An exclusive hour-long TV debate with America's best-known right-winger would normally present a God-given opportunity for a young black party leader to sell himself as a safe pair of hands.
But the Black Panthers' Huey Newton just throws away one opportunity after another. He makes it clear from the start that he rejects the ballot-box as false democracy, in favour of the Maoist system of government, after a visit to China, whose leaders obviously saw him coming. That may be why he keeps harping on 'the people' as his password of authority. (A few years later, this would cost him much credit when he endorsed Jim Jones and his 'Peoples Temple', that ended with such shocking carnage in Guyana.) It may also be why he seems to reject rational debate in favour of hectoring and sermonising, throwing in "Let me finish" far more often than would normally be allowed.
If you didn't listen out too carefully, you could feel that you were hearing something that sounded like logic and reason. Then you realize that it is just a whole lot of phrases taken from political textbooks and thrown together at random. Presently the programme-host William F. Buckley tries to get the debate back on the rails:
"Why don't we get a little more concrete, if you don't mind..."
"I like to argue theory with you, more than factual things..."
Buckley has clearly been far too lenient with Newton, who bestows his approval in rather a patronising way: "You've proved yourself to be the gentleman that people say you are" - which might just be half the trouble. But the most revealing test comes right at the end, when Newton starts to raise his fists angrily at an audience-member who has asked a perfectly reasonable question, and Buckley has to terminate the programme suddenly as the only way of silencing him.
Among other things, it made me wonder what was in that cigarette that seldom left Newton's hand.