The Black Panther Party, Elaine Brown, Emory Douglas: Selected Sources on Revolutionary Art
The latest issue of We Jazz magazine contains my essay "Elaine Brown and the Black Panther Party on Motown." It covers the history of singer Elaine Brown’s self-titled 1973 Motown album, her second with pianist and bandleader Horace Tapscott. The full 10-page piece can be found in We Jazz's summer 2025 issue.
Elaine Brown was a prominent member of the Black Panther Party. The party’s evolving conception of what constituted "revolutionary art" is central to the article. The piece includes a detailed bibliography of the sources used, but since much of this material has been digitized, I am complementing it with the online listing below, which adds links to the full text of nearly all sources.
This material has relevance to the wider history of the Black Panther Party’s relationship to art and culture (often articulated by its minister of culture, artist Emory Douglas), and might be of use beyond the immediate context of my essay.
The most comprehensive online archive of the Black Panther Party’s newspaper, The Black Panther, is currently hosted at the Marxists Internet Archive. A separate, higher quality microfilm digitization used to be available at the Internet Archive, but it has unfortunately been taken down, hopefully only temporarily.
I have excluded from the listing below the post-1970s sources I used as well as exclusive archival material from the Huey P. Newton and Horace Tapscott collections (Stanford University and UCLA, respectively). My article also quotes from unpublished interview transcripts kindly provided by Steven L. Isoardi.
Selected Sources
Douglas, Emory. "Revolutionary Art/Black Liberation." Black Panther, May 18, 1968, 20.
Douglas, Emory. "Position Paper # 1 on Revolutionary Art." Black Panther, October 19, 1968, 5.
Harrison, Linda. "On Cultural Nationalism." Black Panther, February 2, 1969, 6.
Branca, Antonello, dir. Elaine Brown al pianoforte. Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico, Rome.
Branca, Antonello, dir. Elaine Brown live. Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico, Rome.
Tiegel, Eliot. "Vault Springs LP by Black Panther." Billboard, August 23, 1969, 1, 105. [Other similar pieces by Tiegel appeared subsequently, including in Rolling Stone, November 15, 1969, 8, and as liner notes for Seize the Time.]
Brown, Elaine. Liner notes for Seize the Time, by Elaine Brown. Vault SLP-131, 1969, LP. [Also published as "Revolutionary View on Music," Black Panther, October 18, 1969, 8.]
Israeli, Phineas. "Emory Grinds Down the Pigs." Berkeley Tribe, November 14-21, 1969, 11. [Reprinted in Black Panther, November 22, 1969, 6.]
Douglas, Emory. "On Revolutionary Culture." Black Panther, January 3, 1970, 7.
Douglas, Emory. "On Revolutionary Art." Black Panther, January 24, 1970, 5. [Revised version of "Position Paper # 1 on Revolutionary Art."]
Young, Roland. "On Seizing the Time." Berkeley Tribe, February 13-20, 1970, 15.
Douglas, Emory. "Revolutionary Art: A Tool for Liberation." Black Panther, July 4, 1970, 12-13.
Douglas, Emory. "To All Progressive Artist Who Are Struggling against the Racist US Government… World Enemy Number One." Black Panther, August 29, 1970, 20.
Brewer, Brad. "Revolutionary Art." Black Panther, October 24, 1970, 17.
Douglas, Emory. Speech at Augsburg University, Minneapolis, November 12, 1970.
Phyllis and Steve. "Elaine Brown." San Francisco Good Times, March 5, 1971, 10-11.
Douglas, Emory. "Position Paper No. 1 on Art of Survival for the Black Community." Black Panther, April 17, 1971, 9.
Newton, Huey P. To Die for the People. New York: Vintage Books, 1972.
"Art for the People’s Sake: Emory Douglas Speaks at Fisk University." Black Panther, October 21, 1972, 4-5.
Newton, Huey P. Liner notes for Elaine Brown, by Elaine Brown. Black Forum BF 458L, 1973, LP.
"'Until We’re Free:' Elaine Brown’s Latest Album Released." Black Panther, March 24, 1973, 7. [Issue currently unavailable online.]
Yarish, Alice. "Why Elaine Brown Leads Black Panthers." San Francisco Examiner, December 24, 1974, 4.