Notebook on Black History Month 2012 (part 4): The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

After opening in U.S. theatres September 9, 2011, and closing November 6, 2011, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 managed a total domestic gross of only$268,813 before making its debut on Public Broadcast Stations (PBS) over the February 10-12, 2012, Black History Month weekend.

Although the documentary film made its PBS debut as stated, it did so in the state of Georgia initially on channels accessible only to those who subscribe to high definition cable services. It later aired on more accessible channels at 1 a.m., 3 a.m., and 6 a.m. respectively. Consequently, many who may have wanted to see it did not and those still wishing to see the film would do well to check local broadcast schedules before its final PBS showing on February 29, or, invest in the DVD.

That a film such as The Help has grossed almost $170 million during its theatre run, and is nominated for this year’s Academy Award for Best Motion Picture (broadcasting February 26) while The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 has been all but ignored by mainstream commentators possibly says a great deal about the tendency for denial when it comes to dealing with the realities of race in America.

“Mixtape” is a very appropriate word to include in the title of Goran Hugo Olsson’s film because it includes a rich mixture of cultural voices. They speak across different dividing lines such as those of haves and have-nots, youth and maturity, black and white, national and global, and the past and the present. Each adds intensely to the film’s overall power to provide an expanded perspective on African Americans’ struggle for racial equality during the 1960s and 1970s.

The Most Inspiring Minds of Their Times

As Olsson pointed out in an interview at the 2011 London Film Festival, “This film is not about the Black Power Movement. It’s about how it was perceived in Sweden. .. So I’m telling the story of our image of this…” And yet the story of that image could only be told by delving into aspects of the Black Power Movement that until now had been grossly distorted. Most prime-time reports made terroristic villains out of principle figures of the movement now championed as exceptional leaders, or what Olsson refers to as “the most inspiring minds of their times.”

That The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 even exists is an inspiring miracle in its own right. The film is composed primarily of footage shot by Swedish journalists for the Swedish National Broadcast Company (SNBC). Olsson was not among those journalists but more recently undertook research for a completely different documentary on “the sound of Philadelphia” soul music when he came across the raw footage tucked like buried treasure within SNBC’S archives almost forty years ago. Realizing its significance, he committed himself to creating an outlet for its presentation to modern audiences; with the help of co-producer Danny Glover and others, he did precisely that. The result is a film remarkable not only for its reinterpretation of a key period in African-American/American history but for what it implies about political and social agendas unfolding in 2012.

A New Dance

The film is divided into nine “chapters,” one for each year covered from 1967-1975, that play out just over an hour and a half. It opens with a group of white Americans in Hallandale, Florida, near Miami, discussing the virtues of the American dream, and soon gives way to the sound of Michael Jackson gleefully piping “Rocking Robin.”

The scene then shifts to another part of the same small town, focusing first on a black Vietnam veteran, and then on a second black man. They both describe experiences closer to an American nightmare than a dream. The voice of Abiodun Oyewole of The Last Poets introduces the idea of African Americans as one of the U.S.’s most maligned people as well as one of its greatest resources:

“America,” he proclaims, “is always going to be okay as long as Black People don’t totally lose their minds because we’ll pick up the pieces and turn it into a new dance.”

A kind of “new dance” is what viewers then witness when human rights activist Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture) proposing when he expounds on what he views as the pitfalls of Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy of nonviolence. In Stockholm speaking before a group of Swedish reporters, Carmichael delivers one of his most stunning criticisms of Dr. King and his homeland:

“His [Dr. King’s] major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.”

Carmichael’s criticism, stinging though it was, overlooked the damaging economic impact of the boycotts waged in the name of nonviolence. Nevertheless, with Dr. King’s assassination the following year, some have considered his statement prophetic while others have countered that the dreamer may have been slain but the dream itself continues to evolve into a promising reality. In any event, Carmichael’s witty public rhetoric was often reported in the United States as a militant invitation to violence, marking a shift more in alignment with Malcolm X’s philosophy (and the U.S. Constitutional right) that self defense in the face of racial attacks against African Americans was a matter of common sense.

NEXT: Notebook on Black History Month 2012 Part 5 The Black Power Mixtape (continued)

by Aberjhani, National African American Art Examiner
author of The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois
and co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

More from the Notebook on Black History Month 2012