BOOK:The Black Panther Coloring Book,Sun Publications

COINTELPRO (COunter INTELligence PROgram) (1956–1971) was a series of covert, and at times illegal, operations conducted by the United States FBI aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations. FBI records show that COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed subversive. The FBI also financed, armed, and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former Minutemen, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization that targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement, using both intimidation and violent acts. One prurient document that surfaced in the late 1960s was The Black Panther Coloring Book. Opinions differ as to its origins. One story goes that the FBI, concerned about the popularity of the Party’s Free Breakfast Programme for schools, designed the book and distributed it to shops and community organisations sympathetic to the Panthers. Another, more complex theory alleges that the book was created by an eager new party recruit, but was subsequently denounced as racist and too violent by the BPP before copies fell into COINTELPRO’s hands. The crude drawings depicting gun-toting children and wild pigs in police uniform would seem laughably crass if it weren’t for the needless loss of life incurred by both sides throughout the BPP’s troubled existence. This new edition, created by artists Corey Presha and Bill Sullivan, brings the drawings into a new context influenced by the last 50 years of history. With the text removed, a series of drawings once deemed “too offensive” by the Panthers are now almost sympathetic when viewed through the lens of the struggle of Black people, the oppressed finally getting over on the oppressor.-Dimitris Lempesis