CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/3/2018

Soul of a Nation… We Shall Survive. Without a Doubt

“Revolutionary art begins with the program that Huey P. Newton instituted with the Black Panther Party,” graphic designer and Black Panther Minister of Culture Emory Douglas wrote in The Black Panther newspaper in 1970. “Revolutionary art, like the Party, is for the whole community and deals with all its problems. It gives the people the correct picture of our struggle whereas the revolutionary ideology gives the people the correct political understanding of our struggle.” Pictured here is Douglas's back cover poster for the February 17, 1970, issue of the paper, which he also designed. (Caption reads: "We shall survive. Without a doubt.") “Deploring imperialism, capitalism and police brutality, Douglas depicted police, politicians and bankers as pigs and rats,” the curators of Soul of a Nation write. “Heroic Black women fight actual rats in substandard housing. Valiant workers are shown as revolutionary soldiers. A smiling child holds his head high, wearing sunglasses whose lenses are photographs of the free breakfast program that the Party implemented to feed children of poor and working families…”