Former Black Panther Party Chief of Staff David Hilliard and award-winning filmmaker Dante James discuss their forthcoming film on the Black Panther Party and Huey Newton.
December 1, 2015 By The Real News Network
Transcript
Huey P. Newton and the Untold Story of the Black Panther Party
JARED BALL, PRODUCER, TRNN: What's up world, and welcome to another edition of I Mix What I Like here at the Real News Network. I'm Jared Ball here in Baltimore.
Happily we have a chance to catch up with two very important people currently working together on a project about an equally important person, organization, and wildly important set of ideas. Joining us from the Bay is the former chief of staff of the Black Panther Party, author and educator David Hilliard. And from Ohio is an Emmy Award-winning independent filmmaker, Dante James. The two have come together to complete their forthcoming film about Dr. Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party, and we want to welcome them to the Real News Network now to talk about that film. Dante and David, thank you very much for joining us, and welcome to the Real News Network and I Mix What I Like.
DANTE JAMES: Thank you for the opportunity to be here.
DAVID HILLIARD: Good morning.
BALL: David Hilliard, if we could, let's start with you. As I saw you talking a little bit about in the promo for this forthcoming film, you made the point that the popularity of the Panthers among the people and in political and cultural histories is still so strong that there is already a great body of work in existence about the Black Panther Party. But what is it about your film in particular that seeks to address something new that is absent in that conversation, in that expansive conversation internationally about the party? Why this film, and this particular project that you're involved in now?
HILLIARD: Well, primarily because it's my story, that has not been told. And it will involve other people, who are generally not a part of the popularity media, people who have never actually spoken before about their participation in the party, like my brother, Roosevelt [June] Hilliard, who was the assistant chief of staff. His wife, Frances Carter Hilliard, whose sister died from circumstances while being in prison back in Connecticut with Bobby Seale and all of the kidnapping trials. So everything that's coming here will enlighten the public about not only the repression against our Black Panther Party, but the methodology and the way that we were able to survive long enough to tell this story to your contemporary generation.
BALL: Is there something in this film that extends from or expands upon what you wrote about in your book, This Side of Glory?
HILLIARD: Well, the world is still happening. Things go on. So there are certainly new information, new information that [engenders] for me, in the creation of the Huey Newton Foundation, by depositing the most extensive archive in existence at Stanford University. So there's a lot of new information that people don't know about the Black Panther Party, and there's people that have never spoken before publicly, like my sister-in-law, whose sister died from the repression of being in prison in Newhaven, Connecticut during the trials with Bobby Seale, and people doing that kidnapping.
So there's a whole lot of information that has not been introduced to the public on the history and founding of our Black Panther Party. Many in my story, unless you read books.
BALL: Dante James, you as a filmmaker, someone with a great amount of expertise in creating films about the black experience and beyond in this country, tell us from your perspective why is this story so important and this particular project so important, again, given the amount of documentaries and films about the Black Panther Party, or even about the amount--in terms of the amount of films that have been made about the black experience in this country.
JAMES: One of the things, one of the many things that excites me about this project is the opportunity to tell the story of the Black Panther Party from inside the party. Too often our, our being the movement and stories of black people have been defined by outside sources and forces. And in working with David and working with the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, this is an opportunity for the Black Panther Party to define itself and tell its own story.
And the other thing that makes it so intriguing is the fact that we had the materials to do so in addition to the founding members, and people who were on the central committee, we have every issue of the Black Panther Party newspaper. We have nine hours of footage that has never been seen. We have audio recordings of meetings with Huey when he was incarcerated. We have boxes and boxes of photographs. So we have the materials to tell this story from the inside out, and to have the surviving members, help the surviving members, have an opportunity to define themselves and their movement.
And this is really, really important, because we're doing this independently. This is a story that is too powerful and too meaningful, and a story that resonates today, to be told within the confines of corporate controlled media.
BALL: Now, David Hilliard, I know that as I understand it at least, one of the important points that you all are going to address in this documentary are the ideas of Huey P. Newton. A lot is said about Huey, a lot of reference is made to Huey. But from my limited vantage point it seems what is missing in conversations or documentation about Huey Newton, or films made about Huey Newton, or the [Black] Panther Party, are his ideas. The ideas that he worked with, we don't hear a lot discussed about intercommunalism. We don't hear a lot about his, his deployment of Marxist dialectics, or his ideas about party formation. His philosophy of struggle. A lot of that seems to be missing. Is that something that you all seek to address in this particular documentary?
HILLIARD: Well, the way that we tell the Black Panther Party story from our point of view, meaning the members, the people who were founders of the party, is we make certain that people understand that Huey Newton was our lightning rod, and he was the voice and the visionary of our movement. Bobby Seale and Huey Newton were the two founders. Huey was certainly the ideologue and the intelligentsia for structuring our party, and its programs and ideas and concepts. His name is Huey P. Newton, Ph.D., and that was the leader of our movement.
BALL: Dante, any comments about--in response to the question I just raised about the ideas surrounding Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party, that again seem to be brought up often enough absent those, specific reference to those ideas?
JAMES: Well, I think that that also connects to this whole concept of who's telling the story and what lens are we looking at the Black Panther Party through. And again, it's corporate control media. And their efforts to besmirch the memory of Huey and the Black Panther Party, and frame them in a negative context. That's one of the reasons why it's so important for us to have the opportunity to tell the story from the inside out, and to tell it independently, and clearly that is going to, by doing it that way, we address the structure, the philosophy, and the evolution of the Black Panther Party. Because it changed, it evolved. But the bottom line was always in service of the people and the community.
BALL: So am I hearing you both correctly, that the documentary is--maybe I misunderstood, is less about Huey himself and is more about the Panther Party more broadly, obviously with Huey Newton playing an integral role in the development of that party? What else can we, can we get any other kind of preview into the ideas or the, or the approaches or the content of the film? Dante, I believe you told me that there's going to be a particular focus on George Jackson, which of course to some of us, sounds wonderful. But is there--did I misunderstand anything about the direction of the film? Is there something you all could clear up for us here in the last few minutes that we have?
JAMES: No, in terms of George Jackson, based on what I read and my conversations with David, clearly the relationship that George Jackson had with the Black Panther Party is central to the story. I mean, Huey appointed George Jackson field marshal of the Black Panther Party because of his respect and the organizing that he did when he was incarcerated. But I think that in terms of, in terms of your question, in terms of the arc of the film, the narrative arc of the film is going to be the story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton, which are in many cases are synonymous.
But that narrative arc can take us many places, you know. David's involvement as chief of staff and actual leader of the Black Panther Party while both Huey and Bobby Seale were incarcerated is central to the party. The Fred Hampton story in Chicago is essential to the story. But even--but also, things that people aren't aware of are the local chapters, and how the local chapters were established. The political education courses that people had to go through in terms of this philosophy and learning what the Black Panther Party was really all about, the vision of the Black Panther Party, and Huey P. Newton was the visionary.
HILLIARD: So the story is a story that has not been told, and it's a story about these young people from the South who came to California and created one of the most impactful movements in the history of black struggle since slavery.
BALL: All right. Well, David Hilliard and Dante James, thank you very much for joining us here at the Real News Network and for this segment of I Mix What I Like, and we will encourage people to check out your IndieGoGo campaign and help this independent film get made. But thank you both for joining us.
JAMES: Thank you.
HILLIARD: All right, thank you. Bye.
BALL: And thank you for joining us here at the Real News Network and again, for this segment of I Mix What I Like. And as always, I'm Jared Ball here in Baltimore saying for all involved, as Fred Hampton used to say, to you we say peace if you're willing to fight for it. So peace, everybody, and we'll catch you in the whirlwind.
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