Mar 25, 2021 - Sale 2562

Sale 2562 - Lot 88

Price Realized: $ 552
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(BLACK PANTHERS.) Illustrated layout for an article on the Black Panthers in a Princeton University student magazine. Typescript with ink and collage illustration mounted on artist board, 18 x 23 1/2 inches; light glue staining, minimal wear. [Princeton, NJ], [28 October 1968]

Additional Details

This is the original layout for an article published in Princeton's short-lived radical student magazine, Prism. The article was written by a Princeton undergraduate and Black Panther member who signed only as "Khalid," and offers a detailed centerfold exploration of the New Jersey Black Panthers, complete with a list of officers. The language is incendiary: "It's going to come down to war in the streets. We're talking about changing the whole structure of Western society. . . . The white man is only brave when he knows he's got the gun and he knows you haven't. Otherwise, he's a scared motherfucker. There's a message in that for Black people everywhere. Even on the Princeton campus."

The article also includes a vivid description of Newark street life: "It does a Princeton Black good to hit Newark, to come out of Penn Station and walk down to Broad and Market (the Wallace stickers on that Market St. construction site notwithstanding). The minute you hit Market and Broad you know you're in a city with a heavy, poor, and superior (i.e.) Black population. A Black can't help but dig the contrasts at that center-city intersection: red neck laborers, liberal/conservative businessmen, poor white trash of all sorts, and Black people--Black people waiting on tables, waiting for the bus home into the slum." This layout is illustrated with a dramatic 9-inch panther head, composed of a black-paper collage with inked detail.


With--a layout for another article in the same magazine, a back-page article titled "Bringing Back Black" by Bob Blockum, 15 1/2 x 11 inches. It describes the effort to launch the Black Cultural Center of Trenton. The article is printed in white on black background, and is laid out in a decorative border of African-inspired art. The article is continued on another page (layout not present)

and--the published issue of Prism featuring these articles, printed in red and black. 24 pages, 17 x 11 1/2 inches, on 6 folding sheets of newsprint; minimal wear. It also includes articles on presidential candidates Eldridge Cleaver and Dick Gregory, racism in Camden, NJ, and more.