February 2008 Masthead

by Terry Matthew | Published February 2008 | Random Art Archives

February is Black History Month. It's been one of my cranky pet peeves that many "themed" parties these days can be rather contrived - birthdays, Hallmark Holidays, and so on. And sometimes they exist only on the flyer: there are no decorations and minimal musical selections reflecting the theme - it's really just like any ordinary night at the club. For Black History Month, it's always been rather common to use stock art of Martin Luther King for flyers. I wanted to try something different and more radical.

I came across an old issue of The Black Panther, the newspaper produced by the Chicago Black Panthers in the late 1960s. This particular issue was dated right after Fred Hampton was assassinated by the Chicago Police Department, the FBI and the Cook County State's Attorney's Office on December 4, 1969 (read more about Fred Hampton here and here). The original designer of The Black Panther, Emory Douglas, produced a striking collage of Hampton, utilizing his usual Social Realist style in a manner that literally seethed with rage. I recycled Douglas' use of the double photo (the white border was in the original art) as a tribute with Hampton's iconic quote: "You can jail a revolutionary but you can't jail the revolution. You can run a freedom fighter around the country but you can't run freedom fighting around the country. You can murder a liberator but you can't murder liberation". --TM [email]

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