MetaFilter posts tagged with blackpanthers

Fred Hampton: The Assassination of a Black Panther

invitapriore — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 20:48:36 -0800

December 4th, 2009 marked the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. Among the activities undertaken by the FBI as part of their Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), the organization of Fred Hampton's assassination by the Chicago Police stands out as one of the most egregious and tragic. As a charismatic leader and effective organizer, Hampton was an obvious target for J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, which was largely responsible for the dissolution of the black political movement by the 1970s (or, as Michael C. Dawson puts it in his book Black Visions, the undermining of "the institutional foundation for the black counterpublic" (36)). His death occurred in the middle of the filming of a documentary about his activities as a Black Panther, which became The Murder of Fred Hampton (Google video link to the full documentary). Forty years later, Simon Balto hopes that another charismatic black leader from Chicago will pay similar attention to the nation's poor. Also see: the FOIA request of the FBI's documents on Fred Hampton [PDF], a collection of speeches by Fred Hampton, Jr., and the documentary Death of a Black Panther: The Fred Hampton Story, which features interviews with Hampton's girlfriend Deborah Johnson, police officers involved in the raid, and others. (Some links reposted with the permission of Mefi user aquathug.)

Up On The Roof

msalt — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:31:22 -0800

Hello, New York! New York, wake up you f*ckers! Free Music! Free Love! In 1968, two years before those other guys, Jefferson Airplane played their apocalyptic psychedelia from a NYC rooftop, before police shut them down. Filmed (staged?) by Jean-Luc Godard. The song is "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil" from "After Bathing at Baxter's" (1967). Amazingly, this was their single which reached #42 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #24 on the Cash Box Top 100. Filmed for Godard's project "One A.M." aka "One American Movie", which was abandoned and completed four years later by D.A. Pennebaker -- with additional "making of" footage -- as "One P.M." aka "One Parallel Movie." IMDB The film is a fascinating, exasperating mess, featuring Tom Hayden, Eldridge Cleaver (just before he fled the country), Amiri Baraka, Rip Torn, Carol Bellamy, LeRoi Jones and Godard himself. An "American Indian" picks up a tape recorder and spouts/mimics the radical speech on it, etc. The NYT reviewer wrote at the time: "I don't know why "One A.M." was abandoned. There has been talk of Godard's failure to understand the nature of the movement in America. But after looking at the quality of the film work in "One P.M." it seems to me that the reason could quite properly have been despair." One P.M. -- Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10

Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas

mediareport — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 19:26:34 -0800

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.

1960's

MLIS — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 00:13:47 -0800

The Psychedelic 60's: Literary Tradition and Social Change

Oaktown!

serazin — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 15:06:04 -0800

At Organic City you can contribute your Oakland stories, or use their map to find stories around town. And if you're into Oakland history, check out Oakland Chinatown history, go on the Black Panther legacy tour, look at Oakland history in pictures, or Dorothea Lange's negatives, or check out a general view of Oakland history. Why should you care? Oakland is a microcosm of the world. Previously.

The Wacky World of Comic Book Propaganda

jonp72 — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 09:59:57 -0800

An official comic book adaptation of the 9/11 commission report is due to hit bookstores this month. The U.S. Army seeks an Arabic-speaking comic book creator. Meanwhile, an Israeli blogger suspects a Kuwaiti company of misusing Marvel and DC comics. These are just the latest incidents in a long-running history of using comic books for propaganda purposes, ranging from Mussolini and Hitler to Captain America vs. the Nazi-affiliated Red Skull to anticommunist comics for Catholic parochial schools to a phony Black Panther comic book created by COINTELPRO to a comic book of the American invasion of Grenada. However, my favorite site of comic book propaganda tends to focus on more innocuous domestic issues such as bicycle safety, USDA nutrition standards, and fighting crack cocaine. (OK, that last issue isn't so innocuous, but comic book propaganda about health & safety issues still generally blows.)

PantherNabbed

srboisvert — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 05:56:07 -0800

Toronto librarian accused of being wanted Panther More info [1] [2][3][4]

The Battle of Algiers

stonerose — Sun, 07 Sep 2003 08:38:30 -0800

The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece from 1966, was studied closely by the Black Panthers as a training manual for violent uprising against a colonial overlord. Similarly, the Israeli government banned the film until 1975 for fear that the nascent Palestine Liberation Organization would use it as an inspiration for attacks on Israelis. Now, the Pentagon is sitting down with popcorn and notepads. While the film is difficult to find in the U.S., the script is online here. Can (or will) the Pentagon make use of the lessons it contains? Is it too late? What film of literary works would you recommend to teach people about resistance... or how to overcome it?