Remembering the look, the sound, the grit of a revolution

Remembering the look, the sound, the grit of a revolution:

"Black Panther Rank and File' at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts celebrates the founding of the Black Panther Party 40 years ago.

Reading or listening to the rhetoric of the '60s Panthers can make a visitor cringe. Not merely because it sounds dated or naive, though some of it does, but because today we so seldom hear in public speech the plain-spoken anger over injustice that it voices.

A poster among the ephemera on view demands 'land, bread, housing, clothing, education, justice and peace,' any one of which sounds utopian under the present regime of tumescent militarism and merciless social policy.

The course of events embarrassed the Panthers' identification with revolutionary programs, from Che Guevara's to Mao's, that resulted more in social calamity than in liberation. The literal militancy of the Black Panthers also seems dated. It certainly dramatized the fear of selective police brutality under which African Americans lived, and to which some can still testify, but it may also have cost some of the Panthers their lives. A large map of Oakland by Jeff Hull at Yerba Buena marks the locations of violent confrontations between Panthers and police. "