Remember Emory Douglas… the art director, designer and main illustrator for The Black Panther newspaper who created iconic images representing African-American struggles during the 1960’s and 70’s? His work is as relevant today as it was decades ago, and for the same reason — oppression of the black community in the United States of America.
Douglas, who used his art as a weapon in the Black Panther Party’s struggle for civil rights, designed revolutionary newspaper illustrations and created some hard-hitting slogans that became powerful symbols of the movement and inspired many into action.
Douglas’ artwork played a big part in propagating the party’s combative criticisms of the US government as well as any other institutions or persons that the party, formed in the aftermath of the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, viewed as perpetrators of racism, police brutality, poverty and global imperialism.
Watch this short documentary about the rise and fall of the Panthers and about Douglas, who was once the Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party – the most influential black movement organization of the late 1960’s and the strongest link between the domestic Black Liberation Struggle and global opponents of American imperialism.
