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Press Release Contact: FRAMING THE BLACK PANTHERS: by Macalester College Professor Jane Rhodes
A fascinating look at how the Black Panthers became “[Rhodes] does her readers a good turn by extending the Panther story to the present” - Kirkus Reviews St. Paul, Minn. - When former Black Panther Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver died in the summer of 1998, he received more press attention than many heads of state. On the front pages of The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle, Cleaver was eulogized as a major icon of black nationalism as well as sixties culture and history. The Black Panthers have undeniably captured a place in the national imagination; four decades after the party’s demise, the group continues to inspire new stories, hip-hop artists, reality television, and enough films to justify a Black Panther Film Festival. In Framing the Black Panthers, cultural historian Jane Rhodes examines the extraordinary staying power of the Panthers in the American imagination by probing their relationship to the media. Rhodes argues that once the media and pop culture latched onto the small, militant group, the Panthers became adept at exploiting and manipulating this coverage—through pamphlets, buttons, posters, ubiquitous press appearances, and photo ops—pioneering a sophisticated version of mass media activism. Paradoxically, Rhodes argues the news media participated in the government campaign to eradicate the Panthers while simultaneously elevating them to a celebrity status that remains long after their demise. Featuring many never-before-published photographs, Framing the Black Panthers charts the Black Nationalist’s extraordinary rise to the status of media icons, and explains the fascination that the Panthers continue to hold. Rhodes takes the reader from the origins of the Black Panthers to the present day, exploring their transformation into media superstars and symbols of black power. She suggests that the Panthers, with their button-making, newspaper distribution, and irresistible photo-ops, may have been the nation’s first truly media-savvy activists. Jane Rhodes is Dean of the Study of Race and Ethnicity and Chair of the American Studies Department at Macalester College. She is the author of Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century. She lives in St. Paul, Minn. Macalester College, founded in 1874, is a national liberal arts college with a full-time enrollment of 1,873 students. Macalester is nationally recognized for its long-standing commitment to academic excellence, internationalism, multiculturalism and civic engagement. FRAMING THE BLACK PANTHERS: THE SPECTACULAR RISE OF A BLACK POWER ICON
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