Related Link The Most Important Legacy of the Black Panthers (New Yorker)

Loud, black and proud, the polemic Black Panther Party roared into existence in 1966. Helmed by civil rights agitators Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the Panther pack was bred out of the activist hotbed of Oakland, California. Clad in distinctive leathers and black berets, the Panthers established a 10-point program, and were hell-bent on championing freedom, improving economic and educational opportunities for minorities and ceasing police brutality against African Americans.

Chapters soon began cropping up all across America, and the group garnered diverse support from the likes of the Rainbow Coalition, a convergence of the Young Lords, a left-leaning Puerto Rican organization and the Appalachian group Young Patriots. While not all supporters shared the same message, the Panthers had undeniably tapped into a very particular anxiety that wasn’t unique to African Americans. The Panthers embodied the fears of an entire society more attuned to silent paranoia than open dialogue, and forced questions of racially fueled violence to the surface.

Dozens of books have analyzed the Panthers’ history, but until Stanley Nelson’s revelatory new PBS-funded documentary, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, no one had attempted to consolidate so much about the group, including historical information, archival footage and interviews. The film is dense with information, and offers a gripping ride through the picket signs and calls for policy reform that defined the 1960s. The conservationist approach in turns makes a successful case for how the Panthers’ impact remains unparalleled, and continues to reverberate from political activism to pop culture today. “There would be no hip-hop without the Panthers, because they were the first to bring out the hip-hop attitudes,” Nelson tells Newsweek.