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[New York]: Committee to Defend the Panthers, [1970]. 4to (11” x 8.5”), pictorial wrappers. [20] pp. CONDITION: Very good.

Essays included in this volume are “Bobby Seale, the Black Panthers and Us White People”; “I Must Begin with an Explanation of my Presense [sic] in the United States” (better known as Genet’s May Day Speech, delivered before a crowd of some 25,000 people demonstrating in support of the Black Panthers in New Haven, where Seale was imprisoned); and “Here and Now for Bobby Seale”; “The Black Panthers are Preparing the Revolution with Precipitous Care. The Revolution Will Come: Time is at their Service,” followed by the Black Panther platform, “What We Want : What We Believe” and a lower wrapper ad and subscription form for the Black Panther Party Community News Service. 

In the spring of 1970, while both Bobby Seale and Huey Newton were incarcerated and after Eldridge Cleaver had been forced to flee the country, Jean Genet spent some two months with the Party, speaking in its support—particularly to white people—at Yale, Columbia, UCLA, Stanford, and other institutions and (sometimes televised) venues across the country. “Charges of racism and government harassment by a writer of Genet’s international stature doubtless touched the American conscience and contributed to favorable trial outcomes for Panther defendants. Huey Newton’s conviction for voluntary manslaughter was reversed on August 6, 1970; the Panther 21 were exonerated on May 13, 1971; less than two weeks later Bobby Seale was acquitted; and Angela Davis was found not guilty on all counts on June 4, 1972” (Sandarg).

REFERENCES: Sandarg, Robert. “Jean Genet and the Black Panther Party,” Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 16, No. 3 (1986): p. 281.

Item #8474

Price: $225.00