Saturday, October 20, 2012

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975: Take Three



















Göran Olsson's The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011) contains so much material, I can barely tick off all that's shown or heard. In addition to MLK, we see Coretta Scott King (1927-2006). And the Black Power salute at the Olympic Games in Mexico City (1968). The Last Poets, inspired by Malcolm X and formed in 1968. Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, the Black Panther Party. Bobby Seale in Stockholm, saying "in the final analysis" -- a phrase nearly identical to today's "at the end of the day." Free food, free breakfast program hosted by the Black Panthers. J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO. Exile in Algiers, Algeria. Huey Netwon, From Russia With Love in the background. TV Guide taking issue with Swedish journalism. Emile de Antonio (1919-1989 -- director of In the Year of the Pig, 1968, and other influential films). The Attica Prison uprising (1971). Civil rights lawyer William Kunstler (1919-1995). Elaine Brown, Black Panther. Governor Ronald Reagan of California vs. Angela Davis (1972) and her aquittal; her earlier study wih Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979). Robin Kelley, Sonia Sanchez, John Forté, Erykah Badu, Louis Farrakhan, Harlem and Lewis H. Michaux (ca. 1884–1976).        

















The bonus "reels" are also well worth delving into in their own right. There's a heartbreaking section about Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005) and her bid for the presidency in 1972 -- ahead of her time, she was hopelessly outnumbered, defeated but unbowed. There's more with Stokely Carmichael. And there's a very interesting section on the 1974 trial of Joan Little in Raleigh, North Carolina -- charged with first degree murder for stabbing a rapist-prison guard with the ice pick he threatened to kill her with, immediately after he raped her. She was eventually found not guilty. 

Today's Rune: Harvest.   

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