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Stephen Shames

The Black Panthers - Photographs by Stephen Shames Hardcover – July 15, 2006

by Charles E. Jones (Author), Stephen Shames (Photographer), Bobby Seale (Foreword)

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In 1966, as the largely nonviolent Civil Rights movement swept through America, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the legendary Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. Revered by some and vilified by others, the party burst onto the scene with a militant vision for social change and the empowerment of African-Americans. Its methods were so controversial and polarizing that in 1968, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover described the organization as the country's greatest threat to internal security. During the height of the movement, from 1967 to 1973, photographer Stephen Shames had unprecedented access to the organization. He captured not only its public face--street demonstrations, protests and militant armed posturing--but also life behind the scenes, from private Party meetings to Bobby Seale at work on his Oakland mayoral campaign. Shames was prolific and his archive of Panther images is the largest in the world, presenting an uncommonly nuanced portrait of this dynamic social movement. Released on the occasion of the Party's fortieth anniversary, this illuminating publication gathers an astonishing collection of never-before-published images, offering an electrifying visual history. Panther newspapers, posters and other ephemera help convey the ethos of the Panthers and of a transformative period of social upheaval for the whole nation.

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Editorial Reviews

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"Given enormous access to the party, Shames created a historic document of Huey P. Newton, Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver and other Panther leaders in private moments and at public rallies. He also chronicled the party's legions of volunteers manning picket lines, demonstrating at their leaders' trials, serving breakfasts to school children and running free food programs." -- Holly Stuart Hughes --Photo District News

"The Black Panthers: Photographs by Stephen Shames, published to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the founding of the party, is a modestly scaled but excellent survey of the Panthers' early years, combining powerful photographs with a sharp, efficient design (the majority of photos are printed to the edge of the page, unimpeded by text) to present a lucid portrayal of the urgency, pride and determination, as well the love, friendship and occasionally even fun, that drove the movement." -- Holly Myers --LA Weekly

"Photojournalist Stephen Shames met Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton through the anti-war movement in '67; in subsequent years, he captured the lives of Black Panther Party members in striking, time-capsule photos. His new book marks the 40th anniversary of the party's birth." --People Magazine

"Released on the occasion of The Black Panthers' 40th Anniversary, this book of photographs by Stephen Shames, who had access to the organisation during the height of the movement from 1967 to 1973, captures not only street demonstrations and protests but also behind-the-scenes moments." --HotShoe International

"Stephen Shames' powerful and poignant photographs cast a new light on the political party that helped define America in the turbulent 1960s... His book explores the multi-faceted strategy of the Black Panthers all too often obscured by a pre-occupation with aggressive confrontation and armed resistance." -- Beth Wicks --B&W (UK)

Product details

Publisher : Aperture; 1st edition (July 15, 2006)
Language : English
Hardcover : 152 pages
ISBN-10 : 1597110248
ISBN-13 : 978-1597110242
Item Weight : 1.83 pounds
Dimensions : 7.76 x 10.2 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,753,628 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,200 in Photography Collections & Exhibitions (Books)
- #3,856 in Portrait Photography
- #4,193 in Photo Essays (Books)

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Baking Wiz

An eye-opening account of the Black Panther Party

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2013

Verified Purchase

This is an impressive visual story of the Black Panther Party that clearly illustrates the altruist aims of the Party that are easily forgotten.

Helpful

All Power to the People!!!!!!!

Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2006

Verified Purchase

First off peace to all those panthers that are still living and fighting for freedom (FREE ASSATA SHAKUR!!!!!!!!). This book is awesome!!!!!!!!!! Has great historical value, unseen articles and never before seen pictures of the panthers. I was looking for a christmas present for my brothers and it looks like I found it!!!!!!! I love my people and my history and recommend this book for anyone who wants to enrich their book collection or enlighten someone in the dark.

7 people found this helpful

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LaTonya White

Absolutely love this item

Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2014

Verified Purchase

Absolutely love this item.... My parents were so glad to look back and see a piece of history reprinted, thank you so much

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Robin Orlowski

On the prowl

Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2007

I did not live during their heyday, but this book provides an interesting overview of the organization. Their goals jarred American society--then in the Cold War--because it required the concession that a democracy was not treating everybody fairly.

Furthermore successfully winning the war for civil rights was not as simple as African Americans and other historically marginalized communities intergrating into the status quo.

A whole new society had to be built following a LARGE overhaul of the status quo.

A strength of the Black Panther Party was that it encouraged these disadvantaged communities to step up to the plate--and assume responsibilitity for taking care of themselves.

Raising the ire of then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, several of the ten point directives ironically would today be more likely to place the Black Panther Party as proponents of welfare reform--if not dismantlement. They believed in giving people a hand up as opposed to a hand out.

But then Chairman Huey P. Newton attempted to build alliances with 'the women and the gays'. Encouraging Party members to recognize how their own stereotypes undercut a successful creation of the revolutionary society, this directive sharply contrasted with most mainstream 'ultra macho' representations of the Party.

Newton's plan remains all the more radical today when some people attempt to sell out these communities.

2 people found this helpful

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Alfred Johnson

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE BLACK PANTHERS

Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2007

FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Recently I posted on my blog an article passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee protesting the recent arrest of some former Black Panthers for crimes allegedly committed in the early 1970's. Apparently, when the government gets you in its sights you are there forever, especially if you are black. That article got me to thinking back to the days when we of the white left were head over heels in love with the Black Panthers as the epitome of revolutionary manhood (and it was mainly men) and of revolutionary struggle. Well, as we are all painfully aware, those days are long gone although the goals fought for in those days are still desperately in need of completion. Thus, some thoughts about the ups and downs of the Black Panther experience, the most militant and subjectively revolutionary part of the black liberation movement of the 1960's, and its role in the history of black liberation is in order.

It is extremely improbable that the phenomenal rise of the Black Panthers in California, and later elsewhere, would have occurred had it not been for the tidal wave of the black civil rights struggle in the South in the early 1960' s and the various ghetto uprisings in the mid-1960's. The victories achieved in the civil rights struggle, limited as they were, taught masses of blacks how to organize around their own interests. That those victories were limited became apparent with the hardheaded and hard-learned experience that those problems were only the tip of the iceberg for the black community as the struggle moved North and West. This contradiction played itself internally in the black liberation movement and eventually caused a profound political collision between the liberal integrationist, pacific wing epitomized by Martin Luther King and the separatist, nationalist, self-defense oriented Malcolm X wing , of which the Panthers were the heirs. A shorthand way of putting this is the black liberation variant of the age-old tension between revolutionary and reformist strategies for social change. The Black Panthers throughout their rise and fall never did successfully overcome that tension, to the detriment of militant leftists, black and white.

As any photograph taken of the Panthers from the period would demonstrate the Panthers and particularly the central leadership, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Elridge Cleaver among others were not adverse to little provocative demonstrations or shock-value publicity. The FBI, however, early on had other plans for them and they were not pretty. If J. Edgar Hoover saw the placid Martin Luther King-led branch of the civil rights movement as some kind of communist conspiracy then he turned apoplectic at the thought of armed black men asserting their right to bear arms. Since early slavery times that possibility had always been the fear of whites and the response was no different this time. Over a very short period the Hoover-orchestrated federal and state drive against the Panthers left most of the key leaders and cadre dead, in jail, on bail or in hiding, This was not the first time a perceived leftist threat had been deal with this in this way. One can think of the International Workers of the World (Wobblies) in the World War I period, the Communist and Anarchist `red scare' raids and deportations after that war and more recently the anticommunist witch hunts of the 1950's. With this difference, however, in the case of the Panthers there was a concerted effort to kill off every one they could get their hands on.

The repression of the Panthers became so intense that in many ways they became a de facto legal defense organization. That was quite a difference from the wild, revolutionary black nationalist days when they believed that they could go it alone on the streets with a cadre of black street militants in an American version of a `third world' guerilla warfare- driven national liberation front. Their nationalism initially alienated them from the black community (except, perhaps in their home base of Oakland, California) as until very late the ordinary black worker could not relate to the Panther political line despite the fact that even then the East Bay and other locales where the Panthers had influence were solidly working class areas. In short, they were looking in the streets not in the factories to organize the revolution.

The state repression also caused a shift in strategy as a matter of self-defense. However, the price the Panthers would pay for this was a capitulation to Democratic Party reformism through the vehicle of the Communist Party's legal defense organizations, which they latched onto out of desperation. I have personal experience of this change. A fair number of blacks I had known from various earlier political struggles drifted into the Panther revolutionary nationalist orbit in revulsion against Martin Luther King's non-violent strategy for social change, the incessant racism of American society and the barely hidden paternalism of the white liberal establishment and a fair part of the left. For a period in the late 1960's it was almost impossible for white radicals and revolutionaries to talk or to socialize with many Panthers, especially the rank and file. On more than one occasion I was either snubbed by or threatened by Panthers for attempting to argue for an integrated black and white alliance around a common program to fight the beast of American imperialism. Then in the very early seventies all of a sudden I was invited to various Panther support meetings and social affairs. Obviously the line had changed (through the concept of the united front against fascism) and now I was a comrade again

Even a cursory glance at the current American class structure points out that blacks (and more recently Hispanics) are heavily concentrated in the working class so that in order to be successful the struggle for socialism will have to deal with the fact that blacks will be a central component in the leadership of, and the struggle for, those goals. This is where the sad lessons of the demise of the Panthers between the rock of black nationalism and the hard place of democratic reformist politics is especially important. Looking back at the history of the 'sixties' black liberation struggle one can see little turning points where if hard communists had had enough forces they could have shifted the axis of the struggle away from black nationalism and democratic reformism. A working class program to break from the Democratic Party and struggle independently for a freedom/workers party could have gained a cadre. Do you not think that such a program would have not gotten a hearing from the landless rural workers in the South and the black industrial proletariat of the North and West? That, dear readers, is the ultimate tragedy of the demise of the Black Panthers. Enough said.

4 people found this helpful

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Stan B.

The Black Panthers

Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2007

Stephen Shames' The Black Panthers provides some very powerful and insightful documentary images of the Black Panther Party. Shames served as their official photographer- and was actually close to publishing this book decades ago until convicted felon and Vice President Spiro Agnew told his golf buddy (and publishing honcho) that he best not publish any such book.

This book also serves to remind us how our government first denigrates, infiltrates and then obliterates any political movement committed to the direct service of its people and community.

8 people found this helpful

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Frances

Beautiful images

Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2011

The pictures are beautiful, gives you a sense of being there.
Or at least, appreciating the time the photo captured.

Turn off the news and read!

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