The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution movie review (2015)

Far more intimidating was the day-to-day existence of Blacks throughout the U.S. “Being Black in America meant that you didn’t walk down the street with the same sense of safety, and the same sense of privilege, as a White person,” says Jamal Joseph, another Panther interviewed here. This lack of safety and agency did not go away when the Panthers came on the scene. Instead, their show of power was seen as an enormous threat to the American way of life, a threat that caught the attention of J. Edgar Hoover. The former head of the F.B.I. became even more fearful once the Panthers acquired charismatic characters like Eldridge Cleaver and Fred Hampton, both of whom could work a crowd as well as Malcolm X and Dr. King.

Hoover is as big a character in this tale as Newton, Seale, Cleaver and Hampton. Nelson zeroes in on Hoover’s memos and his language, drawing a parallel between the Black Panther Party and Black Lives Matter with no extra effort. The similarities are striking. Hoover’s FBI was going after a group whose origins were in protesting against police brutality. He called the Panthers a racist terrorist group that wanted to destroy America, and a certain faction of the media promoted this message by playing up a manufactured scariness factor. The Panthers interrupted a press conference held by Governor Ronald Reagan, proving they can also play the media game to get politicians to listen. Hampton was illegally gunned down by the cops, leading to a successful civil lawsuit against the Chicago police department.

And in memos, Hoover was constantly fearful of a “Black messiah” who will bend the ear of non-Blacks and turn them toward the Black cause. That last one took me by surprise, but there’s a sly, subversive reason Nelson puts it out there. Remember the GOP’s favorite term for Obama during the 2008 election cycle? It was “the Messiah.”

Though it masterfully highlights the similarities between the “radical” organizations of yesteryear and today, “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” makes an even better cautionary tale for today’s movement. After all, these institutions are run by people who are subject to the best and worst of human emotions, people who aren’t always right in their decision-making. This film shows how the Black Panther Party fractured between its two leaders Newton and Cleaver, and is unflinching in depicting what went wrong and how the FBI exploited it using informants and counterintelligence. “We thought the FBI wanted to kill us,” says Kathleen Cleaver. “I don’t think we understood how insidious their plan actually was.” The damaging elements of human nature turned out to be J. Edgar Hoover’s biggest ally. After a certain point, he just sat back and let the dissention he planted play out on its own.