(Black Panther Party, Civil Rights Movement, Graphic Arts & Illustration) THE BLACK PANTHER BLACK COMMUNITY NEWS SERVICE, VOL. II, NO. 18, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1968. San Francisco, CA: The Black Panther Party Ministry of Information, December 21, 1968. FIRST EDITION. Elephant folio (17-1/2" x 11-3/8"). 24 pp. Original newsprint self-wrappers folded as issued. Front page headline "Pig Xmas Sham Ending" with iconic front cover illustration signed in the matrix by Minister of Culture Emory Douglas depicting an armed Black family surrounding a pig-faced Santa Claus descending their chimney. The back page features full-page Emory Douglas graphic artwork titled "Black Revolutionary Xmas Wishes" depicting a fighter with an assault rifle at a window beside panels of ammunition, sidearms, and a hand grenade, captioned "In Order to Get Rid of the Gun ... It Is Necessary to Pick Up the Gun." Internal contents include coverage of Shirley Graham Du Bois's tribute to Olympic protest figures Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the Montreal Conference on Vietnam, the announcement of the Free Breakfast for Children Program, guerrilla resistance commentary, and news accounts of police raids on Panther headquarters in Seattle and Denver. Lightly age-toned as expected, most noticeably along the outer horizontal and vertical folds, with minimal wear at the fold intersections. The physical condition of the item is graded VERY GOOD + (utilizing the standard antiquarian book grading scale for works on paper).
Revolutionary Iconography and Media Strategy of the Black Panther Party
Published at the height of the Black Power movement, The Black Panther Black Community News Service served as the vital official organ and primary revenue generator for the Black Panther Party from its founding in 1967 through 1980. Conceived as a direct alternative to mainstream media coverage, the newspaper paired groundbreaking investigative reports on police brutality and state repression with foundational ideological texts and grassroots community announcements. Central to the publication's national visual identity was the graphic genius of Emory Douglas, whose powerful, thick-lined illustrations transformed the back cover and front banner of each issue into political posters tailored for public display in neighborhood storefronts and living room windows. In this satire-laden December 1968 issue, Douglas subverts traditional holiday tropes, juxtaposing the commercialized figure of "Santa Pig" against an armed working-class family defending their home, while the back cover lays out an explicit visual inventory of armed self-defense. Furthermore, this issue marks a pivotal moment in Panther history by detailing early operations of the Free Breakfast for Children Program alongside international anti-war solidarity coverage, capturing the Party's transition toward mutual aid survival programs.
Institutional Scarcity and Preservation
Due to the fragile nature of high-acid newsprint, aggressive surveillance and confiscation of Party literature by law enforcement agencies during the COINTELPRO era, and the ephemeral intent of weekly political serials, complete preserved issues of The Black Panther from 1968 remain extraordinarily scarce. The majority of surviving copies exhibit severe brittle edge chipping, splitting along the folds, or missing pages, with complete individual issues held primarily within major legal, civil rights, and African American research repositories.
AN EXCEPTIONALLY WELL-PRESERVED AND VISUALLY ARRESTING ITEM OF RADICAL SIXTIES GRAPHIC EPHEMERA, REPRESENTING A CRITICAL ACQUISITION FOR INSTITUTIONAL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS OR EXTRAORDINARY PRIVATE COLLECTIONS DEVOTED TO THE HISTORY OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY, CIVIL RIGHTS AND BLACK POWER MOVEMENTS, OR TWENTIETH-CENTURY RADICAL PRINT CULTURE.
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