A List
8/20/07

SLU'S BRUSH GALLERY HAS EXHIBITIONS ON BLACK PANTHERS PARTY

CANTON - "The Black Panthers: Photographs by Stephen Shames" and "Louder Than Words: Black Panther Materials from the Collection of Billy X Jennings" is on exhibition in St. Lawrence University's Richard F. Brush Art Gallery through October 6.

Jennings, historian of the Black Panthers Party, will give a lecture in conjunction with the exhibitions on Monday, September 24, at 7 p.m. in Room 123 of the Griffiths Arts Center. It is open to the public, free of charge.

In the midst of the civil rights movement, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the legendary Black Panther Party in 1966 in Oakland, California. The party, revered by some and vilified by others, burst onto the scene with a revolutionary agenda for social change and the empowerment of African Americans. Its methods were controversial and polarizing, so much so that in 1969 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover described the organization as the country's greatest threat to internal security.

In April 1967, Stephen Shames, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, met the Panthers at a rally to end the war in Vietnam. He was invited to photograph them and continued to do so until 1973. His close friendship with the Panthers, and Seale in particular, gave Shames unusual access to the organization, allowing him to record not only the public face of the party - street demonstrations, protests, militant posturing - but also unscripted behind-the-scenes moments, from private meetings in party headquarters to Seale at work on his mayoral campaign in Oakland. The immediacy and intimacy of Shames' photographs offer a nuanced portrait of this dynamic period in U.S. history.

Aperture, a not-for-profit organization devoted to photography and the visual arts, has organized the traveling exhibition of photographs by Shames and produced the accompanying publication.

"Louder Than Words" examines the Black Panther Party's survival programs, which served African-American communities across the nation from the mid-1960s through 1982. These programs served as an example of what could be done to effect revolutionary social change, and today, many such programs have roots in or are a direct result of the Panthers' leadership efforts. Photographs in the exhibition depict people signing up to vote for the first time and families who participated in the busing to prisons program. Photos of the award-winning Oakland Community School are also displayed for the first time.

The exhibition also highlights the artwork of Emory Douglas, the Black Panthers Party's former minister of culture and chief artist of the Black Panther newspapers. Lee Lew-Lee's documentary "All Power to the People" (1997) will be shown throughout the exhibition, as will other films and videos related to the Black Panthers.

For more information, or to arrange individual or group tours, contact the Brush Gallery at 315-229-5174.

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More information: Arts at St. Lawrence