In our continuing discussion over police tactics used to control and often oppress minority communities throughout the nation, more than a few law enforcement and conservative voices have dragged out the wretched old canard of linking the former Black Panther Party to the Ku Klux Klan.

December 4, 1969 is the 46th anniversary of the assassination of Chicago Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and, four days later, of the shootout between the Los Angeles Black Panthers and the LAPD.

While watching Stanley Nelson's documentary, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, I was propelled back to my own remembered experience in these years - hearing Stokely Charmichael speak at my college campus, learning of Fred Hampton's murder by FBI and Chicago police while I was in the army.

Documentarian Stanley Nelson Jr. looks back on the life of the young Black Panther.

The killings of Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, and Freddie Gray, along with the militarization of municipal police forces, the rise of the prison-industrial complex, and the riots, are all symptoms of a much deeper malady.