Young graphic artist Emory Douglas, who illustrated the Black Panther newspaper, believed that "the ghetto itself is the gallery for the revolutionary artist." It fought for improved housing and education in the Black community and campaigned for an end to police brutality. In 1966, the Black Panther Party was formed in Oakland, California. "For instance," he adds, "There was one set of answers given in Chicago, and another in Los Angeles." "There wasn't one answer and there wasn't one Black art," says Mark Godfrey, co-curator of Tate Modern's exhibition "The Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power." Should the artist serve himself or his community? And was there even such a thing as "Black" art? This group of African American artists, formed in 1963, questioned the role of the Black artist at a time of great social and political change in the United States. "America the Beautiful" was painted by Norman Lewis, a member of the New York art collective Spiral. Flashes of white cut through a pitch-black background, forming the distinctive, eerie shapes of hooded Ku Klux Klan members meeting after dark.
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