Manchester

• 

Manchester: Black Panther Emory Douglas at Urbis

Discover the work of the leading 1960s graphic artist and civil rights campaigner in a new show at Urbis

Despite the strenuous efforts of the Chinese government, this year’s Beijing Olympics may well be remembered as much for their political unrest as their athletic achievements. But using the Games as a focus for protest is nothing new: we need only look back to the 1968 Mexico Olympics to see that this year’s activists took their lessons from history. It was here, 40 years ago, that American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos subverted the deliberately apolitical Games by using the ‘black power’ salute as they collected their medals. This was no idle gesture: in drawing attention to America’s appalling civil rights record, the duo turned the country against them and effectively ended their athletic careers.

A new exhibition at Urbis traces the career of graphic artist and civil rights campaigner Emory Douglas, one of the leading lights of the Black Panther Party. It was from the Black Panthers that Smith and Carlos took advice, and it was the work of Emory Douglas that formed and shaped much of the Party’s radical politics and direct (and sometimes violent) action. The show is no walk in the park. Alongside Douglas’s posters, cartoons and excerpts from the Party’s weekly newspaper is disturbing footage of the police brutality and mob ‘justice’ that plagued America’s black communities during the 1960s. In this context, Douglas’s now-famous slogans – 'All Power to the People' and 'Revolution in our Lifetime' – suddenly take on poignant meaning. This is a show that reveals just how far America has come since those dark days – and just how far we’ve all yet to go.
Black Panther: Emory Douglas and the Art of Revolution, Urbis, Cathedral Gardens, M4 3BG (605 8200/www.urbis.org.uk). October 30 2008-April 2009; Sun-Wed 10am-6pm, Thurs-Sat 10am-8pm; free.

• Did you find this useful? Yes No
• 

---