“Revolutionary art is a tool for liberation'’: Emory Douglas and protest aesthetics at the black panther

Abstract

Abstract

From its emergence in 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self‐Defense deliberately projected an image of black power and revolutionary martyrdom that hinged on potent black masculinity and patriarchal authority. If that image was embodied in the Black Panthers’ paramilitary physical and public presence, it was also visualized in numerous posters and drawings designed for The Black Panther, the Party's newspaper and chief means of political dissemination. Emory Douglas, the primary artist at The Black Panther during the Party's peak from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, produced hundreds of pictures promoting the Panthers’ mixed agenda of armed militance and community welfare. Challenging long‐standing assumptions about race and racism, Douglas crafted a visual strategy of cultural resistance which aimed at convincing audiences of the efficacy of black power by offering alternative images of a forceful black masculinity.