Government
The Black Panther Party’s History of Urban Street Art
The group’s Minister of Culture designed posters that were glued on the walls of decaying buildings in mostly black and Latino neighborhoods.
One day in 1969 while filming a mural across from the Black Panther Party’s Boston office in Roxbury, I was approached by three black youths. The mural depicted an egg cracking open and giving birth to a Black Panther—I thought they were coming to congratulate me for my interest in it.
Instead, a member of the group informed me that they were appropriating the movie camera “for the community.” When I refused to hand it to them I was punched and pushed to the ground. My first encounter with the Panthers only increased my interest in the ghettos in which they were active.