He Said It Loud

"What you had was two arrogant people," White recalls on camera. "Brown and myself."

Brown gets the city to pay up. Introduces the mayor onstage as "a swinging cat." People applaud, the show starts.

And if that were it, it wouldn't be much of a documentary.

But Leaf knows something about building tension, and this is when he shows black fans starting to jump onstage. White cops start shoving them off the stage, getting rough. Holy cow, a race riot, broadcast live, one day after King's death!

Brown backs the cops off. Lets people up there a minute. But people don't leave. They get a little rowdy. Brown, irritated now: "Can't y'all go back down and let's do this show together? We're black! Don't make us all look bad. Let me finish doing this show."

But things start getting ugly. The hair on your forearms starts to stand up. Across the country, there are dozens of cities in flames. Smoke is billowing. Vietnam, Malcolm dead, Martin dead, Watts, Detroit. Black Panthers, power to the people. Onstage, lots of cops, clubs. The tension, man, that racial thing .

Soul Brother No. 1, pacing, lecturing a few thousand angry people now:

"You made me look very bad. 'Cause I asked the police to step back and you wouldn't go down. Nah, that's wrong."

We're past babybabybaby and goodgod and henh! and ifeelgoodiknewthatiwouldnow. With one question, Brown tosses his reputation up in the air:

"Now I asked the po-lice to step back because I figured I could get some respect from my own people. Now are we together or we ain't?"

David Gates of Newsweek, one of the few white fans in the house: "It could have gone up like a torch."

The answer comes back down, down, this noise filling the arena, falling across Brown's shoulders, falling down across the suit drenched with sweat, falling down across the city on television sets flickering in Roxbury: