‘I was one of the few people able to document it': shooting the Black Panthers
'They understood the media and culture,' says Stephen Shames of the Black Panthers, who he photographed in the 1960s and 70s. 'Black leather jackets and berets like the French Resistance – they commanded attention and projected strength and hope with their 'hip' clothes and discipline.' This image shows Angela Davis speaking in Defermery park at a Free Huey rally. This photo is Angela Davis's portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC. Black Panthers and Revolution is at Amar Gallery, London, until 6 July
Black Panther chairman Bobby Seale speaks at the first national United Front Against Fascism conference. About 4,000 delegates, most of them white, came from all over the nation. Seale announced that control of police would be the Front's first project. The Black Panther Party was one of the most influential responses to racism and inequality in American history. The Panthers advocated armed self-defence to counter police brutality, and initiated a programme of patrolling the police with guns and law books
On 28 October 1967, Oakland police officer John Frey was shot to death in an altercation with Huey P Newton during a traffic stop. In the stop, Newton and backup officer Herbert Heanes also suffered gunshot wounds. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter at trial, but the conviction was later overturned
Black Panthers founder Huey P Newton claimed that he had been falsely accused, leading to the 'Free Huey' campaign, which then developed alliances with numerous individuals, students and anti-war activists, 'advancing an anti-imperialist political ideology that linked the oppression of antiwar protesters to the oppression of blacks and Vietnamese'. This incident gained the party even wider recognition by the radical American left. Newton was released after three years, when his conviction was reversed on appeal
Bobby Seale was taken off the street as he left his wedding ceremony on 19 August 1969. He was charged with starting the riots at the 1968 Democratic convention. Shames writes: 'James Baldwin came to visit Bobby when he was in the San Francisco county jail before being sent to Chicago for the Chicago Eight trial, where Bobby was bound and gagged by Judge Hoffman. I was honoured to be able to witness these two giants in conversation. They became lifelong friends, meeting together often'
Black Panther founders Bobby Seale and Huey P Newton stand in front of their national headquarters. Seale believed that 'no kid should be running around hungry in school', a simple credo that lead FBI director J Edgar Hoover to call the breakfast programme, 'the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralise the BPP and destroy what it stands for'
White supporters hold Free Huey signs at a rally in front of the Alameda county courthouse where Black Panther minister of defence, Huey P Newton, was on trial for killing an Oakland policeman
Davis smokes a cigarette as she relaxes in the backyard of a supporter's house during her trial. 'This is a private moment,' says Shames. 'The Panthers introduced me to Angela and she allowed me to be present during private moments like this with her family and support team. Photographs like this are what make this exhibit at the Amar Gallery so special - the behind the scenes moments that I was one of the few people to be able to document'
A child at the Intercommunal Youth Institute, and the Oakland Community School. In 1970, in Oakland, David Hilliard created the idea for the first full-time liberation day school. This school, and its attendant dormitories in Oakland and Berkeley, was simply called the Children's House. This school concept, directed by Majeda Smith and a team of BPP members became the way in which sons and daughters of BPP members were educated
Black Panthers carry George Jackson's coffin into St Augustine's church. In 1961, Jackson was convicted of armed robbery (as a teenager stealing $70 at gunpoint) and sentenced to one year to life in prison. During his first years at San Quentin state prison, Jackson became involved in revolutionary activity, as well as assaults on guards and fellow inmates. This behaviour was used to justify his continued incarceration on an indeterminate sentence. Jackson was killed on 21 August 1971 while in the maximum security prison
Martin Luther King Jr speaks at the University of California at Berkeley. The speech about the Vietnam war drew thousands of students
George Murray, minister of education for the Black Panther Party, speaks at a Free Huey rally in Defermery Park, which the Panthers re-named Bobby Hutton Park, in honour of their slain 17-year-old comrade. Murray was a leader of the San Francisco State student strike, which was put down by governor Ronald Reagan. Far left is Kathleen Cleaver, communications secretary and the first female member of the party's decision-making Central Committee
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Such court rulings temporarily blocking Trump's moves to deport people without due process or unilaterally impose widespread tariffs by declaring his actions as probably illegal, have infuriated Trump and provoked verbal attacks on judges by Trump and his top aides. Trump in late May, for instance, raged at judges who have temporarily blocked the administration from moving fast to carry out deportations with an all-caps attack against 'USA hating judges who suffer from an ideology that is sick'. On a related track, Trump's provocative order to federalize thousands of state national guard troops and deploy marines to cope with largely peaceful protests in Los Angeles sparked a lawsuit from California challenging Trump's action that US district judge Charles Breyer in mid-June backed. Using strong language, Breyer ruled that Trump was setting a 'dangerous precedent for future domestic military activity' by unlawfully federalizing the national guard without the governor's permission; but a three-judge appeals court, two of whom were Trump appointees from his first term, ruled on June 19th that Trump's order federalizing the guard can remain in place giving the White House a temporary win that California appealed on the 20th. Legal experts warn Trump's sweeping declarations of emergencies are dangerous moves to expand his powers in authoritarian ways and unjustified. Ilya Somin, a George Mason law professor, argued in Lawfare last month that Trump has ratcheted up bogus claims of emergencies that undercut the constitution and Congress to implement his agenda. 'The Trump administration has exhibited a dangerous pattern of invoking spurious emergencies to undermine the constitution, threatening liberty and circumventing Congress. This is most evident in the fields of immigration and trade policy. 'If not stopped, or at least curtailed, these policies could harm millions of people, imperil civil liberties and compromise our constitutional system. Abuse of emergency powers is far from unique to the current administration. But Trump has taken this tendency to new heights.' Somin has been involved in one lawsuit filed by the Liberty Justice Center on behalf of several small businesses at the US Court of International Trade. Other legal scholars warn that Trump's reliance on specious emergency power arguments and actions pose threats to the rule of law. 'My view is that all these emergency actions taken together are autocratic steps … Trump's instincts are autocratic,' said Frank Bowman, a University of Missouri law professor emeritus. Bowman said that in general giving a president emergency powers is premised on their acting in good faith and being rational, neither of which apply to Trump. 'Courts are not dealing with a rational executive, but a would-be autocrat,' he said. Bowman stressed courts must closely examine the factual bases for Trump's invoking dubious emergency orders and powers to see if the arguments justify his actions. To implement his tariff regime, for instance, Trump claimed in April that 'foreign trade and economic practices have created a national emergency.' Trump's sweeping assertion was rejected by two courts, but an appeals court has temporarily halted the more expansive ruling. Once again, Trump officials responded to their legal setbacks with angry attacks on judges, as they did late in May when the Court of International Trade ruled against them. The White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, blasted the ruling on social media as a 'judicial coup'. A day later Miller added that 'we are living under a judicial tyranny,' even though two of the three judges were appointed by Republicans, including one who Trump tapped for the court. On another legal front, 15 Democratic attorneys general last month sued Trump to halt his national 'energy emergency' declaration from his first day back in office, which the states argued was an unlawful attempt to speed permitting for oil and gas projects and ignore regulations. The state attorneys general said that the use of emergency powers to override normal permitting rules for hundreds of projects would cause enormous damages to historic and natural resources and undermine drinking water standards. 'Many environmental laws allow for emergency exemptions when there are genuine emergencies,' said Michael Gerrard, who heads the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. 'But their wholesale use for a manufactured emergency is contrary to law. The US has no energy emergency. We are producing more oil and gas than any other country in the world. 'Declaring a fake emergency is another way that the Trump administration is trying to bypass established laws and procedures to advance its various agendas. One of those agendas is to maximize both the supply of and the demand for fossil fuels.' Critics say Trump's drive this year to declare national emergencies with tenuous or phony legal bases pose clear dangers to democracy. 'Trump keeps citing statutes to give himself emergency powers where they don't extend nearly so far or where the facts don't remotely justify an emergency,' Jamie Raskin, a Democratic representative for Maryland, told the Guardian. 'When he wants something, Trump doesn't care if he's violating the constitution or federal law. It's like kicking a chair out of the way.' Likewise, as Trump has ramped up claims of national emergencies, he has effectively bypassed the Republican-controlled Congress and eroded their authority with executive power grabs. Pozen sees Congress complicit in Trump's emergency moves which ironically undercut congressional powers. 'Even though Republicans control the House and the Senate, there has been no attempt to seek legislative authorization for Trump's most aggressive measures on the economy, energy, immigration and most everything else. It evinces enormous contempt for Congress.' From a historical perspective, Raskin sees Trump's reliance on using emergency powers as a page from the classic authoritarian playbook. 'Authoritarians thrive on emergencies. They love to create emergencies in order to invoke and exercise extraordinary authoritarian powers. This was the advice of fascist philosopher Carl Schmitt for dictators – declare an emergency to have the exception swallow the rule and never go back to the norm,' he said.
