Latest news with #BlackPanthers
The Guardian
23-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘I was one of the few people able to document it': shooting the Black Panthers
'They understood the media and culture,' says Stephen Shames of the Black Panthers, who he photographed in the 1960s and 70s. 'Black leather jackets and berets like the French Resistance – they commanded attention and projected strength and hope with their 'hip' clothes and discipline.' This image shows Angela Davis speaking in Defermery park at a Free Huey rally. This photo is Angela Davis's portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC. Black Panthers and Revolution is at Amar Gallery, London, until 6 July Black Panther chairman Bobby Seale speaks at the first national United Front Against Fascism conference. About 4,000 delegates, most of them white, came from all over the nation. Seale announced that control of police would be the Front's first project. The Black Panther Party was one of the most influential responses to racism and inequality in American history. The Panthers advocated armed self-defence to counter police brutality, and initiated a programme of patrolling the police with guns and law books On 28 October 1967, Oakland police officer John Frey was shot to death in an altercation with Huey P Newton during a traffic stop. In the stop, Newton and backup officer Herbert Heanes also suffered gunshot wounds. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter at trial, but the conviction was later overturned Black Panthers founder Huey P Newton claimed that he had been falsely accused, leading to the 'Free Huey' campaign, which then developed alliances with numerous individuals, students and anti-war activists, 'advancing an anti-imperialist political ideology that linked the oppression of antiwar protesters to the oppression of blacks and Vietnamese'. This incident gained the party even wider recognition by the radical American left. Newton was released after three years, when his conviction was reversed on appeal Bobby Seale was taken off the street as he left his wedding ceremony on 19 August 1969. He was charged with starting the riots at the 1968 Democratic convention. Shames writes: 'James Baldwin came to visit Bobby when he was in the San Francisco county jail before being sent to Chicago for the Chicago Eight trial, where Bobby was bound and gagged by Judge Hoffman. I was honoured to be able to witness these two giants in conversation. They became lifelong friends, meeting together often' Black Panther founders Bobby Seale and Huey P Newton stand in front of their national headquarters. Seale believed that 'no kid should be running around hungry in school', a simple credo that lead FBI director J Edgar Hoover to call the breakfast programme, 'the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralise the BPP and destroy what it stands for' White supporters hold Free Huey signs at a rally in front of the Alameda county courthouse where Black Panther minister of defence, Huey P Newton, was on trial for killing an Oakland policeman Davis smokes a cigarette as she relaxes in the backyard of a supporter's house during her trial. 'This is a private moment,' says Shames. 'The Panthers introduced me to Angela and she allowed me to be present during private moments like this with her family and support team. Photographs like this are what make this exhibit at the Amar Gallery so special - the behind the scenes moments that I was one of the few people to be able to document' A child at the Intercommunal Youth Institute, and the Oakland Community School. In 1970, in Oakland, David Hilliard created the idea for the first full-time liberation day school. This school, and its attendant dormitories in Oakland and Berkeley, was simply called the Children's House. This school concept, directed by Majeda Smith and a team of BPP members became the way in which sons and daughters of BPP members were educated Black Panthers carry George Jackson's coffin into St Augustine's church. In 1961, Jackson was convicted of armed robbery (as a teenager stealing $70 at gunpoint) and sentenced to one year to life in prison. During his first years at San Quentin state prison, Jackson became involved in revolutionary activity, as well as assaults on guards and fellow inmates. This behaviour was used to justify his continued incarceration on an indeterminate sentence. Jackson was killed on 21 August 1971 while in the maximum security prison Martin Luther King Jr speaks at the University of California at Berkeley. The speech about the Vietnam war drew thousands of students George Murray, minister of education for the Black Panther Party, speaks at a Free Huey rally in Defermery Park, which the Panthers re-named Bobby Hutton Park, in honour of their slain 17-year-old comrade. Murray was a leader of the San Francisco State student strike, which was put down by governor Ronald Reagan. Far left is Kathleen Cleaver, communications secretary and the first female member of the party's decision-making Central Committee
National Post
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- National Post
Sly Stone, groundbreaking '60s funk rock musician, dies at 82
Article content By the early '70s, Stone himself was beginning a descent from which he never recovered, driven by the pressures of fame and the added burden of Black fame. His record company was anxious for more hits, while the Black Panthers were pressing him to drop the white members from his group. After moving from the Bay Area to Los Angeles in 1970, he became increasingly hooked on cocaine and erratic in his behavior. Article content On 'Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),' Stone had warned: 'Dying young is hard to take/selling out is harder.' Late in 1971, he released 'There's a Riot Going On,' one of the grimmest, most uncompromising records ever to top the album charts. The sound was dense and murky (Sly was among the first musicians to use drum machines), the mood reflective ('Family Affair'), fearful ('Runnin' Away') and despairing: 'Time, they say, is the answer _ but I don't believe it,' Sly sings on 'Time.' The fast, funky pace of the original 'Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)' was slowed, stretched and retitled 'Thank You For Talkin' to Me, Africa.' Article content By the end of the decade, Sly and the Family Stone had broken up and Sly was releasing solo records with such unmet promises as 'Heard You Missed Me, Well I'm Back' and 'Back On the Right Track.' Most of the news he made over the following decades was of drug busts, financial troubles and mishaps on stage. Sly and the Family Stone was inducted into the Rock & Roll of Fame in 1993 and honored in 2006 at the Grammy Awards, but Sly released just one album after the early '80s, 'I'm Back! Family & Friends,' much of it updated recordings of his old hits. Article content He was born Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas, and raised in Vallejo, California, the second of five children in a close, religious family. Sylvester became 'Sly' by accident, when a teacher mistakenly spelled his name 'Slyvester.' Article content He loved performing so much that his mother alleged he would cry if the congregation in church didn't respond when he sang before it. He was so gifted and ambitious that by age 4 he had sung on stage at a Sam Cooke show and by age 11 had mastered several instruments and recorded a gospel song with his siblings. He was so committed to the races working together that in his teens and early 20s he was playing in local bands that included Black and white members and was becoming known around the Bay Area as a deejay equally willing to play the Beatles and rhythm and blues acts. Article content 'A Whole New Thing' came out in 1967, soon followed by the single 'Dance to the Music,' in which each member was granted a moment of introduction as the song rightly proclaimed a 'brand new beat.' In December 1968, the group appeared on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' and performed a medley that included 'Dance to the Music' and 'Everyday People.' Before the set began, Sly turned to the audience and recited a brief passage from his song 'Are You Ready': Article content
The National
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
REVIEW: Martin Luther King drama hits the heights, and a technical low
King calls room service and requests a coffee. A young maid by the name of Camae arrives with his beverage. So begins American dramatist Katori Hall's Olivier Award-winning 2009 play The Mountaintop. If you are – as I am in writing reviews – averse to spoilers, Hall's drama is a tricky proposition. It is necessary, yet possibly saying too much, to reveal that the fictional figure of Camae is not what she seems. The maid is Black, working class, clever, fast talking, flirtatious, irreverent, yet very much in respectful awe of King. As such, this multifaceted character is a brilliant foil to Hall's imagined MLK. King himself emerges – in Hall's characterisation – as a complex combination of traits inspired by both his public persona and what we know of his private biography. Inevitably – given the ever-present threats against his life – he is afraid for his person. His conversation with Camae explores the tussle between fear, on the one side, and determination, faith and a sense of purpose, on the other. Camae's respect for King does not prevent her from invoking Black radicals such as Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, and from airing opinions on the struggle for racial justice that are at odds with MLK's insistence on non-violent resistance. READ MORE: 'Joy, celebration and warmth' of Palestinian art to be showcased at Edinburgh Fringe In one particularly memorable scene, she even imagines a new, radically Black nationalist rhetoric for King. Yet the dialogue between the pair is so deftly wrought, so believable in its humour, affection and growing familiarity that its political dimension never comes close to polemic. The characters' interactions reflect to a considerable degree MLK's well-established 'weakness' where his extra-marital relations with women were concerned. In this, and in other – by turns delightful and anguished – aspects, the play's broad humanism is inflected with feminism. Caleb Roberts (MLK) and Shannon Hayes (Camae) create a powerful and transfixing theatrical duet as they perform on set designer Hyemi Shin's impressive set (a vertiginous rendering of King's motel room). Caleb Roberts Although contrasting in so many ways, the actors generate characters who are in equal measure charismatic and vulnerable, all the better for Camae to guide King through a dark night of the soul and up to the titular mountaintop. Indeed, so spellbinding are the actors that one cannot help but feel disappointed by the needless distraction – in what should have been a shuddering denouement – of very visible stagehands invading the stage in the crucial final scene. This misjudgement on the part of acclaimed director Rikki Henry seriously undermines an otherwise sure-footed staging. The director exhibits a misplaced loyalty to a visual metaphor for which he and his team have been unable to find a satisfactory technical solution. Which is a great shame as, otherwise, this production does excellent justice to Hall's celebrated drama. Until June 21:
Metro
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Beyoncé's London Cowboy Carter show made me homesick for a US that doesn't exist
When Beyoncé sang the American national anthem on the first night of her London Cowboy Carter tour dates, I instinctively placed my cowboy hat over my heart, unsure whether I was pledging allegiance to the US flag or Beyoncé herself. As Tottenham Hotspur Stadium filled with (nearly) 62,000 Londoners in chaps, Levi's, cowboy boots, and the occasional bolo tie, I bizarrely felt more connected to the country I left nearly three years ago than I ever did during my final decade living there. That might be because Beyoncé presents a version of the American South not as it is, but as it could be: inclusive, textured, full of contradiction and pride, defiant of unjust power structures, and rooted in the stories of people who refused to disappear – no matter how hard the world tried to erase them. This defiance is nothing new for her. Beyoncé has long navigated the delicate balance between American patriotism and protest. She's been criticized for everything from her 2016 Super Bowl performance that paid tribute to the Black Panthers, to her support of Black Lives Matter, to the visual album Lemonade, which unapologetically explored infidelity, rage, and Black womanhood. And then there's the country music establishment, which has famously tried to keep Beyonce on the outside. Which is why this concert felt revolutionary in a time of political was reclaiming a genre, a flag, and a cultural identity, not just for herself, but for everyone who's ever been told they don't belong. While I was moved to tears repeatedly by this message, I did wonder if the concert didn't strike an interesting chord with a UK crowd. Could it be alienating to anyone who didn't grow up listening to Willie Nelson in the backseat of their daddy's pickup? Maybe. But it doesn't matter. Even if the images of pioneering black country singer Sister Rosetta Thorpe were lost on you or if you didn't immediately recognise a famous Texas line dance when it broke out on stage, the power of the performance could not be ignored. While the country album's contents take up almost half the set, there was something for everyone. Fans were treated to Crazy In Love, If I Were A Boy, Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It), a very short rendition of To the Left, Daddy Lessons from Lemonade, and several hits from Renaissance. It's a goose-bump-inducing pleasure just to watch her strut the length of the stage and flip her hair, so when she joins in the choreography, it feels like staggering generosity from a star with nothing left to prove. Perhaps the most moving moment of the show came when the singer stood completely motionless in a dress that, via projection, changed colors and designs in sync with the soaring notes of the song Daughter. It's a song that references the violence and toxic Christianity woven into the fabric of Southern culture, and when she sings:'Now I ripped your dress and you're all black and blue/ Look what you made me do..' it's with all the power and perspective of a Shakespearan monologue. So when a message that read, 'THIS IS THEATRE' later flashed across the screen, it felt undeniably true. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The pop diva spoke infrequently, but when she did, there was the delightful sense of a performer who no longer needs to worry about putting on airs or sticking too tightly to a script. Almost counterintuitively, becoming the most famous person in the world allows Beyoncé the freedom to be herself. She grinned at the crowd after every voice in the place shouted along to Box to the Left, giggling and saying into the mic: 'Did y'all know every world to that thang? Did that just happen like that?' One of the most talked-about moments of the night came during her performance of Protector. As she sang, her eldest daughter, Blue Ivy – who performs as a backup dancer throughout the show – stood just behind her. Then, to a roar of surprise and delight from the crowd, seven-year-old Rumi walked on stage and wrapped her arms around her mother in a tender hug. There had been speculation about whether Rumi would appear during the London shows, so the eruption of cheers visibly delighted the little girl, and Beyoncé's beaming smile read as nothing but genuine pride. With another artist, this level of family involvement might risk feeling gimmicky or even exploitative. But Beyoncé – who's long past the point of doing anything she doesn't want to – makes it feel like something else entirely: a mother sharing her passion with her daughters and loving them boldly, in front of the world. More Trending My only criticism worth mentioning has nothing to do with Beyonce or her crew. Bizarrely, given that it's a football stadium, the venue seemed startlingly unprepared for the crowd's exit. A chaotic queue system for the overground descended into confused chaos, and buses literally passed by crowds of concertgoers, unwilling or unable to take on the cowboy-hat-clad masses. But a two-and-a-half hour journey home is a small price to pay for a night that combined the best of stadium concerts, political commentary, theatre, and star power so bright it was almost blinding. Thanks to Beyonce, for the first time in a long time, I feel proud to be an American. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Beyonce suffers wardrobe malfunction as trousers drop mid-performance in London MORE: Traffic guitarist Dave Mason cancels all 2025 tour dates due to 'ongoing health issues' MORE: 'I saw Beyonce's most hot and provocative show yet – this flaw made it better'
Axios
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Hip hop collides with Silicon Valley in new SF musical "Co-Founders"
A new hip hop musical tells a uniquely Bay Area story: A young Oakland coder hacks her way into San Francisco's most competitive startup accelerator, intent on saving her home from gentrification. Driving the news: " Co-Founders" draws from the region's hip hop roots while incorporating traditions from soul, gospel, funk, jazz, R&B and more to pay homage to the people who make Silicon Valley what it is. Zoom in: The musical explores the tension underlying a Black woman trying to enter circles she's long been excluded from while investigating the perils of tech when it comes to grief. The brainchild of Ryan Nicole Austin, Beau Lewis and Adesha Adefela, "Co-Founders" is now playing at American Conservatory Theater's Strand Theater (1127 Market St.) through July 6. What they're saying: The fingerprint of historical figures like the Black Panthers is reflected in the music and parallels the grit needed to pave your way in the tech world, according to Austin. "That's where the synergy is with the spirit of the entrepreneur," she told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's like, 'Hey, I gotta make something out of nothing, and even though everything around me says no, I know that I have it within me to say yes.'" My thought bubble: This musical tackles head-on the intersections of tech, race and class, reminding us that seemingly siloed corners of the Bay are never as disparate as they seem. Fun fact: The production includes interactions between on-stage actors and a holographic avatar controlled by an actor backstage via live-motion capture.
