“Revolutionary Verticality? The Black Panther Party as Media Company”

presented by Rich Purcell 

At the height of its influence, the Black Panther Party was one of the most important and controversial political parties in the United States. It was well known for confronting anti-Black racism, police brutality, and the carceral state, as well as for establishing community-based mutual-aid programs. Lesser known was the party’s establishment of Stronghold Consolidated Productions, Inc., a business entity that the Black Panther Party incorporated in 1970 to manage its finances, print The Black Panther newspaper, and to negotiate various book, music, film projects.

In this SouthTalk, Rich Purcell, the Hubert H. McAlexander Chair of English at the University of Mississippi, will draw from material about Stronghold Consolidated Productions, Inc. from Huey P. Newton and Black Panther Party archives to reveal the party’s cinematic aspirations and its attempts to control the party’s intellectual property. Purcell will illuminate how the Black Panther Party’s intensely capitalistic relationship to intellectual property vis-à-vis Strongarm Consolidated Productions, Inc. both connects with and clashes with its own and other left-progressive theories of media, revolutionary cinema, and finance capitalism in the 1970s.

SouthTalks is a series of events, including lectures, performances, film screenings and panel discussions, that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern studies. All events are free and open to the public.