A scene from Riotsville, USA (Magnolia Pictures)

There have been plenty of recent documentaries about police brutality, and especially its connection to African Americans, but Riotsville, USA, the new documentary from director Sierra Pettengill (The Reagan Show), is a vivid time capsule of the late 1960s, when anything seemed possible, yet nothing really changed. It features evocative writing from critic/writer Tobi Haslett, read in a kind of breezy but knowing style by actor Charlene Modeste: “A new force lurched to life in the sixties and threatened to shatter everything, but that didn’t happen.” Indeed, the terrifying thing about Riotsville, USA is witnessing the shift from the small but real potential of an open and more inclusive society to the closed one that we’ve had for the last 50 years—but it’s also somewhat hopeful to see a time when trends could have gone a different way.

The documentary consists entirely of archival footage from the period—colorized but appropriately grainy—and asks us to supply the context and larger message. In this, it is closer to art than documentary, and its aim isn’t necessarily to educate (though it offers important historical information). Instead, it seeks to function as a kind of social dynamite. At this, it succeeds wonderfully.

Race riots, sometimes more accurately called uprisings, had been a feature of American city life for decades, but in the mid-1960s they gained an intensity that shocked the nation. By 1967, it had become such an undeniable reality that President Lyndon Johnson appointed a special commission, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, to produce an official report on the problem. The film covers this history in a methodical, thorough, yet crisp way. The leader of the group was Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, and it became known as the Kerner Commission. It was something like the Warren Commission, but for riots. While the Warren Commission report produced an explanation that satisfied few, and continues to produce conspiracy theories to this day, the Kerner Commission report actually hit the nail on the head. Its report accurately diagnosed the socioeconomic roots of the riots and suggested serious measures to solve the problem.

The report has more or less been forgotten, but it was remarkably popular in its day. It was published in mass market paperback by Bantam Books, and was its most popular title since The Valley of the Dolls. Yet today, who has heard of it? (It couldn’t have been very fun reading—it was mostly filled with statistics and policy proposals.)

The report called for creating millions of jobs, building millions of homes, and providing a guaranteed minimum income for all citizens. That was the obvious answer back then, and it still is today. The cost would have been about $2 billion per month, which would be a lot now, and was a whole lot back then. It wasn’t the case that the government couldn’t afford the social spending that the report called for. In the late 1960s, about $2 billion per month was being spent on the Vietnam War.

Congress ignored most of the report, but there was a supplement at the end about “controlling disorder,” calling for investment in police, so that’s what Congress did. The modern police force emerged from this. The title of the documentary comes from part of this initiative—the government turned a few of its military bases into “riotsvilles,” fake towns, complete with main streets, where people came in and mimicked social unrest, giving military police practice using crowd control techniques (and fancy new weapons and gadgets) to subdue them. The military filmed it all for training purposes, and this footage makes for fascinating, surreal viewing.

There is also lot of compelling footage from the Public Broadcast Laboratory, an episodic news magazine program. PBL aired on National Educational Television, a precursor to PBS, from 1967–1969. Perhaps the best moment in the documentary is footage of an incredible performance on PBL of the song “Burn, Baby, Burn” by Jimmy Collier and the Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick.

The song, as its title suggests, is a call to violent revolution. But despite this, the song is cool, thoughtful, almost tentative, yet never wavering in its message. Its tone and style are revolutionary, but in a way that is not abrasive. It’s hard to believe that it was broadcast on public television. (Shortly after this song was aired, PBL lost its funding from the Ford Foundation.) That “Burn, Baby, Burn” is almost totally unknown is sad enough, but that the phrase became synonymous with the song “Disco Inferno” really says everything about how the revolutionary spirit of the ’60s became totally dead in the ’70s.

Riotsville, USA captures in words and images what “Burn, Baby, Burn” does in song—a revolutionary spirit that is violent but undeniable, scary but true, a quiet explosiveness. It doesn’t hit you over the head with its message, and it doesn’t overload you with information. It’s cool and subtle, kind of detached and laid back—but that’s an effective way to convey the heaviest messages. The connections to today’s events aren’t made at all—everything is left up to the viewer.

The documentary likely teaches viewers what they didn’t already know, especially about the Kerner Commission report, but even there, the point is that the problems (and solutions) underlying riots have been understood for decades. Its more important message is for us to have the courage to face the truths we already know—and what needs to be done about them. Burn baby burn.