Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vfjqv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T18:50:42.826Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Imaging the Panthers: Representing Black Power and Masculinity, 1960s–1990s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Get access

Extract

When the movie Panther premiered in American theaters in May 1995, it introduced a whole new generation to the rhetoric and radical politics of the Black Panther Party of a quarter-century earlier. It also sparked fierce debate about Panther fact, Panther fiction, and the power of images. Former leftie David Horowitz, now the head of the neoconservative Center for Popular Culture in Los Angeles, took out an ad in Daily Variety calling Panther a “two-hour lie.” Damning director Mario Van Peebles for glorifying the positive aspects of the black power movement — the children's breakfasts and sickle cell anemia tests the Panthers sponsored, for example — Horowitz warned that people “will die because of this film” and faxed a seven-page press release to the media condemning the Panthers as “cocaine-addicted gangsters who … committed hundreds of felonies.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1. Corliss, Richard, “Power to the Peephole,” Time 145, no. 20 (05 15, 1995): 73Google Scholar; and Kilday, Gregg, “Power to the Peebles,” Entertainment Weekly, 05 12, 1995, 33.Google Scholar

2. Corliss, , “Power to the Peephole,” 73Google Scholar; Kilday, , “Power to the Peebles,” 33Google Scholar; and Travers, Peter, “Fight the Power,” Rolling Stone, 05 18, 1995.Google Scholar For further reviews, see Hoberman, Joel, “Wild Cats,” Village Voice, 05 9, 1995Google Scholar; McCarthy, Todd, “Panther,” Variety, 05 7, 1995, 35, 39Google Scholar; and Morgan, Joan, “New Power Generation,” Vibe 3, no. 5 (0607 1995):8688.Google Scholar

3. bell hooks, “In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life,” in Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography, ed. Willis, Deborah (New York: New Press), 46Google Scholar; see also hooks, “Introduction: Revolutionary Attitude,” in Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End, 1992), 17Google Scholar; and Golden, Thelma, ed., Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994).Google Scholar

4. Heath, G. Louis, Off the Pigs! The History and Literature of the Black Panther Party (Metuchen, N. J.: Scarecrow, 1976), 214.Google Scholar

5. Black Panther, 11 21, 1970, 15.Google Scholar

6. Douglas, Emory, quoted from “On Revolutionary Art,” Black Panther, 01 24, 1970, 5Google Scholar; and in Alloway, Lawrence, “Art,” Nation 211, no. 12 (10 19, 1970): 382.Google Scholar

7. Pearson, Hugh, The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1994), 60, 64.Google Scholar

8. Charles Leinenweber, quoted in Pearson, , Shadow of the Panther, 67.Google Scholar

9. Carmichael, Stokely, “SNCC Chairman Talks About Black Power,” New York Review of Books, 09 22, 1966Google Scholar, as noted in Pearson, , Shadow of the Panther, 9596.Google Scholar

10. Seale, Bobby, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton (New York: Random House, 1970), 418.Google Scholar

11. Churchill, Ward and Wall, Jim Vander, Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (1988; rept. Boston: South End, 1990)Google Scholar; and Churchill, and Wall, Vander, The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents From the FBI's Secret Wars Against Domestic Dissent (Boston: South End, 1990).Google Scholar On the Black Panther Party's community impact, organization, and numbers, see Heath, , Off the Pigs! 9899, 116–21.Google Scholar

12. Newton, Huey, quoted in Brewer, Brad, “Revolutionary Art,” Black Panther, 10 24, 1970, 17Google Scholar; and Douglas, Emory, quoted in “Revolutionary Art: A Tool for Liberation,”Google Scholar taken from a speech delivered at Malcolm X College (Chicago) at the First Revolutionary Artist Conference, June 8, 1970, reprinted in Black Panther, 07 4, 1970, 1213.Google Scholar For an extended analysis of the role of the media in shaping and directing radical politics, see Gitlin, Todd, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).Google Scholar

13. Black Panther, 04 25, 1967Google Scholar, back page; and Major, Reginald, A Panther Is a Black Cat (New York: William Morrow, 1971), 104.Google Scholar Stokely Carmichael, quoted in Burns, Stewart, Social Movements of the Sixties: Searching for Democracy (Boston: Twayne, 1990), 119Google Scholar; and Seale, Bobby, quoted in Seize the Time, 64.Google Scholar

14. Turner, Patricia, Ceramic Uncles and Celluloid Mammies: Black Images and Their Influence on Culture (New York, Anchor, 1994), 18, passim.Google Scholar

15. Gates, Henry Louis Jr., Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man (New York: Random House, 1997), xiiGoogle Scholar; and Mercer, Kobena, Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 1994), 106–7, 110–11.Google Scholar

16. Heath, , Off the Pigs! 45.Google Scholar

17. Cleaver, Eldridge, “Initial Reactions on the Assassination of Malcolm X,” in Soul on Ice (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), 61Google Scholar; and Mercer, (with Isaac Julien), Welcome to the Jungle, 139.Google Scholar See also Van Deburg, William L., Black Camelot: African-American Culture Heroes in Their Times, 1960–1980 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 7881.Google Scholar

18. See, for example, bell hooks, “Reconstructing Black Masculinity,” in Black Looks, 87113Google Scholar, Gray, Herman, “Black Masculinity and Visual Culture,”Google Scholar in Golden, , Black Male, 175–80Google Scholar; and Mercer, , Welcome to the Jungle, 141–54.Google Scholar See also Staples, Robert, Black Masculinity: The Black Man's Role in American Society (San Francisco: Black Scholar, 1982)Google Scholar; Berger, Maurice, Walls, Brian, and Watson, Simon, eds., Constructing Masculinity (New York: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar; and Stecopoulos, Harry and Uebel, Michael, eds., Race and the Subject of Masculinities (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

19. Major, A Panther, 280–82.Google Scholar

20. Jones, Frank, “Talent for the Revolution,” Black Panther, 03 16, 1969, 9Google Scholar; and Brisbane, Robert H., Black Activism, Racial Revolution in the United States 1954–1970 (Valley Forge, Pa.: Hudson, 1974), 218.Google Scholar

21. Fax, Elton C., “Emory Douglas,” in Black Artists of the New Generation (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1977), 257–78.Google Scholar

22. Fax, , “Emory Douglas,” 270Google Scholar; and Israeli, Phineas, “Emory Grinds Down the Pigs,” Black Panther Party, 11 22, 1969, 6Google Scholar, reprinted from the Berkeley Tribe (no date given).

23. Fax, , “Emory Douglas,” 273.Google Scholar

24. For information on the Shabazz affair, see Pearson, , Shadow of the Panther, 120–26Google Scholar; Major, A Panther, 7072Google Scholar; and Van Peebles, Mario, Taylor, Ula Y., and Lewis, J. Tarika, Panther: A Pictorial History of the Black Panthers and the Story Behind the Film (New York: New Market, 1995), 3132.Google Scholar

25. On cultural nationalism, see Van Deburg, William L., New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 170–91.Google Scholar

26. The full text of Executive Mandate No. 1, written by Huey Newton, is reprinted in Major, A Panther, 289–90.Google Scholar

27. On media coverage of the Panthers, see, for example, Peck, Abe, Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 65Google Scholar; Peebles, et al. , Panther, 39Google Scholar; and Davis, Angela, “Black Nationalism: The Sixties and the Nineties,” in Black Popular Culture: A Project by Michele Wallace, ed. Dent, Gina, Center, Dia for the Arts, Discussion in Contemporary Culture, no. 8 (Seattle: Bay Press, 1992), 319.Google Scholar

28. Israeli, , “Emory Grinds,” 6.Google Scholar

29. Ibid.

30. Brewer, , “Revolutionary Art,” 17.Google Scholar

31. Emory Douglas, quoted in Israeli, , “Emory Grinds,” 6.Google Scholar

32. Fax, , “Emory Douglas,” 274Google Scholar; Douglas, , “Revolutionary Art,” 13Google Scholar; and Douglas, Emory, “Revolutionary Art/Black Liberation,” Black Panther, 05 18, 1968, 20.Google Scholar

33. Douglas, , “Revolutionary Art/Black Liberation,” 20.Google Scholar

34. Illustrated in Barnicoat, John, A Concise History of Posters: 1870–1970 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1972), 248.Google Scholar

35. Fax, , “Emory Douglas,” 276–77.Google Scholar The etymology of policemen as pigs is noted in Howard, Philip, The State of the Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 28.Google Scholar

36. Fax, , “Emory Douglas,” 277Google Scholar; and Douglas, , “On Revolutionary Art,” 5Google Scholar, and quoted from author interview, April 27, 1993. In another version of the hanging pigs cartoon, Douglas labeled the four hogs “Dean of Rusk,” “Mad McNamara,” L.B.J.,” and “R.F.K.” (see Black Panther, 03 16, 1968, 10).Google Scholar

37. Douglas, Emory, “On Revolutionary Culture,” in New Black Voices: An Anthology of Contemporary Afro-American Literature, ed. Chapman, Abraham (New York: New American Library, 1972), 489–90Google Scholar; and Gitlin, Todd, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam, 1987), 350–51.Google Scholar

38. Gitlin, , The Sixties, 351Google Scholar; Eldridge Cleaver, quoted in “Eldridge on Weathermen,” Black Panther, 11 22, 1969, 5Google Scholar, reprinted from the Berkeley Tribe (n.d.); and Major, A Panther, 139, 140, 142.Google Scholar

39. Douglas, , “On Revolutionary Art,” 5Google Scholar, and from author interview, April 27, 1993. See also Fax, , “Emory Douglas,” 276–77.Google Scholar

40. For more information on these murals, see Barnett, Alan, Community Murals: The People's Art (Philadelphia: Art Alliance, 1984).Google Scholar On Faith Ringgold and David Hammons, see Boime, Albert, “Waving the Red Flag and Reconstituting Old Glory,” Smithsonian Studies in American Art 4, no. 2 (Spring 1990): 325.Google Scholar On Dana Chandler, see Lewis, Samella S. and Waddy, Ruth G., Black Artists on Art (Los Angeles: Contemporary Crafts, 1969), 1: 3942Google Scholar; Fax, , “Dana Chandler,” in Black Artists, 345–61Google Scholar; and Fine, Elsa Honig, The Afro-American Artist: A Search for Identity (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), 203–4.Google Scholar

41. On Betye Saar, see Lippard, Lucy, Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America (New York: Pantheon, 1990), 234.Google Scholar On Catlett, Elizabeth, see Catlett, Elizabeth, “The Role of the Black Artist,” Black Scholar 06 1975: 1014.Google Scholar

42. Jean Teemer's comic book also angered Bobby Seale, who protested that the artist did not emphasize the “political context” of black struggle (see Seale, , “Renegades, Jackanapes, and Agents Provocateurs,” in Seize the Time, 383–89).Google Scholar A copy of the Lowndes County SNCC comic book can be seen in the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.

43. Baruch, Ruth-Marion and Jones, Pirkle, The Vanguard (New York: Beacon, 1970).Google Scholar For one review of the De Young exhibition, see Mann, Margery, “Black Panthers Photographic Essay,” Popular Photography. 64, no. 5 (05 1969): 8283, 137.Google Scholar Another photographer who documented the Panthers was Jeffrey Henson Scales, whose photos of the Panthers appeared in the Black Panther and in Bay Area exhibitions (see “Pictures From America,” a supplement to Afterimage 23, no. 3 [1112 1995]: 12).Google Scholar

44. For reflections on the contemporary dimensions of this mass media sensationalization of race and crime, see Rose, Tricia, “Rap Music and the Demonization of Young Black Males,”Google Scholar in Golden, , Black Male, 149–57.Google Scholar

45. “Black Panthers: The Hard Edge of Confrontation,” Life 68, no. 4 (02 6, 1970): 1827.Google Scholar In 1970, Life's circulation was approximately 8.6 million. Calculated on a “pass-along” rate estimated at around 4–5 persons per copy, the number of actual Life readers was much higher, giving the magazine a weekly total audience at around 43 million. See van Zuilen, A. J., The Life Cycle of Magazines, A Historical Study of the Decline and Fall of the General Interest Mass Audience Magazine in the United States During the Period 1946–1972 (Uithoorn, The Netherlands: Graduate, 1977), 248Google Scholar; Elson, Robert T., Time Inc.: The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise, 1923–1941 (New York: Atheneum, 19681973), 1: 342–43Google Scholar; and Bogart, Leo, Strategy in Advertising (New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1967), 261–62.Google Scholar

46. Pearson, , Shadow of the Panther, 231Google Scholar; and DrSmalls, Tolbert, quoted in Van Peebles, et al. , Panther, 120.Google Scholar

47. Douglas, Emory, quoted in author interview, 04 27, 1993Google Scholar; and advertisement for Douglas greeting cards, Black Panther, 01 18, 1972, 22.Google Scholar

48. Betye Saar, quoted in a 1975 interview with Andrews, Benny, “Jemimas, Mysticism, and Mojos: The Art of Betye Saar,” Encore American and Worldwide News, 03 17, 1975Google Scholar, as noted in Betye Saar (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984), 23, 41.Google Scholar

49. An illustration of black power era merchandise is seen in Van Deburg, , New Day, 14.Google Scholar

50. Wolfe, Tom, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1970), 68.Google Scholar

51. Genet, Jean, Prisoner of Love (London: Picador, 1989), 213Google Scholar, as noted in Mercer, , Welcome to the Jungle, 218–19.Google Scholar

52. See Gould, Stephen Jay, “The Hottentot Venus,” in The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History (New York: Norton, 1985), 292Google Scholar, as quoted in Jorge Daniel Veneciano's review of the 1994 Black Male exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, titled “Invisible Men: Race, Representation and Exhibitiont(ism),” Afterimage 23, no. 2 (09/10 1995): 14.Google Scholar

53. Kilday, , “Power to the Peebles,” 33.Google Scholar

54. Corliss, , “Power to the Peephole,” 73Google Scholar; and Hobennan, , “Wild Cats,” 67.Google ScholarPanther was budgeted at $9.5 million (compared with $35 million then budgeted for the average Hollywood film) and opened in 800 theaters in early May 1995. It closed less than a month later with grosses at less than $6.5 million (see Variety, 06 12, 1995, 12).Google Scholar

55. Van Peebles, , Panther, 131, 147, 172.Google Scholar

56. See von Hoffman, Nicholas, “Pop Goes the Gangsta, Farrakhan's Message Routs a Pernicious Role Model,” Washington Post, 11 12, 1995Google Scholar, C-1, C-4; and Franklin, Donna, “Black Herstory,” New York Times, 10 18, 1995, A-19.Google Scholar

57. Elaine Brown, quoted in Pearson, , Shadow of the Panther, 336Google Scholar; and hooks, , “Introduction,” 7.Google Scholar