The Sixties: From 1969 to 2009
Essay by Cornelius Moore

This essay accompanies the program The Sixties: 1969-2009.

The candidacy and subsequent election of Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States is certainly an indicator of how much the country’s racial politics have progressed from a few decades ago. (On a personal note, as the child of black parents from the southern state of Virginia, the capitol of the Old Confederacy, I am still amazed by Obama’s victory. It was unimaginable just a short time ago.) The Obama campaign was also an opportunity for black media professionals and commentators to voice their perspectives and shed light on their lives to national audiences: something still distressingly uncommon. As I watched the historic inauguration, I was in the process of curating this documentary program, which examines events from forty years ago. That was when movements for social change, many inspired by the black freedom struggle, were reaching revolutionary heights even as they faced institutional intransigence and state repression. The national mainstream broadcast media was one of those lily white institutions, and when it did report on the social movements, the coverage was often distorted.

This created the need for media production to present viewpoints of the racial equality and anti-Vietnam War movements. Newsreel emerged in 1968 to fill this void. It was a network of local film groups in New York, San Francisco, Boston, and a few other places. It became the media arm of ‘The Movement’. Two of its first films focused on the fight for racial justice. Black Panther (originally entitled Off the Pig!) was made in collaboration with the Black Panther Party (BPP) and its young urban leadership. At one point, there were 200 film prints in active circulation across the country, generating awareness about and support for the group’s activities. San Francisco State: On Strike reports on the six-month student strike to win the country’s first ethnic studies department. Neither film pretended to be ‘objective’ but rather actively engaged with their subjects, made from the ‘inside’.  The films not only embraced their points of view but also adopted their confrontational style. They were also influenced by both the aesthetics of ‘underground’, or avant-garde film, and even Cuban noticieros (newsreels), most famously directed by Santiago Alvarez.

Black Panther and San Francisco State: On Strike are shorts (fourteen and twenty minutes respectively). These were unconventional lengths for theatrical exhibition or broadcast but, undoubtedly, these arenas were never seriously considered by the makers. In fact, they were mainly exhibited at meetings, college auditoriums, community centers, and church basements. They reached their intended audiences, energizing activism and solidarity. They are often rough, accompanied by simple musical soundtracks featuring percussion, songs, and chants, which seemed composed on the spot. Filmmaking was (and still can be) an expensive endeavour, so the films were made with free labour. But, ironically, they were funded by white middle and upper class individuals who dominated the very early Newsreel membership.

There were no foundation, art, public broadcasting, or government grants to fund these radical films. As a combination of government dirty tricks and infiltration fueled internal conflicts and led the BPP to implode by the 1970s, Black Panther is now largely viewed as an historical artifact, trotted out when programs on the 1960s are organized. However, San Francisco State: On Strike is sometimes used by ethnic studies departments to inform students about the program’s origins and why it is important to maintain.

Pairing Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968 with Black Panther and San Francisco State: On Strike allows viewers to consider how different times produce different types of media and how historical perspective influences the final product. Although all three films deal with the same time period, Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968 received funding from the public broadcast entities: the Independent Television Service (ITVS) and the National Black Programming Consortium, which were established in 1979 and 1991 respectively. The film runs a standard broadcast length of 57 minutes and will be shown on PBS in the fall 2009 and distributed to colleges, high schools, and community organizations by California Newsreel. It is clearly sympathetic to the students. As well, one of the producers/directors, Judy Richardson, was on the staff of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the late 1960s with connections to some of the Movement veterans. But it is also driven by journalistic investigation rather than propaganda. The film allows participants to tell their stories, but rather than rest in the past it encourages the viewers to ask:

1. What kind of climate allowed the killings to happen?


2. Why are we ignorant about the incidents? 


3. How has historical perspective influenced how we view these events today?


4. How does the film contribute to rectifying past wrongs as well as provide some healing for the community?

To these ends, Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968 was recently screened on the 21st anniversary of the police killings at the site of the assault, South Carolina State University. The enthusiastic audience was 700 strong and included people of different generations and races. An illustration of the transformative power of film in these changing times occurred at the screening. The mayor of Orangeburg, South Carolina, a conservative figure, used the occasion to apologize for the first time for the city’s role in violently attacking protestors.

Curator Biography

Cornelius Moore is the Co-Director of the 41 year-old San Francisco-based distributor and production company, California Newsreel. His work focuses on the acquisition, promotion, and programming of films on African American life and history as well as films from and about Africa.