Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon by Jane Rhodes

Author:Jane Rhodes [Rhodes, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Social Science, General, Ethnic Studies, African American Studies, Media Studies, Political Science, Civil Rights
ISBN: 9780252082641
Google: 8GRavgAACAAJ
Amazon: 0252082648
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2017-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

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SERVANTS OF THE PEOPLE: THE BLACK PANTHERS AS NATIONAL AND GLOBAL ICONS

As a reporter, I try to be sympathetic to anything I want to understand and write about. But the more I work on the subject, the more I know that sympathy is not my primary feeling. Deep in my white, possibly racist, probably unrevolutionary heart, I am afraid of the Black Panther Party.

Gene Marine, The Black Panthers (1969)

By the end of 1968, numerous journalists, authors, and photographers were engaged in the task of memorializing the Black Panthers and the past tumultuous year. They sought to capitalize on the enormous popularity of the Black Panthers, and to somehow capture the uniqueness of the times—to convey to current and future audiences the complexity and chaos that engulfed much of the nation. The texts they produced often transcended the constraints of daily journalism to provide insight, texture, and analysis to the barrage of news stories that had been generated. Many of these cultural products were also the result of a political mission; they hoped to further the Panthers’ agenda of critiquing the police, the state, and racial ideologies. If the Panthers remained tied to certain narrow frames—threatening black males, criminals, deviants, terrorists, and celebrities—this emerging material would reinforce the alternative frames of revolutionary heroes, victims of state repression, and servants of the people.

One genre of Panther literature that emerged during this period was the “insider” account of the organization in the form of memoir. The media had generated an enormous popular curiosity about the Black Panther Party; news stories gave only glimpses into the thoughts and personalities of these charismatic rebels, while making them irresistibly attractive. Many unanswered questions abounded: Who were they? How did they come up with the idea? What did they want? What went on behind the stern-faced, paramilitary façade seen on television? These personalized narratives satisfied the Panthers’ need to vindicate themselves, to explain their ideas and actions to a national audience that formed much of its opinions based on the mainstream press. They also filled a market demand for texts that enlarged the debates on social unrest, political dissent, and race relations that were in the forefront of American mass culture. The cultural entrepreneurs who understood the marketability of the Black Panthers also guessed—shrewdly—that the same throngs of urban black youth, New Left activists, and university students who attended Panther rallies and lectures would willingly pay a few dollars for a book that might provide them with lasting inspiration. In the process, the Black Panthers had moved from relying on hand-lettered mimeographed flyers to disseminate their ideas, to having major publishing companies at their disposal.

The editors at Ramparts magazine, who played a major role in promoting the idea of the Black Panthers as the vanguard of the black liberation movement, were a major force in this process. In the fall of 1968 they encouraged Panther co-founder Bobby Seale to create an oral history of the organization on tape. Immediately, this was envisioned as a book project. In

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