Black Power in Print: The Black Panther Newspapers at MoMA

In November 2019, The Museum of Modern Art acquired 30 issues of the Black Panther newspaper, dating from 1969 to 1970, that I had the privilege and responsibility of stewarding for four years. The newspapers, which document the activities and opinions of the Black Panther Party during a crucial period in its history, are the first works by Revolutionary Artist and former Minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party Emory Douglas to enter MoMA’s collection.

Before these materials came into my custody, they belonged to my dearly departed friend Patrick McQuaid; when I met him in 2011, he was an American expatriate living in Berlin. In the 1990s, Patrick was a high school student doing odd jobs at the Washington, DC, branch of the Century Foundation, a public policy research institute, where he had been tasked with emptying out and discarding the contents of a cluttered storage closet. Inside, he discovered a box of newspapers labeled “THE BLACK PANTHER,” and had the foresight to ignore instructions and take it home with him. The box would remain in the basement of his parents’ house for over 20 years.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in October 1966 in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. A year later, Newton established The Black Panther: Black Community News Service as its journalistic organ.[1] The first issue of The Black Panther, published April 25, 1967, is dedicated to the story of Denzil Dowell, a Black youth killed by police, and reflects the motivations for the Party’s founding: to protect the community from wanton police violence and provide an alternative to the nonviolent civil rights movement.

Patrick told me about his collection of Black Panther newspapers and their intriguing provenance when I visited him from Paris, where I was then based, in October 2013. I mentioned that I had been moonlighting as an editorial assistant at Éditions de L’Herne, an independent French publishing house that in addition to volumes on art and literature published translations of radical political texts. I was thrilled at the prospect of unearthing the collection; we immediately resolved to carry out a project that would bring the uniquely preserved set of newspapers to light. Unfortunately, the following month, Patrick passed away in a tragic accident in Berlin; he was only 36 years old. I was devastated and I continue to mourn the loss of my friend. A loving father, avid basketball player, and aficionado of reggae music, Patrick was one of the most curious and compassionate people I have encountered.

The box Patrick saved contained 37 copies of the Black Panther newspaper, representing 30 issues (three in duplicate, and one in triplicate), spanning May 4, 1969, to February 28, 1970. The Black Panther newspaper was typically distributed folded in half, but the Century Foundation stored its copies flat and in a dark box, so they remained in excellent condition and maintained the brilliance of Emory Douglas’s beautifully colored covers and spreads with minimal creases. All the issues bear the systematic annotations of the Century Foundation, including an intake stamp denoting the date the paper was read and cataloged, and the initials of the reader. Throughout, names and reported locations of certain Black Panther Party members are underlined and circled with a blue colored pencil (see below). The Century Foundation’s motive for holding multiple subscriptions to The Black Panther and assiduously annotating the issues remains murky. Founded in 1919 as the Co-operative League by business leader Edward Filene, and known as the Twentieth Century Fund during the period in question, the organization described itself as a “philanthropic foundation for research and public education on current economic, social and international policy issues.”[3]

The contemporary relevance of the Black Panther newspaper is a double-edged sword: both a testament to the pervasiveness and persistence over time of the oppressive forces that called the Black Panther Party into action, and, especially in the era of “fake news,” a reminder of the power of marginalized voices. The timeliness of the struggles and revolutionary art of the Black Panther Party is tragic but telling. More than 50 years after the founding of the Black Panther Party, and 40 years since its cessation, the Black Panther newspaper not only teaches us about the ambitions, successes, failings, merits, challenges, and aesthetics of the Party, but also provides a template for forging boldly equitable paths forward. Its message has again become urgent at a time when the murders of unarmed Black and Brown men, women, and children by police—as well as debates about prison reform, income and education inequality, and food justice—are receiving increasing public and media attention.

MoMA’s acquisition of the Black Panther newspapers underscores the import and impact of the Black Panther Party on visual culture, and specifically highlights the revolutionary fine art practice of Emory Douglas. As an art institution, MoMA is especially well suited to present, interpret, and contextualize Douglas’s work. Moreover, this acquisition enables MoMA to better promote the history and legacy of the Black Panther Party. While preserving these important cultural artifacts for posterity, the Museum has made their full contents accessible online, where they can inspire new generations of revolutionary artists and empowered citizens.