Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

The year 1969 was one of those touchstone periods in United States history. As the ’60s came to a close, the worlds of American science, politics, and music, to name just a few, would never be the same. The decade produced a marine coast of watershed moments. For people of color, though, many were unforgettable tragedies. The most powerful advocates and heroes of the disenfranchised — along with their hope — were killed.

The first half of the 1960s saw President John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X plotted against and assassinated. In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy announced to the country that Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered. Two months later, on the brink of becoming presidential balm for a nation in great pain, Kennedy met the same fate. Fred Hampton didn’t survive the close of the ’60s, but the Black Panther chairman lived to see the summer of 1969.

Although the entire nation was on fire, few burned and fumed more than inner-city Black people living through the middle of the decade’s final year. To fully comprehend the racial temperature of the final summer of the ’60s is to transport yourself back to its microcosm of metropolitan Black life: Harlem. Harlemites, like their bredren and sistren in locales like Detroit and South Central, were in desperate need of food, thought, and prayer. Over several successive weeks, all three necessities were delivered in a most powerful and shared form: soul music. The upcoming documentary Summer of Soul — the directorial debut of music master Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (out July 2)— enters the library of pivotal Black history as the sole captain on this musical voyage.

Through hours of distilled half-century-old archival footage, Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) unearths the buried story of a monumental-yet-unpublicized weekly outdoor concert series called the Harlem Cultural Festival, which took place during the summer of ’69 in Harlem’s Mount Morris Park (since renamed Marcus Garvey Park). Summer not only offers never-before-seen stage performances by Black artists renowned today as global icons, it also revisits these giants at the tipping points of their careers and the connection of those careers to Black history.

We see a 19-year-old Stevie Wonder coming into his own — escaping Motown’s popcorn box and beginning to put pen to the times. Apartheid refugee Hugh Masekela finds a new American tribe for his brass mastery. A 25-year-old Gladys Knight, with the Pips in tow, takes the stage not as music darlings, but laser-intentional activists. “It wasn’t about the music,” says Knight, reflecting today on her performance 52 years ago. “We were Black people and we wanted progress.”

‘Summer of Soul’ is an art exhibition of the warrior drums and spirituality that marched Black American culture into the incomparably soulful ’70s.

Although the film’s narrative is 2021 essential, the vintage stage appearances serve as the lifeline. David Ruffin, fresh off a divorce from the Temptations, takes his vocals to tea kettle heights while wrapped in a dark suit and a Beatles pink top. A more spectacular Stevie Wonder percussion solo than the one in Summer may not exist. Viewers are also gifted the rainbow that is peak Sly Stone. With a Caucasian percussionist and sax player as well as a woman playing trumpet, Stone was electric demolition to all racial and gender constructs (perhaps Prince’s father in spirit, as well). The ebony visuals alone are worth the watch: the sheeny moist melanin, the Afro assortment, the pasture of tinted metropolitan beauty that has always been Harlem. Summer of Soul is an art exhibition of the warrior drums and spirituality that marched Black American culture into the incomparably soulful ’70s.

The documentary paints a nuanced portrait of Harlem in ’69, using the Big Apple’s Black core to also reflect the state of America. That summer, journalist Charlayne Hunter (who helped break color barriers in Georgia), pushed the New York Times to evolve their language when describing Black people. The biggest national news was the United States landing the very first human onto the moon. Footage of concert attendees’ reaction to the progressive leap in national science echoed a race that felt the millions of dollars poured into planting Neil Armstrong on the moon could’ve went to providing poor minorities with a better quality of life.

New York City was in terrible shape that summer. Poverty and drug statistics were statuesque. Although the city’s mayor was a progressive Republican who remained in the good graces of native minorities by meeting the low bar of “he didn’t seem uncomfortable around Blacks” — quoted by Reverend Al Sharpton — the fact is that the NYPD didn’t want to provide security for a Black music festival in Harlem. So the Black Panthers — who at the time had more than 20 members incarcerated in NYC — served as the park’s protectors.

Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples perform at the Harlem Cultural Festival. Photo by Searchlight Pictures

The racial tension hovering over Harlem in ’69 was as thick as unprocessed Nubian hair. The fear Black people possessed for their own lives paralleled America’s fear of Black life. It’s been reported for some time that when the bullet that killed Martin Luther King Jr. entered his face, it broke his jaw, ripped through his lungs, and severed his spine. A year later, Jesse Jackson appeared on the stage of the Harlem Cultural Festival (also endeared as the “Soul Festival”) in a state of mourning while simultaneously accepting some of his late friend’s weight. Before Jackson chanted toward nearly 50,000 Black and Brown people, “I am Black. I am beautiful. I am proud,” he spoke about Dr. King’s last words: a request that his favorite song “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” be played at an event scheduled the night he was killed. King often invited the great Mahalia Jackson to perform the 19th-century gospel classic. With help from Questlove and producer Joseph Patel, Jackson’s story transitions into a piercing and almost surreal performance by Jackson and Mavis Staples of the Staple Singers. There’s footage of Mahalia performing the song at MLK’s funeral. The performance in Harlem stands supreme.

That the film’s exclusive archival footage remained hidden treasure for more than half a century is unbelievable. No one would buy it. A big factor may have been the fact that the concert series shared the summer with America’s darling music festival, Woodstock. (The only act to play both Woodstock and the Harlem Cultural Festival was Sly and the Family Stone.)

Nina Simone wasn’t at Woodstock, but she certainly illuminated Harlem that summer with sweltering sonics like “Backlash Blues.” Not only was she masterful musically, she played preacher, shaman, and war general, all at once. “Are you ready to kill?” she asked the audience. “Are you ready to smash some White things? Are you ready to burn down buildings?”

It’s quite possible that America felt the Harlem Cultural Festival stage supplied kerosene to a nation of Black and Brown people already hot. Could be that it provided too much Blackness. Perhaps for the United States of America in 1969, that Black sizzled a bit too true.