Another view from ’60s of Black Panthers

Book offers another view from '60s of Black Panthers

http://www.thenewstribune.com/ae/books/story/846555.html

Images: Life magazine photographer documented group

LAURA CASEY; Contra Costa Times
Published: 08/16/09

OAKLAND, Calif. ­ It was the summer of 1968. Oakland was the
epicenter of the Black Panther Party movement, and its members were
fighting for the release of party co-founder Huey P. Newton, jailed
after being accused of shooting an Oakland police officer to death.

Now-defunct Life magazine wanted a story on the Black Panthers and
asked photographer Howard L. Bingham to shoot scenes around Oakland
and Los Angeles while reporter Gilbert Moore took notes.

Bingham took nearly 10,000 pictures ­ from stunning portraits of
Panther leaders to Panther gatherings outside the Alameda County
Courthouse in Oakland ­ while Moore filled three dozen notebooks over
several months following the revolutionary group.

His photos, and Moore's story, were never published by Life.

This month, California-based AMMO Books is releasing Bingham's
unpublished work in a stunning new coffee table book, "Howard L.
Bingham's Black Panthers 1968" ($44.95). The book displays not only
Bingham's photos but essays from Moore, biographies on Panther
members and guest essays from curators of museums that focus on black issues.

"I think the book now really shows a history of the Panthers and what
was going on at the time," Bingham says. "And the same thing the
Panthers wanted is being fought for now by other organizations. Maybe
they aren't as dramatic as the Panthers were, but they're around."

The Black Panther Party was a controversial 1960s organization
established to promote black issues and black power. It had a
10-point plan that called for freedom, employment, decent housing and
education, free health care and the end to police brutality. The
party eventually fell apart in the 1970s after years of infighting,
turmoil and violence.

STARTING WITH RIOTS

You may have heard Bingham's name before; he is the personal
photographer for Muhammad Ali and Bill Cosby and has been Ali's best
friend for four decades.

He started in journalism as a photographer for the black newspaper
The Los Angeles Sentinel and eventually took photos of riots in San
Francisco, Detroit and Chicago.

"Wherever riots started, Howard Bingham went," he says.

The riots during the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention changed him.

After seeing Chicago police push a group of people into a window,
Bingham told a rioter that, if he had a gun, something else would
have happened that day.

"That's when I said I wasn't going to do any more riots," he says.

When Life magazine editors decided they wanted a story on the Black
Panthers, Bingham says they had to go through Eldridge Cleaver,
acting as chief spokesman for the Panthers after Newton was arrested.
Cleaver insisted that Bingham be assigned to the story, he says.

"I had never met Eldridge before. He had heard about me through
Muhammad Ali," he says.

Throughout the months he and Moore covered the Panther story, Bingham
took photos of Eldridge Cleaver and his wife, Kathleen Neal Cleaver,
in their San Francisco home. He took photos of "Free Huey" rallies at
DeFremery Park in Oakland and photos at the Panther headquarters.

Many images collected in the book are striking not because they show
a tremendous amount of weaponry the Panthers were famous for carrying
but because they show a humanity underneath the black leather and
black berets the Panthers often wore.

For example, a head-shot portrait of Kathleen Neal Cleaver at her
attorney's office shows a young woman with sharp eyes, a soft smile
and delicate Afro. She could be a teacher or a librarian, not the
hard-scrabbled revolutionary activist shown several pages later
climbing a protest bus in DeFremery Park.

OUTCOME

Writer Moore says Life magazine never published his story, despite
several drafts, because of its conservative bent.

"They could do nothing less than print a story chastising the Black
Panthers for hating policemen so much and for hating the glorious
American system and wanting to overthrow the government," he says.
Moore's experience with the Panthers, and how it affected him as a
black American, was eventually published as the definitive novel "A
Special Rage" in 1971 and republished in 1993 as simply "Rage."

None of the still-living Panthers contacted for this story have seen
the book or are aware of it being published.

Today, Moore is writing a new novel about marijuana addiction and
Bingham, 70, is called by professional sports stars and celebrities
to shoot photographs.

.