Black Power in Print

A four-page newsletter at its inception in Oakland, California, in 1967, The Black Panther was the official newspaper of the Black Panther Party. Founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, it was distributed in cities across the United States as well as internationally. 

Graphic artist Emory Douglas created the The Black Panther newspaper’s visual protest vocabulary, often using cut-and-paste collage techniques and prefabricated type from Formatt (a Letraset alternative). 

“Initially, wherever we were set up, [usually in someone’s home], that would be our production area. We used regular tables, regular lights, Elmer’s glue, rubber cement. We cut and pasted. We made up our own layout sheets. Non-repro blue markers. A lot of it was done on [an IBM Selectric] typewriter.” —Emory Douglas

This spread documents the police murder of Chicago-based Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, an act of violence that Dana Chandler would later commemorate in his work.

Dana Chandler created Fred Hampton’s Door 2 following the theft of his small painting Fred Hampton’s Door (1970), which he made in response to the violent murder of the young Black Panther Party leader. Both works commemorate Hampton while protesting and mourning the violent circumstances of his death. Chandler used an actual door for the second version to ensure it could not be as easily stolen. Though the original painting was exhibited at the MFA in 1970, it was not until 50 years later, in December 2020, that this major work by Chandler finally entered the Museum’s collection.

Chandler released Black People break free of the Sucking, Mother-F—ing White Egg as part of a portfolio published by the Impressions Workshop in 1968 in collaboration with Artists Against Racism and the War (AARW). It was dedicated to the memory and ideals of Martin Luther King Jr. in the wake of his assassination. According to curator and scholar Makeda Best, “The portfolio formed a major component of Fifteen Days in May, the AARW’s wide-ranging program of murals, poetry readings, exhibitions, and performances.” (From Art in Print, March/April 2014). This modestly sized numbered print was the only work by Chandler in the MFA’s collection until late 2020.

In early 1970, Chandler channeled his rage over the murder of yet another gifted and charismatic young Black leader by creating the first version of Fred Hampton’s Door. According to Time magazine, the work was permeated with actual bullet holes. In Chandler’s words: “I remember spending a great deal of time...being very publicly angry about the killing of this brilliant young man just because what he was trying to do was get both Blacks and whites together in a movement to make things better for people of color and poor people. He was a young version of Martin Luther King and they killed him outright.”

When making the original version of Fred Hampton’s Door, Chandler recalled: “I wasn’t just thinking about [Fred Hampton]. I was thinking about how many Black people were dying because the police has gone berserk as they had all over the country.... I was thinking about all of that, how it was nonstop all the time, every single goddamned day, and I was so pissed. That’s how that came about, and it hasn’t ceased.”

In 1970, Chandler wrote “A Proposal to Eradicate Institutional Racism at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts,” a manifesto challenging the MFA (and, by inference, similar institutions) to represent Black artists in their collections and exhibitions, and to support Black self-determination in the arts by financially backing Black-centered arts institutions. The manifesto and subsequent exchange between Chandler and then MFA director Perry T. Rathbone is available online as part of “Black Power in Print.”

Shortly after Chandler wrote his manifesto, the MFA formed a partnership with the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists (NCAAA). Together with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, the institutions collaborated on the exhibition “Afro‐American Artists: New York and Boston.” On view from May 19 to June 23, 1970, the exhibition was part of larger conversations around equity of representation in cultural organizations at the time.

“Afro American Artists” was curated by Edmund Barry Gaither, then the newly appointed director and curator of the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists and a special consultant to the MFA.

Illustrator Jerry Pinkney and designer Tom McCarthy designed the “Afro-American Artists” catalogue and marketing materials, which featured a photograph by artist Robert Boardman Howard. 

On May 1, 1970, activists gathered in Boston’s Post Office Square to protest the trial of Black Panther national chairman Bobby Seale. The crowd was met with speeches by area captain Doug Miranda and Seale’s then wife Artie Seale. Around the same time, Dana Chandler created a large-scale portrait of Bobby Seale, which he would soon show in “Afro-American Artists.” 

The Black Panther Party, originally known as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, created a platform in October 1966 in response to police violence, discrimination, and inequity. This document was published in every issue of The Black Panther newspaper from 1967 until 1980, when the paper went out of circulation. Chandler read the newspaper and attended party meetings in Boston around the time he crafted and delivered his own manifesto, list of demands, and plan of action to the MFA.

Dana Chandler gives a gallery talk on his portrait of Bobby Seale, the national chairman of the Black Panther Party who was on trial in New Haven, Connecticut, at the time. Under Chandler’s arm is the small head of his then six-year-old daughter, Dahna. In 2021 she recalled that the MFA “did not feel like a space that was welcoming. To be honest, most spaces that were white dominated did not feel like welcoming spaces to me, and the Museum of Fine Arts at the time was not an exception to that rule.”

Following much controversy leading up to “Afro-American Artists” opening, Chandler wrote, “This is a very, very major show.... Its significance to me as a Black man, a Black parent, and a member of a dynamic Black community (as well as one of several catalysts for this exhibit) becomes obvious when one remembers that this will be the first time that my children, my parents, and my community will see a major show about them and of them sponsored by a Black institution in a major white institution. This is both a joy and a tragedy. A joy because of what my children and the children of my community will at last see; a tragedy that it happened so long after my parents’ childhood. However, the joy immeasurably transcends the tragedy.” (From “Notes from a Black Artist,” May 1970. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Archives.)