informants was widespread. For no good reason, Rackley, an illiterate young man, was suspected of being an informant. In May 1969, after her Panther husband, John Huggins, was killed in a shoot-out with black nationalists, Huggins moved with her baby daughter to New Haven, Connecticut, where she led the local chapter of the Black Panthers. What she doesn’t mention – and nor does the film – is the case of a 19-year-old Panther foot soldier called Alex Rackley. We hear Huggins speak about what initially galvanised her to join the Panthers, how she committed herself to the cause and how, with a heavy heart, she finally left, having been assaulted by an increasingly deranged Newton. Their story has been sidelined and it is to the documentary’s credit that it seeks to redress the marginalising of female voices. Although the image of the Panthers was potently male, more than half the members by the late 1960s were female. For example, the film features interviews with a charming and now grey-haired former Black Panther called Ericka Huggins. But that side of the story is either only referred to in passing or ignored altogether. But there is even less doubt that among their own senior ranks were pathological killers, ideological madmen and depraved opportunists. There is little doubt the Panthers were targeted in ways that were often viciously excessive, including what amounted to extrajudicial killings. The story it tells is of noble intentions undermined by the dark machinations of the US state, in the malign guise of the FBI and the omnipotent figure of its devious director, J Edgar Hoover. Yet it’s also unquestionably an idealised vision of the Panthers. Without making a direct correlation, the film shows that recent flashpoints have a long and tumultuous history. With protests taking place from Ferguson in Missouri to New York, we have been reminded that although there may be a black president in the White House, the plight of far too many African Americans is that of second-class citizens and victims of racist law enforcement. The past couple of years have seen a spate of incidents of police brutality towards African Americans, many of them captured on video. It’s a powerful film, full of dramatic footage and a pulsating soundtrack of funk and soul. This historic period is emotively captured in a new documentary, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, made by Stanley Nelson, a long-time chronicler of African American struggles. Huey Newton, centre, on his return from China, with Elaine Brown on the left. As Todd Gitlin, a leading member of the US counterculture, stated in his book, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage: “Nothing made the idea of revolution more vivid to the white left than the Black Panther party.” More generally, the Panthers were taken up by the counterculture as a kind of domestic version of the anti-imperialist struggle being waged in the Vietnam war. And the composer Leonard Bernstein held a celebrity-packed fundraising party at his New York home, complete with uniformed Panthers, which was famously satirised by Tom Wolfe who minted the phrase “radical chic” to describe the rich and famous toying with revolutionary causes. Hollywood stars flocked to get a glimpse of this excitingly dangerous new phenomenon. Jean Genet, the French writer and activist, became a committed supporter. ![]() Very soon, they were known throughout the world, inspiring black radicals and all-purpose revolutionaries in the UK, Europe, the West Indies and even Africa. It was a stunningly cool and defiant image and overnight the Black Panthers forced themselves to the front of black radical politics in America. They were dressed in black leather jackets with rollneck jumpers, berets, sunglasses and shotguns. But then, on, the Black Panthers showed up at the California state assembly in Sacramento carrying loaded weapons. ![]() For the most part, these patrols were limited to Oakland the rest of the US remained largely ignorant of the young revolutionaries. It was Newton’s idea to go out on armed patrol with other Black Panthers and bear witness to racist or provocative police action. There was a vacancy for a new black vanguard. Malcolm X had called on black Americans to combat oppression “by any means necessary”, but he was killed that same year. There had been riots in Watts in Los Angeles in 1965. Yet increasing numbers of young blacks, appalled by scenes of African Americans being brutally treated by well-armed white police, were frustrated by what they saw as the passivity of the civil rights movement. This was an era when black politics was inextricably bound up with the civil rights movement and the non-violent protests led by Martin Luther King. We wanted to give this film the spirit of this revolutionary fervour Director Stanley Nelson
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