In 1968, FBI chief, J. Edgar Hoover vilified the Black Panthers as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States." That same year photographers Pirkle Jones and wife, Ruth-Marion Baruch documented the Black Panthers for an exhibition at the De Young Museum in San Francisco. Their hope was to expose the public to the Panthers as they saw them - symbols of pride and strength - rather than the way they were portrayed in the media. Jones and Baruch were given unprecedented access to the inner circle of the Black Panther Party. At intimate meetings, family gatherings and public demonstrations we witness, through these incredibly moving photographs, a unique crusade for dignity and self-definition. "Black Panthers 1968" is a historic documentation of this fascinating movement, so challenging and controversial to our culture that it was virtually erased from established texts and American history books.

Black Panther Party Photo Exhibit Reframes Image 

JOHN GELUARDI / Berkeley Daily Planet 15apr03

[More on the Black Panther Party]

“We are challenging the memory that Blank Panthers were brutal, the memory that they were violent, and the memory that they were criminal,” said UC Berkeley professor Percy Hintzen at a lecture Sunday. The challenge is in photographs — taken over a four-month period in 1968 — now on display at the Berkeley Art Museum.

Hintzen, chair of African American studies, called the exhibit “a project of ‘re-memory.’ ”

Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver
Photo: Pirkle Jones 14jul68*

Former Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver spoke at the lecture, praising the series of photographs for focusing on the group’s civic reform efforts in the 1960s, helping temper the violent reputation for which the Bay Area radical liberation group became infamous.

Husband and wife photographers Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones photographed the Black Panther Party members at a time when the radical organization was reeling from the pending trial of co-founder Huey P. Newton for the alleged murder of Oakland Police Officer John Frey. It was also a time when local, state and federal law enforcement agencies were pressuring the organization after FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called the Panthers “the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States.”

Pirkle Jones & Kathleen Cleaver at 
Berkeley Art Museum photo exhibit 
Photo: Paul Goettlich 13apr03

According to Cleaver, the Baruch and Jones photos tell a different story. She said they depict a very young, idealistic and organized group intent on making changes in a community that had long suffered the indignities of brutal oppression and little opportunity.

About 250 people, including 15 ex-Panthers, filed into the museum’s theater Sunday to listen to Cleaver discuss the liberation movement while she flipped through a sampling of photos from the exhibit. She paused for a long time at a portrait of an unidentified young man standing guard outside a Black Panther meeting.

“He is intense, completely concentrated and prepared to deal with any situation that arises,” she said. “It’s important to remember that most of the Panthers were teenagers. They were young, vulnerable, committed kids who put their lives on the line to better their community.”

Black Panther Huey P Newton in Alameda Co. Courthouse Jail 
Photo: Ruth-Marion Baruch 26sep68*

A jail photo of Newton just after he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Frey’s killing captures the youthful resolve of movement, she said. His handsome face is relaxed, his large eyes open and hopeful despite the recent conviction.

“He seemed to be very much the leader,” wrote Baruch, who passed away in 1997, about the photo. “Sensitive and responsive, Huey’s face was a joy to photograph.”

One goal of the photo exhibition, running concurrently with a series of documentaries on the Black Panther Party at the Pacific Film Archive, is to change the image of the Black Panthers, said Hintzen.

He said Newton and Bobby Seale, then students at Merritt College, founded the Black Panther Party in 1966 to challenge a society based on racism, oppression and inequality.

Hintzen described the Panther’s founding doctrine, known as the 10 Point Program, which sought to establish basic rights for the black community. The program demanded opportunities for housing, education and employment and an end to police brutality.

Many of the exhibit photos focus on the Black Panther ethics of education and community service. There are several classroom photos of professor George Murray, a Panther who taught at San Francisco State University, as well as reading programs that were offered to the rank and file Panthers.

Photos of the Panther-sponsored St. Augustine’s Breakfast Program for black children are also included in the exhibit, which runs through June 29.

“It was an exciting, exhilarating and important time,” Cleaver said. “We were doing to politics what Jimmy Hendrix was doing to music.”

Former Panther Elder Freeman, a painter who still lives in Oakland, said he was glad to see the photography exhibit highlighting the group’s accomplishments.

“I very proud to see attention given to the Breakfast Program and the Panther emphasis on education and the voter registration drives,” he said. “We really felt we could make a change.”

Pirkle Jones, 86, said he and his wife thought a photo essay on the Panthers would be interesting, and they proposed the project to Jack McGregor, then director of the de Young Museum. McGregor agreed to support the project.

“We had no idea in the world that this would become as important as it did,” Jones said. “This is what we saw and this is what we felt.”

source: http://www.berkeleydaily.org/article.cfm?issue=04-15-03&storyID=16474 17apr03

• Photos above are from Black Panthers 1968 Photographs by Ruth Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones. Introduction by Kathleen Cleaver. Greybull Press, Los Angeles, CA. (2002) ISBN 0-9672366-9-X. Library of Congress Control Number 200106638. First edition, 137 black and white photographs, ~ 10"x12", hardbound, limited to 4,000 casebound copies. For a flash video presentation by Greybull Press, go to http://www.greybullpress.com/gb_main/panther.html
• Black Panther Party

"We photographed the Black Panthers intensively form July into October of 1968, during the peak of a historic period and in the Bay Area, where the Black Panther National Headquarters is located. We couldn’t possibly photograph all the aspects of this virile, rapid growing and deep rooted movement, but we can show you: this is what we saw, this is what we felt, these are the people."

Pirkle Jones and Ruth-Marion Baruch, 1969