The Black Panthers: Making Sense of History

The Haggerty Museum’s “The Black Panthers: Making Sense of History” exhibit presents more than 40 prints from the 1960s and ’70s by award-winning photographer Stephen Shames. Shames, at the time enrolled as a student at the University of California, Berkeley, gained access to the leaders of the revolutionary Black Panther Party. The Black Panthers, today an iconic symbol of ’60s political discourse and counterculture, had called for radical reforms to empower African Americans through changes in education, employment, health care and housing. Images of the party and the issues at hand helped to shape public perception of the Black Panthers and their movement.