Emory Douglas
Black Panther Minister of Culture 1967–1980
It was also inspired by the writings of various people. Robert Williams, who was a black man and Mabel Williams who was his wife, who had to leave the country because of the Conflict with the Klan in the south…. Huey Newton used to sell his book Negroes with Guns. He [Robert] went to China- initially he went to Cuba. He was there for many years. And he used to send back his publication with him sitting on the front of the Peking Review with Mao accepting him in solidarity with the movement and African American struggle in this country. Of course that inspired us to view them as our comrades, as our friends because here is this black man and his wife who are accepted there and sitting up with Chairman Mao. Of course we wanted to learn more about that when we saw those things during the movement. We were inspired by that... And we read Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, we used to read about the Algerian Revolution and what was going on in Cuba, Castro and the movements in Latin America and all over Europe and the student movements and many other periodicals.
Now when you look at it as ongoing it’s really by design what took place in this country. The dismantling of the movement. It’s when they began to demonise it, separate it and bring the crack cocaine into the community. Now you have commonfolk people in the community who all were supporters of change, still wanting change, but now are frustrated trying to make ends meet, to survive. They’ve cut back social programs that were in the interests of helping people and the community. You don’t have those anymore. All those are cut back now. They’re trying to create a dog eat dog situation of survival. There’s substance abuse. Crack cocaine comes in and breaks up the families. Up until this point today you have three to four to five generations into babies having babies, and babies raising babies. And so you have all those things adding to the discontinuity of the family structure of the community. You have a whole generation of young folks who know nothing about the struggles of the past across the board, no matter what colour they are, until the hip hop community came on the scene. You had those who were in the hip hop community like Public Enemy, Dead Prez, Digital Underground, who Tupac was a part of, Paris and many others, they gave a whole new generation a connection.
But at the same time there was a disconnection, because there had been this whole continuous onslaught trying to deny folks about this whole history. Any time they could they would demonise, make us look like the scourge of the earth. But it was through those young people that there became more interest amongst young folk, at the same time overcoming the obstacles put in front of us that created the dissension within the party amongst many party members. We began to resolve that as human beings. We began to have these reunions, and people began to come from all over the country and all over the world, and this began to be played up on the news, so now you have a lot of interest in this whole era.
© 2008 EMORY DOUGLAS -ARTIST RIGHTS SOCIETY- (ARS)