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Iconic artwork saluted

20/ 8/2008

One-time Black Panther Emory Douglas tells Angela Kelly how his first UK exhibition celebrates overcoming obstacles

ONE of the most enduring Olympic images is of athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s Black Power salute on the medal podium in Mexico City in 1968.

Even now, it swiftly evokes a time when the Black Panther Party in America was a powerful and often-feared movement.

Another series of images from that period is likely to prove just as atmospheric when a new exhibition opens at Urbis in October.

It features the work of Emory Douglas, the groundbreaking US graphic artist who produced a compelling visual record of the Black Panthers – in fact, of the whole civil rights movement – in the Sixties and Seventies.

It’s the first time his work has been shown in the UK.

Emory Douglas and the Art of Revolution will include posters, cartoons and campaign pamphlets which highlight the huge racial inequalities prevalent at the time.

Douglas was in Manchester, on only his second visit to England, to discuss preparations for the exhibition, so I asked him if he felt his work also had relevance in the UK.

"Yes, I think so. The dynamics are different but there is always social relevance," he said. "At least, that’s what the young people tell me in the universities and elsewhere. They see what the message is and understand it."

Today, Douglas is 65 and still an artistically articulate political activist, using his undoubted talents to reveal anomalies in private prisons in modern America and other social problems.

He was not born to political parents, however. "My mama was legally blind," he said.

He attended art school at the City College of San Francisco, where he gained work experience and developed his technical skills. During this time, he also became involved in the Black Arts Movement, designing very modest stage props for playwright Amiri Baraka.

It was while attending a planning meeting in early 1967 to bring Malcolm X’s widow, Betty Shabazz, to San Francisco Bay that he met Bobby Seale and Huey P Newton, who had just co-founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defence.

Douglas quickly became an involved member, using his typography and illustration skills to produce revolutionary artwork and design its weekly publication, The Black Panther.

In 1968, he became the official Minister of Culture for the party and remained so until its demise, art directing every publication.

His arresting graphics became an iconic visual signature of the Black Panthers, synonymous with their

ideology. His work spoke to the ordinary, deprived black people, helping empower them. Unsurprisingly, the effect on worried white authority was quite different.

Like many of the party members, Emory had a number of encounters with the police, including a period in prison following public protest.

After the Black Panthers’ demise, Douglas worked at a silk screen printing factory and continued as a graphic artist. In 1984, he was recruited to work on The Sun Reporter by publisher, editor and civil rights activist Carlton B Goodlet as a graphic artist – a post he held until last year.

He is still creating new work focusing on social issues that concern him and has co-produced a poster for the Malcolm X Jazz Festival in Oakland, organised by the EastSide Arts Alliance, for whom he is an advisory board member.

Douglas continues to do voluntary work, taking part in social outreach programmes and speaking at schools and universities.

He is a grandfather to four girls and these days enjoys aiding them with their artwork, too. But he is glad of an opportunity to help people understand that period of

history in context.

"There was a lot of mis-information about that time (the Sixties) and what happened then and I think the exhibition helps to put it into context. It’s a historical document," he said.

And is there a central theme to the exhibition itself? "Certainly, it’s about overcoming obstacles," added Douglas. "I think people everywhere know about that and relate to it."

l Emory Douglas and the Art of Revolution runs at Urbis, Cathedral Gardens, from October 30 to April 2009