Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas, the Black Panther Party's Minister of Culture from 1967 to 1979. Douglas is still alive and making posters for the cause, in this case the San Francisco 8, who were arrested earlier this year for the murder of a police officer in 1971 -- despite the fact that evidence was thrown out of federal court in 1976 because "officers stripped the men, blindfolded them, beat them and covered them in blankets soaked in boiling water," and "used electric prods on their genitals." The SF Weekly published a detailed 5-page story about the case in November 2006.
posted by mediareport on Dec 14, 2007 - 19 comments

Kehinde Wiley : painter and sculptor . "The subjects, anonymous men in T-shirts and jeans that Wiley approaches on the street, are given the mantle of authority and grandiosity bestowed on figures such as Napoleon in Jacques-Louis David's famous depiction with a rearing steed or the holiness of saints." (via)
posted by desjardins on Mar 7, 2007 - 7 comments

Romare Bearden was probably the least-known great American artist of the 20th century. A glance at the Google image search will give you an idea of his exciting colors, bold designs, and joyously crowded canvases; here's a picture of the artist with cat, a brief appreciation, a Derek Walcott poem ("How you have gotten it! It's all here, all right..."), and a bunch of reproductions. There are good introductions here and here; I saw the latter at Plep, which reminded me I'd been wanting to make a Bearden post for ages (there's a book based on the National Gallery exhibit). Enjoy!
posted by languagehat on Aug 4, 2005 - 8 comments

The Language of Saxophones At 55, L.A. musician and poet Kamau Daáood is finally beginning to acknowledge the possibility of his own place in local letters with his debut book of poetry, The Language of Saxophones, a 30-plus-year retrospective published by City Lights. Though he’s recorded a solo CD and read nationally and internationally, Daáood had never seen fit to collect his material in a book. Until now. “I never liked the idea of poetry sitting on a shelf somewhere, lost in all those book spines”.
posted by matteo on Apr 17, 2005 - 2 comments

Harlem 1900-1940, a site full of pictures and history. The scope of this portfolio is Harlem from the years 1900-1940. Various elements of the history of the urban experience in Harlem's early days as the Cultural Capital of African Americans are represented here by graphic and photographic images from the Schomburg Center collection.
posted by Ufez Jones on Sep 8, 2003 - 3 comments

Tom Feelings, an African-American illustrator, author, and historian, has passed. "I had used the functional form of a narrative without words, it is open to all people, especially those who have difficulty visualizing what Black people describe as racism from the past and its lingering presence in the present."
posted by moonbird on Aug 29, 2003 - 2 comments

Rent-A-Negro is a state-of-the-art service that allows you the chance to promote your connection with a creative, articulate, friendly, attractive, and pleasing African American person. Show everybody that you really are down.
posted by Su on May 6, 2003 - 35 comments