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“font-family: Verdana;”>When the dust was wiped from canisters of film lying in an obscure, defunct Swedish television station, how could anyone expect to find an objective and appreciative account of the Black Power Movement in the United States?
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“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>Director Goran Olsson wove together footage shot by Swedish journalists and used the scenes, interviews and first-hand commentaries as a backdrop for perspectives from past and present generations in The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975. Danny Glover serves as one of the film’s producers.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>When crews of Swedes first traveled to the U.S. to capture the African-American experience, a shift in the paradigm of the movement for equality was underway. By 1967, marches had given way to militancy. “We Shall Overcome,” had given way to “Burn Baby Burn” and “Pick Up the Gun.”
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“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>As the film begins, Stokely Carmichael, one of the founding fathers of the Black Power Movement, is explaining his perceived futility in the nonviolent acts of the Civil Rights Movement – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s approach.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>Commentary from contemporary voices – including rapper Talib Kweli and John Forte, singer Erykah Badu and musician Questlove – are stirred in alongside Harry Belafonte, Sonia Sanchez, Melvin Van Peebles and Black Power figures Bobby Seale, Kathleen Cleaver and Angela Davis.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>“America killed Dr. King last night,” Carmichael says at a press conference. “And in doing, so she declared war on us.”
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“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>The assassination of Robert Kennedy, the trials of Angela Davis and Huey Newton and the Attica Prison uprising were shown to Swedish citizens. And as they exposed America’s ugly secrets, Sweden was blasted as being “anti-American,” which was also dissected by the journalists.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>But as the film covers the life cycle of the Black Power Movement, the decline is just as thought-provoking as the inspiration, encouragement and motivation that is stirred up during the peak of the movement.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>By 1973, Black Power had been upstaged by black poverty. Long before the nation’s war on drugs was waged, drug casualties riddled the urban landscape.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>The same crew that casually strolled the streets of Harlem to gain insight on the black experience was too afraid to leave their tour bus because of crime. Vietnam veterans came home as heroin addicts. Overdoses inundated the morgues of New York, and drug-addicted babies filled the nurseries.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>Davis “font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>said she believed that the heroin was pumped into black soldiers and neighborhoods as a defense tactic to keep Black Power at bay – a strategic move in a conspiracy to dilute and sedate the entire movement.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>Lewis H. Michaux, owner of the legendary African National Memorial bookstore, voiced what he believed was the biggest problem in the movement and the community.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>“A few young men came in here with their fists up saying ‘Black Power,” Michaux said as he sat in the store in 1973. “I told them, ‘Black is beautiful, but black ain’t power. Knowledge is power. And if you don’t know, you can’t grow.’”
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“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>Mischaux’s bookstore, which housed more than 200,000 texts by Africans and African Americans, would close down the next year.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>By the time their filming wrapped in 1975, the struggles of the movement to lead blacks into liberation had dissipated into a fight for survival in the ghetto.
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“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>Badu said, “You come to a point where the pain to change outweighs the pain to stay the same.”
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“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975 opens at the Tivoli Theatre (6350 Delmar) tomorrow (Oct. 28). The film is not rated, with a running time of 100 minutes.
