Featured

Opinion: State Assembly Leaders Respond to National Park Service Yanking Grant for Black Panther History Project

Published

8 years ago

December 20, 2017

Oakland Post

By Anthony Rendon and Chris Holden

Apparently, history makes some people uncomfortable.

The facts make some people uncomfortable.

Pressure from people with a limited grasp of the past recently led the National Park Service to cancel a University of California historical research project regarding the Black Panther Party.

We know the Black Panthers are controversial. Even the document that awarded the grant refers to “the complex history of the Black Panther Party.”

But the project was for understanding that history, for probing into it, and how it related to historical incidents going back to World War II.

Instead of exploring history, we get an attempt to cover up the past by defunding the project.

The Fraternal Order of Police wrote to President Donald Trump, protesting the grant for the research.

That group has a complex history of its own, including protesting sales of Black Lives Matter t-shirts.

In their letter to the President, they called the Black Panthers “anti-American,” and quoted old FBI statements labeling it as “a black extremist group” advocating the “overthrow of the U.S. Government.”

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover listed the Black Panthers as a hate group.

Yet, the FBI’s anti-Black Panther history goes far beyond that. The Black Panthers were subjected to constant surveillance, infiltration and attempts to discredit their activities.

Its members were criminalized, attacked, and sometimes killed for their pursuit of justice in the Black community.

Much of this was covered in an exhibit this year at the Oakland Museum of California. It is history.

Assemblymember Chris Holden

A thorough look at the Panthers’ history would include – as the Oakland museum did – the Party’s original 10 “wants.” They started with freedom, employment, and education, before getting to point 7: “We want an immediate end to police brutality and the murder of black people.”

Officially sanctioned violence against Blacks is a fact of American history, going back to the Atlantic Slave Trade.

The letter opposing the National Park Service grant barely touches on that shameful past, and in a skewed manner.

The letter suggests a parallel between its opposition to the research project and opposition to memorials to the Confederacy that subjugated Blacks as slaves. That is wrong.

To call Confederate markers, as the letter does, “memorials to aspects of the darker times in our history,” glosses over the 400-year legacy of the horrors inflicted on African Americans and on our country by the Confederacy.

Today, communities of color still face negative reactions for organizing to pursue justice and equality in the face of incidents of peace officer violence.

Groups like Black Lives Matter are seen as threats to a conservative world view. Those who share that view use the killing of a park ranger by a Panther as an excuse to defund the Black Panther project.

That is an attempt to cover up history.

Some members of the Black Panthers committed inexcusable acts. We won’t cover that up.

But we also know Black Panthers filled a void in the social safety net for its community through programs such as benefits counseling; drug/alcohol abuse awareness programs; free food, dental, and health programs; and much more.

Speaker Anthony Rendon

The historical research project that has been aborted promised to collect oral histories by those affected by the Black Panthers and their movement.

The project award document put out by the Parks Service speaks to an effort to “truthfully” address the legacy of the Black Panthers.

Those who want to stifle the project seem afraid to engage in meaningful dialogue about the past.

If history, any history, offers a lesson to us, it is that they will not be successful in the long run.

It has been suggested by Martin Luther King, Jr. and by Theodore Parker, a 19^th-century anti-slavery activist, that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice.

Maybe it’s right for opponents of this research to be afraid of history, because the facts suggest history will not be kind to them.

Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) is the 70th Speaker of the California State Assembly. Assemblymember Chris Holden is the Chair of the California Black Caucus (D-Pasadena).

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Up Next

Oakland Natives Set to Debut Play Off-Broadway in January

Don't Miss

Is Oakland Doing Enough to Protect the Environment & Combat Climate Change?

Oakland Post

Click to comment

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of April 8 – 14, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 8 – 14, 2026

Published

4 hours ago

April 10, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of April 1 – 7, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 1 – 7, 2026

Published

4 days ago

April 6, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

#NNPA BlackPress

Black Artists in America, Installation Three Wraps at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens

TRI-STATE DEFENDER — With 50+ paintings, sculptures and assemblages, the exhibit features artists like Varnette Honeywood from Los Angeles, whose pieces appeared in Bill Coby’s private collection (before they were auctioned off) and on “The Cosby Show.” Also included are works by Alonzo Davis, another Los Angeles artist who opened one of the first galleries there where Black Artists could exhibit.

Published

2 weeks ago

March 24, 2026

admin

By Candace A. Gray | Tri-State Defender

The tulips gleefully greet those who enter the gates at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens on an almost spring day. More than 650,000 bulbs of various hues are currently on display. And they are truly breathtaking.

Inside the gallery, and equally as breathtaking, is the “Black Artists in America, From the Bicentennial to September 11” exhibit, which runs through Sunday, March 29. This is the third installment of a three-part series that started years ago and illustrates part of the Black experience through visual arts in the 20th century.

“This story picks up where part two left off,’’ said Kevin Sharp, the Linda W. and S. Herbert Rhea director for the Dixon. “This era is when we really start to see the emergence of these important Black artists’ agency and freedom shine through. They start to say and express what they want to, and it was a really beautiful time.”

With 50+ paintings, sculptures and assemblages, the exhibit features artists like Varnette Honeywood from Los Angeles, whose pieces appeared in Bill Coby’s private collection (before they were auctioned off) and on “The Cosby Show.” Also included are works by Alonzo Davis, another Los Angeles artist who opened one of the first galleries there where Black Artists could exhibit.

“Though [Davis] was from LA, he actually lived in Memphis for a decade,” said Sharp. “He was a dean at Memphis College of Art, and later opened the first gallery in New York owned and operated by black curators.”

Another featured artist is former NFL player, Ernie Barnes. His work is distinctive. Where have you seen one of his most popular paintings, Sugar Shack? On the end scene and credits of the hit show “Good Times.” His piece Saturday Night, Durham, North Carolina, 1974 is in this collection.

Memphis native James Little’s “The War Baby: The Triptych” is among more than 50 works featured in “Black Artists in America, From the Bicentennial to September 11” at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, the final installment of a three-part series highlighting the impact and evolution of Black artists through 2011.

The exhibit features other artists with Memphis ties, including abstract painter James Little, who was raised in a segregated Memphis and attended Memphis Academy of Art (before it was Memphis College of Art). He later moved to New York, became a teacher and an internationally acclaimed fixture in the art world in 2022 when he was named a Whitney Biennial selected artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Other artists like Romare Bearden, who had a Southern experience but lived up North, were featured in all three installments.

“During this period of time, he was a major figure,” said Sharp. “He wrote one of the first books on the history of African American art during a time when there were more Black academics, art teachers, more Black everything!”

Speaking of Black educators, Sharp said the head curator behind this tri-part series and Dixon’s partner in the arts is Earnestine Jenkins, Ph.D., an art history professor at the University of Memphis, who also earned a Master of Arts degree from Memphis State University (now UofM). “We began working with Dr. Jenkins in 2018,” he said.

Sharp explained that it takes a team of curators, registrars, counterparts at other museums, and more, about three years to assemble an exhibit like this. It came together quite seamlessly, he added. Each room conjured up more jaw-dropping “wows” than the one before it. Each piece worked with the others to tell the story of Black people and their collective experience during this time period.

One of the last artists about whom Sharp shared information was Bettye Saar, who will turn 100 years old this year. She’s been working in Los Angeles for 80 years and is finally getting her due. Her medium is collages or assemblages, and an incredible work of hers is on display. She’s married to an artist and has two daughters, also artists.

The exhibit catalogue bears some of these artists’ stories, among other scholarly information.

The exhibit, presented by the Joe Orgill Family Fund for Exhibitions, is culturally and colorfully rich. It is a must see and admission to the Dixon is free.

Visit https://www.dixon.org/ to learn more.

Fun Facts: An original James Little design lives in the flooring of the basketball court at Tom Lee Park, and he makes and mixes his own paint colors.