When black men started bearing arms, these people who we think of as being pro-gun are saying, 'We ought to change this law.

As black people, we want our story to be this constant ascendance from slavery. But it's not like that. You push and it goes up. Then there's a backlash, and if folks stop pushing, it goes down. Let's face it, it's a lot more complicated.

You can't imagine hip-hop without the Black Panthers. Today, hopefully, the movement can be an inspiration to people. These were people who made mistakes but they were trying to change things.

I want to be able to tell black people something they don't know, something about our own lives.

As the voices beneath the music are talking, you find that the music is just as important as what they're saying. The traditional thing is to lower the music so you can hear the dialogue. We just couldn't do that for that song.

Race is always tossed into the mix. The unspoken idea is always that white people have a right to carry guns and bear arms.

Usually we look at it like, "Oh, black people couldn't vote in Mississippi because they had to take a literacy test." But one of the things you learn in the film is that there were major consequences for even trying to vote. You could be killed for trying to vote. You could definitely be fired from your job and many were, which is why so few black Mississippians even attempted to register early on. They put your name in the newspaper if you tried to register to vote.