Sebastião Salgado.  Asháninka, State Of Acre, Brazil, 2016.

The Black Panthers fed more hungry kids than the state of California

It wasn’t all young men and guns: the Black Panther Party’s programs fed more hungry kids than the state of California

The Black Panther’s Free Breakfast for Children Program is probably their best-known initiative, the press finding an intriguing story juxtaposing the Panther’s tough-guy-in-leather-jacket image with the act of serving small children plates of hot food. Importantly, it was mostly women who led these survival programmes, and women made up a majority of the Panther membership. They served in leadership roles from ‘Officer of the Day’ (essentially the office – and people – manager for each branch), to organising the many details of a location’s breakfast programme to initiating and leading food justice, healthcare and housing programmes within neighbourhoods.

So why does the image of the Panthers as a masculinist and violent organisation persist? The answer lies in part with media distortion, influenced both by the sexism and racism that misrepresented the Panthers. There was also a misinformation campaign by the FBI, led by J Edgar Hoover, waged against the increasingly popular Panthers, which had an enduring impact on how people saw them.

I fidanzati (Ermanno Olmi, 1963)

Chris Marker - Blue Helmet (1995)

Jean Cocteau by Germaine Krull

Dogwood and Dead Vine, 5 4 21, Photo by Joe Bruha, Copyright 2021

Zaire, 1987

Chris Steele-Perkins

Guerrillera de la "Organización del Pueblo en Armas en las montañas." Guatemala. Junio, 1982. Photo: Pedro Valtierra

Roden Crater is a cinder cone type of volcanic cone from an extinct volcano, with a remaining interiorvolcanic crater. It is located northeast of the city of Flagstaff in northern Arizona, United States.

Satellite view of Roden Crater, the site of an earthwork in progress by James Turrell outside Flagstaff, Arizona.

Mount Wilson & Palomar Observatories, Milky Way (negative print), +/- 1950, United States.

Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979