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Black panther party and civil rights
Why is the black panther party important essay
Why is the black panther party important essay
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Gun-slinging, militant-looking, irate adolescent African American men, women, and children: an incessant image employed by the revolutionary artist Emory Douglas. Douglas is perhaps one of the most iconic artists’ of the 20th century and has created thousands of influential protest images that remain unforgettable to this day. Through the use of compelling images Emory Douglas aided in defining the distinct visual aesthetic of the Black Panther Party’s newspapers, pamphlets, and posters. It was through such mediums that Douglas had the ability to enlighten and provoke a predominately illiterate and uneducated community via visual communication, illustrating that art can evolve into an overpowering device to precipitate social and political change.
Emory Douglas was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, until 1951 when he and his mother relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area. At the time San Francisco was the hub of African American organizations that arranged events aimed at overthrowing the social injustices within the Bay Area’s black communities. As a minor immersed within the community Douglas became captivated by Charles Wilbert White, an African American social realist artist whom created various monochrome sketches and paintings, “transforming American scenes into iconic modernist narratives.” Not long after, Douglas was incarcerated at the Youth Training School in Ontario, California where he spent countless hours working in the penitentiary’s printery. It was not until the mid-1960’s when Douglas registered in the City College of San Francisco, majoring in commercial art and graphic design. Soon after, Douglas went to a Black Panthers rally, where he encountered Bobby Seale and Huey Newton; during ...
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...ion. Tucson, AZ:
John Brown Party, 1971, 1-2
Gaiter, Colette. “VISUALIZING A REVOLUTION: EMORY DOUGLAS
AND THE BLACK PANTHER NEWSPAPER.” AIGA. 8 June 2005.
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(accessed Mar. 9, 2012).
Moyer, Carrie. “Minister of Culture: the Revolutionary Art of Emory
Douglas.” Modern Painters 19, no.9 (2007): Art Full Text (H.W.
Wilson), EBSCOhost (Apr. 11, 2012).
Ross, Alice. “Emory Douglas - Interview.” Digital Arts. 26 Jan. 2009.
http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/?FeatureID...
(accessed Mar. 8, 2012), 2
Stewart, Sean. On the Ground: An Illustrated Anecdotal History of the
Sixties Underground Press in the U.S.. Oakland, CA: PM Press,
2011, 28
Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., s.v. “Emory Douglas.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emory_Douglas (accessed March. 7,
2012).
The author was born in Washington D.C. on May 1, 1901. Later, he received a bachelor’s degree from Williams College where he studied traditional literature and explored music like Jazz and the Blues; then had gotten his masters at Harvard. The author is a professor of African American English at Harvard University. The author’s writing
Trilling, Lionel. "Review of Black Boy." Richard Wright: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K. A. Appiah. New York : Amistad, 1993.
George Schuyler’s article “The Negro Art Hokum” argues that the notion of African-American culture as separate from national American culture is nonsense. To Schuyler, all seemingly distinct elements of African-American culture and artistic endeavors from such are influenced by the dominant white American culture, and therefore, only American. The merit of Schuyler’s argument stems from the fact that it is practically impossible for one culture to exist within the confines of another without absorbing certain characteristics. The problem with Schuyler’s argument that Langston Hughes notes in his response article, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” is that it assumes complete assimilation of African-Americans by a singular national culture. Fundamental to Hughes’ rebuttal is the allowance of a unique African-American culture extant of the standards of a singular American cultural identity. For Hughes, this unique culture lies within the working-class, out of sight of the American national culture. This culture, while neither completely African nor American, maintains the vibrant and unique roots of the African-American experience. Schuyler advocates cultural assimilation, while Hughes promotes cultural pluralism, in which minority cultures maintain their distinctive qualities in the face of a dominant national identity.
World War II presented several new opportunities for African Americans to participate in the war effort and thereby begin to earn an equal place in American society and politics. From the beginning of the war, the black media urged fighting a campaign for a “Double Victory”: a global victory against fascism at the warfront and national victory over racism at the homefront. In spite of the literary and artistic achievements of the Harlem Renaissance, the economic or political gains that the black community expected did not come to light from the African American participation in the First World War. (Perry 89) Thus the black media aimed to obtain that foothold that would bring about racial equality. They emphatically declared that there would be no lessening of racial activism, in order to present a consolidated front to America’s enemies.
The African-American Years: Chronologies of American History and Experience. Ed. Gabriel Burns Stepto. New York: Charles Scribner 's Sons, 2003.
As artists began to gain recognition in the artistic world, they continually represented what it meant to be black in America. Personalities and individualism were displayed through their work while simultaneously portraying the political, social, and economic conditions of being black. This idea runs parallel with Mary Louise Pratt’s (1990) definition of a contact zone. She defines it as a "term to refer...
“The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, – this longing to attain self-consciousness, manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message f...
Bloom, Joshua, and Waldo E. Martin. Black against empire: the history and politics of the Black Panther Party. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
The civil rights movement in the 1960’s was a very powerful time period in this country. Birmingham, Alabama was in the heart of the struggle for equal rights. African Americans protested and fought for what they believed in through peaceful and violent protests. In this picture the struggle is shown on how difficult it was for African Americans to gain equal rights. The photo was taken in the midst of a protest which adds dramatic effect, the people in the photo show pain and the people not pictured make them a faceless foe and the lack of colors in the picture helps send a powerful message.
"You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life! Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?"1 Frederick Douglass pondered the question of freedom. Like other slaves, he had no recollection of freedom. This was not because he had forgotten, but because he never experienced it. He doubted becoming free. That was until he endured a quest toward freedom. Douglass did not always have a thirst for freedom. However, once he developed a desire for knowledge, his thirst became clear.
The Black Panther Party was born to elevate the political, social, and economic status of Blacks. The means the Party advocated in their attempt to advance equality were highly unconventional and radical for the time, such as social programs for under privileged communities and armed resistance as a means of self preservation. The Party made numerous contributions to Black’s situation as well as their esteem, but fell victim to the ‘system’ which finds it nearly impossible to allow Blacks entry into the dominant culture. Thus, the rise and fall of a group of Black radicals, as presented by Elaine Brown in A Taste of Power, can be seen to represent the overall plight of the American Black: a system which finds it impossible to give Blacks equality.
Jasper, James M. The Art of Moral Protest Culture: Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Print.
..., where his paintings grew even more popular due to their religious themes. His study in drawing and painting became beneficial to becoming friends with a renowned mentor, Stuart Davis. “In the early 1930’s, he joined the Harlem Artists Guild and was responsible for the drawing of cartoons that were to be published in Baltimore Afro-American. He formed the spiral group that dealt with the promotion of the black artists’ works, as well as, exploring ways for contributing to the civil rights movements at that time” (edu, 2014). His lifelong commitment to African Art, helped shape the way that African American art was viewed.
Black art forms have historically always been an avenue for the voice; from spirituals to work songs to ballads, pieces of literature are one way that the black community has consistently been able to express their opinions and communicate to society at large. One was this has been achieved is through civil disobedience meeting civil manners. In this case, it would be just acknowledging an issue through art and literature. On the other hand, there is art with a direct purpose - literature meant to spur action; to convey anger and shock; or to prompt empathy, based on a discontent with the status quo. That is, protest literature. Through the marriage of the personal and political voices in black poetry and music, the genre functions as a form
Artists associated with the Black Arts Movement promoted the notion that art should serve the needs of the African American community, while challenging white hegemony and the oppression of African Americans (Wofford). Despite having similar, yet thoughtful views on black supremacy, much like that of authors from the New Negro Movement, the “Black Power Concept” of the Black Arts Movement had ...