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Panther, the Mario and Melvin Van Peebles film fictionalizing the early days of the Black Panther Party, begins with the familiar sounds of "We Shall Overcome," and the familiar voice of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.¹ Soon the images turn to documentary footage of the violent repression of civil rights marches and the voice of Malcolm X talking about the right to self-defense. The film switches from black-and-white to color, from documentary to fiction. We see a young black boy bicycling through a friendly community of fast-talking black people of familiar types— informal merchants, knowing elders, curvy and colorful women, corner boys, and a well-dressed preacher. The young bicyclist is hit by a car, and the varied community members gather around his bloody corpse to mourn. Reverend Slocum, we are told, is holding "another vigil," but a group of twenty-something black men proposes to their friends that they respond differently— that they put pressure on the police by following them. They propose that they respond to the tragedy "not by praying, but by watching." "You think City Hall really cares about a bunch of black people holding another prayer vigil at some God-damned church?" the character played by Chris Rock queries.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137548665_8

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