Ten Minutes with Emory Douglas: On Arts Activism

Emory Douglas has a battle cry: “Culture is a weapon.” And this chant reverberates throughout everything he does.

In 1967, Douglas was chosen as the minister of culture and revolutionary artist for the Black Panther Party, a political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey Newton with the goal of improving conditions for people of color across the United States through “whatever means necessary.” Mobilizing his commercial arts training, Douglas designed the layouts and iconic imagery for the Black Panther newspaper. From 1967 up until the early 1980s, he produced more than 530 newspapers, each bearing his distinctive style of bold lines, graphic silhouettes, block text, and photomontage.

Even after the Black Panther newspaper ceased publication in the early 1980s, Douglas’s art continued to shape and define the visual language of social-justice art. His designs depicting law enforcement officers and politicians as pigs, as well as his illustrations of communities rallied in self-defense, continue to resonate with people around the world. In this month’s Ten Minutes podcast, Douglas shares his path toward arts activism and the power of art to “penetrate the souls of the resistance via the resistors (We The People) against all forms of cruel and unjust authority.”

Artist Emory Douglas: We were dealing with the issues of the police abuse at that time. Huey Newton and them came over one time and he had this graphic, because he used to come in and he’d talk about how they stood down the pigs, in the community and on the streets, and he brought this image of this pig on four hoofs. It was like clip art. And he wanted me to put it in the paper, wanted to put the badge number next to it, or on it—each week—to show those police who were bad actors and disrespecting the community.

So I had to clean it up, refine it, and that became the first image of the pig drawing. But it was thereafter that I thought about it, and it came to me, why don’t I stand it up on two hoofs? Keep the snort, keep the tail, all those things, put the flies around it, put the badge on it. And that became the iconic image of the pig that transcended the Black Panther Party, became a movement beyond just the United States, but transcending borders. So it took on a life of its own.

My name is Emory Douglas. I was initially the revolutionary artist of the Black Panther Party, and thereafter became the minister of culture of the Black Panther Party, 1967 until 1980.

So going fast-forward, there was a meeting being planned to bring Malcolm X’s widow to the Bay Area to honor her. And one of the brothers who were a part of this group, they needed an artist to do the poster for the event. I said I would do the poster and it was a simple poster—a sketch of Malcolm X.

But it was then that I knew that that’s what I wanted to be a part of. It was after that meeting that I asked Huey Newton and Bobby Seale how could I join.

Huey P. Newton was the cofounder of the Black Panther Party, and he was the minister of defense of the Black Panther Party. Bobby Seale was the other cofounder, and he was the chairman of the Black Panther Party.

Now this is late January of 1967. The organization had started in October of 1966. I called Huey, I would go by his house, then he would introduce me to folks in the community that he knew, then we would go to Bobby Seale’s house.

So this was a lot of what was going on during that initial phase, because it had not even become a national organization at that time. It was still local in the context of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.

1. Don’t be fooled by deception.

2. Don’t be deceitful or corruptible.

3. Know you get more truth from the artists than from bureaucrats.

4. Recognize that art is a powerful tool, a language that can be used to enlighten, inform, and guide to action.

5. Create art that recognizes the oppression of others and considers the basic quality-of-life concerns and basic human-rights issues.

6. Create art of social concerns that even a child can understand.

7. The goal should always be to make the message clear.

8. Make an effort not to create political art dealing with social issues just because it’s a fun, cool thing to do.

9. Create art that challenges the colonization of the imagination.

10. Self-evaluate one’s work and be open to constructive evaluation from others. Be open to making adjustments if you choose to do so, and be prepared, if necessary, to defend and explain what you communicate through your art.

11. Know the rules before you break the rules.

12. Don’t lose sight of what the goals are.