Stephen Shames is one of the most significant documentary photographers of the American civil rights era. Beginning in the late 1960s, while a student at UC Berkeley, Shames gained rare and intimate access to the Black Panther Party. He photographed its leaders, its community programs, and the broader activist movements that defined the era. His work has been published in books including “Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers,” co-authored with Bobby Seale, and “Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party.” His photographs are held in the permanent collections of institutions, including the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Decades later, his archive remains one of the most complete visual records of the Panthers and the political upheaval of that time. In an interview, Philip Zhang asked Shames to reflect upon a selection of his images.
“Angela Davis at the Microphone” | Image Source: Stephen Shames
[Philip Zhang] What did you notice about Angela Davis in this moment? What did it mean to photograph someone so transformative for Black Americans?
[Stephen Shames] That particular picture has become the iconic Angela picture. It’s her photograph at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. Angela was very articulate. Like Bobby and Huey and a lot of the Panthers, Angela was basically like a movie star, someone larger than life. That picture was taken at a “Free Huey rally” in DeFremery Park, which the Panthers renamed Bobby Hutton Park. Back then, a number of people like Angela, like Huey Newton, and like Bobby Seale, kind of became iconic figures, like movie stars. They were larger than life. I admired Angela, and we later became friends.
“We Want An End To The Robbery Of Our Black Community” | Image Source: Stephen Shames
[Philip Zhang] Bobby Seale co-founded the Black Panther Party in Oakland in 1966. What did his leadership mean to the party?
[Stephen Shames] Bobby was like a mentor to me. He was almost like a dad to me, but also to the whole Panther Party. He was a community organizer, and it was really Bobby who had the idea and started the survival programs. The first one was the free breakfast for schoolchildren. The idea behind it was that kids were going to school without eating breakfast and not having any food or money for lunch. As Bobby said, how can little Johnny concentrate when the teacher says what’s one apple and two apples? He simply can’t concentrate. The Panthers started that program before the U.S. government did, and they wouldn’t have done it if the Panthers didn’t do it first.
“Two Panthers and a Child” | Image Source: Stephen Shames
[Philip Zhang] How did the Panthers function at the level of everyday community life?
[Stephen Shames] The Panthers’ offices were like community centers. If a family member had been arrested or had a problem with the police, they’d go to the Panthers. If they had a problem with their landlord, the Panthers would go and negotiate. Their programs were for two reasons: one was to embarrass the government that in the richest country in the history of the world, children were going to school hungry. The second, more important reason was that they wanted to show people what a just society would look like. So their programs illustrated what they felt society and the government should be doing for people. For instance, their free medical clinic. The United States still hasn’t got universal medical care for everybody.
Also, the Panthers did polling, and the Panthers had a 90 percent favorable rating in the Black community. People understood that the Panthers really were for them and that their programs were for them. As early as 1968, they registered people to vote, and they put candidates up and supported candidates. Instead of just protesting, they were actually a political party. They had their pie-in-the-sky goals — they wanted a revolution, they wanted to completely change the system — but they also understood how to work within the current system to get whatever changes they could. And that’s something that I feel a lot of organizations have lost.”
“Bobby Seale Addresses the Crowd” | Image Source: Stephen Shames
[Philip Zhang] How did Bobby Seale lead? How did he motivate and unite the people around him?
[Stephen Shames] Bobby always talked about the issues that were important to people. He would lead political education and go talk to groups. The Panthers didn’t just do marches. In fact, they were in the community. Every time Trump does something, people say, let’s organize a march, and it’s like, yeah, okay, fine, have a march, but then when the march is over, what have you got? Everyone goes back home. The Panthers were in the communities. Their offices were community centers where people would go when they had an issue, and the Panthers would help them. If people needed a lawyer, the Panthers hooked them up with a lawyer. If they didn’t have food, the Panthers gave them food.
“Panthers Monitoring the Streets” | Image Source: Stephen Shames
[Philip Zhang] The Black Panther Party was founded in direct response to policing in Oakland. What was that reality on the ground?
[Stephen Shames] The first thing the Black Panther Party focused on was the police and how the police acted in the Black community. Back then, the Oakland Police recruited white police officers from Mississippi and Alabama to patrol the Oakland ghetto. Think about that: why would a white officer who was very likely not sympathetic to Black people, from Mississippi and Alabama, be patrolling the Oakland ghetto? It says something about the leaders of the city of Oakland that they would want to hire police officers from there who had no understanding of the community that they were patrolling. So the Panthers would stay ten feet away, which was what the law said, and they would advise the people the police had stopped of their rights.
“Bobby Seale Portrait” | Image Source: Stephen Shames
[Philip Zhang] You mentioned that Bobby Seale was a practical, pragmatic leader. How did this work begin?
[Stephen Shames] The Panthers made coalitions with a number of groups: the Peace and Freedom Party, the Young Lords, the Brown Berets, Native Indian groups, and Asian Americans. In Chicago, Fred Hampton started the Rainbow Coalition. The Young Lords were a street gang, and they convinced them to become political. They also worked with a group called the Young Patriots, who were white guys and women from Kentucky and West Virginia who had a Confederate flag on the back of their jacket. Fred Hampton went and talked to them and asked them, what are your schools like, how are the landlords, what’s the job situation. And he would say, well, you’re kind of like us, why don’t you join us. The Panthers really understood that there was never going to be change or a revolution if Black people acted alone.
“Raised Fists at Sather Gate, UC Berkeley” | Image Source: Stephen Shames
[Stephen Shames] I was a student at the time and took part in the strike in 1969 to create the Black Studies Department, which was the first Black Studies department in the United States. There at Berkeley and at San Francisco State. There was a Panther on the organizing committee of both of those protests. One of the Panther points was that we need an education system that teaches us the true history of our people. Out of that came gender studies, women’s studies, and those other study programs. Most of the students at Berkeley took part because we all understood that it was really important. Honestly, why should they only be studying European history? Women and Blacks have contributed greatly to the culture and history of the United States, and we all felt that had to be included.
Featured Image Source: Stephen Shames