The Black Panthers Movie’s Luster and Tarnish
A new movie on The Black Panther Party for Self Defense, The Black Panthers,
has planned showings in 31 cities nationwide this summer and fall, after playing at
34 film festivals previously. The film does a good job at showing the positive
community organizing done by the radical leftist group in the 1960s. The film also
presents many great interviews and much good archival footage. The film only
strays into negative historical revisionism in offering an overly negative
presentation regarding two of the top three national Black Panther leaders.
“Vanguards of the Revolution”
Baltimore’s Morgan State University Professor Stanley Nelson listed the
subtitle of his movie as, “Vanguards of the Revolution,” harking back to the language
used at that time. These words could be taken as either the overly optimistic voice of
some radical activists, or the propaganda used by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) whom Nelson quotes in the film. The Black Panthers quotes J.
Edgar Hoover’s famous line about The Black Panthers being the number one threat
to national security (A movie theater’s staff thought their safety was threatened
during a Saturday Baltimore screening when someone tweeted they would shoot
people, and the staff all left the theater, canceling the two remaining shows where
Nelson planned to speak).
The Black Panthers begins by showing how the organization started as a civil
rights political party opposing police brutality and setting up many “survival
programs.” These programs included free breakfast for poor children, free medical
clinics, and housing organizing groups. It also included political education programs,
particularly through its national newspaper. The film rightfully displays how their
great community organizing made them role models for other radical ethnic groups.
A better film on The Black Panthers, former Panther Lee Lew Lee’s All Power to the
People!, explicitly says how groups such as the Puerto Rican, Young Lords, the
American Indian Movement and the Asian, Yellow Peril, all learned from and
modeled themselves after The Panthers.
The film also shows at least several great speeches by some Black Panther
leaders. It includes particularly good speeches by 20 year-old Chicago Panther
leader Fred Hampton as well as snippets of speeches by national Panther cofounder,
Bobby Seale. Hampton speaks his famous lines, “You can kill a revolutionary, but
you can’t kill the revolution.” Stanly Nelson presents National Black Panther
Secretary of Communications Kathleen Cleaver a few times, and includes short but
good interviews of her.
The movie then begins to detail the attacks on The Black Panthers, starting
with the police shootout with Huey Newton. It’s at this point in the movie that
Nelson appears to leave out some context for why Newton was stopped by police,
where he and a police officer were both shot. Nelson failed to mention what has
been noted in at least several books about the Panthers, which is that the police
officers had a list of Black Panther license plates on them that they arguably
intended to target.
Highlighting the FBI’s War on the Panthers
The Black Panthers does do a relatively good job of showing several other key
instances of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program targeting of the Panthers. It
presents good details on the targeting of the New York Black Panther leadership,
which came to be known as the New York 21. It only leaves out some of the top
names, such as Lumumba Shakur, who headed New York’s largest chapter in
Harlem, as well as leaving out Afeni Shakur (Tupac’s mother) and not mentioning
Assata Shakur, nor Bronx Panther leaders Sekou Odinga and Zayd Shakur. Maybe
many names were omitted to cut down the length of the film or maybe the Ford
Foundation’s co-funding of the film led to such omissions.
Director Stanley Nelson mentions some of the FBI’s Counterintelligence
Program (Cointelpro) tactics, but fails to mention them with the splitting of Huey
Newton’s Oakland national Panther office and the New York chapter. For example,
top Panther historians Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall’s two books, Agents of
Repression and The COINTELPRO Papers, discusses the fake letters and undercover
agents that helped accomplish this split more specifically. The director does give
good details about the New York trial of the Panthers being the longest of its time
(over two years) and the jury’s acquittal of all the New York defendants in 2-3
hours.
Nelson also gives some specific details about the targeting of the Chicago
Black Panthers that included the tragic murder of Fred Hampton in his bed. It
further shows excellent footage of the FBI targeting of the Los Angeles Black
Panther office four days later. One Los Angeles Panther who fired back at a police
fuselage of bullets in the early morning attack made a very evocative statement. He
said that he’s “never felt so free as I did in the middle of that firefight.”
Again, omissions are far from a major issue when a film needs to be a
reasonable length, but they do bear pointing out. Nelson’s film fails to mention the
murders of the original LA Panther leaders, Jon Huggins and Alprentice “Bunchy”
Carter. It also fails to mention the false imprisonment of Los Angeles Panther leader
Geronimo Pratt a year or two after a sniper’s particular targeting of him during that
attack on his Panther office.
Incorrect Shaming of Top Panther Leaders?
A much more problematic aspect of Stanley Nelson’s The Black Panthers
comes in the way it portrays two of the top three national Black Panther leaders,
without the full context of their targeting. The film contradicts the accounts of welldocumented books on Eldridge Cleaver. It quotes people calling him “crazy” early
on, when he was made the Panthers national Minister of Information. It also doesn’t
relate the details of the 1968 police attempt to murder Cleaver.
After several negative comments about Cleaver, Nelson depicts Cleaver as
enlisting young Panther Bobby Hutton in joining him to attack police. This account
appears spliced together from interviews with Panthers and taken out of context.
Many books covering this incident, such as The COINTELPRO Papers, detailed how
the Oakland Police “Panther Squad” deliberately provoked this attack on Cleaver
and Hutton. Another book, Bitter Grain, stated that Cleaver and fellow Panthers put
the word out that Oakland activists shouldn’t riot as police would use it as an excuse
to kill Panther leaders. Interviews of former military snipers by historians such as
attorney William Pepper confirm this belief. Despite having one of the highest per
capita black populations, Oakland was one of the only major cities that didn’t riot
after King’s assassination. Police then used a made-up excuse to attack Cleaver and
Hutton. Nelson’s movie appears to blame Cleaver for Hutton’s murder at the hands
of police.
The Black Panthers rightfully discusses some Cointelpro tactics around the
time it discusses the split between Panther national cofounder, Huey Newton, and
Cleaver. Yet, it somehow does not describe exactly how these tactics were used in
this split, only seeming to blame Newton and Cleaver’s less rational impulsiveness.
This split also set Newton against the imprisoned New York Panther leadership, yet
the film appears to present the division as a natural disagreement, rather than
showing it within the context of Cointelpro tactics being used. Churchill and Vander
Wall’s books, along with the film, All Power to the People!, the feature presentation of
the first Black Panther Film Festival, detailed the U.S. intelligence-written letters and
undercover agents used to create these divisions.
Too Much Testimony from a Likely Undercover Agent?
These sources, The COINTELPRO Papers and Agents of Repression present
many Panther reports that one particular Oakland Panther, Elaine Brown, was
actually a U.S. intelligence undercover agent. All Power to the People! contains
copious details and statements from respected Black Panthers regarding Elaine
Brown’s history and work for U.S. Intelligence, as guided by her self-reported,
lifetime “mentor” Jay Richard Kennedy. David Garrow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book
on Martin Luther King, Bearing the Cross, details how Jay Kennedy was the CIA’s top
spy in the Civil Rights movement. MLK’s friend and historian, William Pepper, also
notes Jay Kennedy’s top spy work.
All Power to the People! shows Bobby Seale stating that many Panthers told
him of Brown’s spy work and influence over Huey Newton to expel other Panther
leaders and take apart the organization. Most importantly, when Elaine Brown
threatened to split the black vote within the Green Party that was looking to run
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney for president, McKinney backers Kathleen
Cleaver and Geronimo Pratt (changed to Geronimo Ji Jaga by this time) took action.
The two Panther leaders put out a letter from Geronimo detailing Elaine Brown’s
history of reported psychiatric hospitalization, infiltration of the Panthers, and
aiding of U.S. intelligence in the murders of LA Panther leaders Carter and Huggins.
Furthermore, Geronimo detailed how Newton told him that Elaine Brown
developed way too much influence over him by regularly bringing beautiful women
and cocaine to him just after Newton got out of jail in 1970. Newton eventually got
out from under her influence and found that Brown had played a part in helping
frame Geronimo Pratt on a murder charge.
Several decades later, after Geronimo and Cleaver sent this letter out to
activists, Elaine Brown sued them for slander and defamation of character. This
writer and many other activists sent Cleaver documents to back her and Geronimo’s
claims and the suit was dismissed.
Elaine Brown was one of many undercover agents used to manipulate Huey
Newton. Two other confirmed undercover agents surrounding Newton included
Richard Aoki and Earl Anthony. Anthony admitted his agent status in his book,
Spitting in the Wind. In All Power to the People! New Haven Panther George Edwards
quotes CIA whistleblower John Stockwell saying that from 1971 onwards the CIA
waged psychological warfare on Newton. Stanley Nelson did a huge disservice to
Newton’s legacy in only showing Newton’s negative actions, instead of the mass of
evidence backing up the psychological warfare being perpetrated on him. Nelson
then repeats the police-proposed myth that Newton died in a random drug deal.
Various writers, including Churchill and Vander Wall, have presented
eyewitness reports, along with police and FBI foul play around Newton’s murder,
that support how U.S. Intelligence assassinated Huey Newton in 1989. That decade,
Newton received his PhD, started a Panther school, was working to free Geronimo
Pratt, and had just contacted an active New York Black Panther about reconvening
the organization. Evidence supports that many Black Panther leaders experienced
lesser but similar psychological warfare for years to come.
Stanley Nelson’s film, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, brings
more awareness to many great aspects of this legendary, armed community
organizing group. While it also provides a balanced perspective on The Black
Panthers, it’s too bad that the overly negative portrayal of two top Panther leaders
might tarnish some of the movie’s positive messages in excluding more context of
U.S. intelligence’s influence.
John Potash is the author of, The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders, and
the newly released, Drugs as Weapons Against Us.