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<h1 class="reader-title">The Baddest Black Power Artist You
Never Heard Of</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/lej-rachell/"
rel="nofollow">LEJ Rachell</a> - April 20, 2018</span></div>
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<p>Featured in the education display at the Schomburg’s
recent Black Power 50 exhibit were several illustrations
done by an artist not identified on the display label. A
comic strip of his also prominently displayed in the
martial arts section is mislabeled. There the artist is
identified as ‘!Jana-Leo-Na-Kesho!’. That is the name of
the book it was taken from, though – !<i>Yesterday,
Today and Tomorrow</i>!, its English translation from
the Swahili.</p>
<p>The correct name of the artist? <a
href="http://www.corenyc.org/omeka/items/show/301">Jim
‘Seitu’ Dyson</a> (1). Although largely forgotten, he
was one of the most significant graphic artists of the
Black Power movement.</p>
<p>The easiest way to describe him is as the East Coast
equivalent of the <a
href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Panther.html?id=Q4_rAAAAMAAJ&sou%C2%A0rce=kp_cover">Black
Panther Party’s (BPP) Emory Douglas</a> (2), the
illustrator whose work was featured prominently in the
BPP newspaper and the Schomburg’s exhibit. Seitu, a
founding member of the New York City (NYC) Black Power
group, the EAST, was like Douglas the epitome of
a “revolutionary artist”. Such artists provided us with
a pathway to artistic responses for issues that are
still relevant to the current social and political
climate for Blacks in America. They gave us the tools to
fight the current administration. We need the historical
context of how such artists responded to these same
issues during the movement.</p>
<p>Founded in 1969, The EAST was part of a larger
community of cultural nationalist organizations
throughout the country. Closely associated with Maulana
Karenga’s US organization in Los Angeles, Haki
Madibuti’s Institute of Positive Education in
Chicago and Amiri Baraka’s Congress of African Peoples
in Newark, the EAST was based in the <a
href="http://www.corenyc.org/omeka/items/show/320">Bedford
Stuyvesant</a> section of Brooklyn (3). One of the
largest Black communities in the city, Bed-Stuy was
second only to Harlem, then the largest Black community
in the country.</p>
<p>According to historian <a
href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/12720">Kwasi Konadu</a>
(4), The EAST was an attempt to put ideas of
self-determination into action in particular Kawaida,
the philosophy which formed the foundation of Kwanzaa.
The EAST included a bakery and catering business, book
and clothing store, printing business, nightclub and
record label. At the heart of its operations though was
its school, Uhuru Sasa Shule, one of the first
Afrocentric independent Black schools in the country.</p>
<p>EAST members also took Africanized names, usually
Swahili. “Seitu” for example is Swahili for artist. His
work was regularly featured in the Black News, an in
house newspaper similar to that of the BPP’s. For the
first few years, Seitu did the covers and majority of
inside illustrations.</p>
<p>Whereas much of Emory Douglas’s work is influenced by
third world poster art, Seitu developed a proto-graffiti
style heavily influenced by American comic books. Blacks
are often portrayed in a superheroic fashion by using
violence. The villains are agents of racism, corrupt
government and corporate America. This was at a time
when it was rare to see Blacks portrayed in that format,
in the media in general… especially those that win.</p>
<p>Seitu himself, at 6’5, had he been in the Army and was
an accomplished martial artist (karate, aikido and
jujitsu). He also functioned as security for the EAST in
the equivalent of its honor guard.</p>
<p>Maisha Winn is one of the very few historians to have
written about Seitu in her article “<a
href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.5323/jafriamerhist.95.3-4.0392">We
Are All Prisoners: Privileging Prison Voices in Black
Print Culture</a>”. 5 While she focuses on Dyson’s
work pertaining to the EAST’s efforts at prison reform,
I focus more on his anti-drug work. His illustrations
often contained unusually militant anti-drug messages
such as “Ice the Pusher”, “Dope is Death” and “Death to
the Pusher”. Blacks are depicted as revolutionaries and
urban guerrillas fighting against not just Empire
but these “internal enemies”.</p>
<p>His work speaks to the underground movement among Black
Power activists in which they physically fought drug
dealers as a means of eradicating the growing
narcotics plague. Most well known are actions by members
of the Black Liberation Army such as Dhoruba Bin Wahad
and Jamal Joseph. There were other such groups
throughout the country. In NYC, for example, there was
the Harlem Youth Federation a.k.a. the Harlem 5, the
United Brothers of Queens, and the Brooklyn chapter of
the Congress of Racial Equality (Brooklyn CORE). The
EAST had its own sub group, the Black Ass
Kicking Brigade, mentioned briefly in the pages of Black
News where names and locations of dealers would be
published as a warning.</p>
<p>Some may refer to such actions as vigilantism, but at
the foundation was the main principal of Black
nationalism – self determination. If Black people were
to take control of and ultimately be responsible for
what goes on in their own community then the narcotics
problem would have to be taken care of by themselves.</p>
<p>This movement resurfaced in the 1980s during the crack
epidemic with organizations like the Black Men’s
Movement Against Crack (BMMAC). Led by former
Brooklyn CORE head <a
href="http://www.corenyc.org/omeka/items/show/305">Sonny
Carson</a> (6), the BMMAC raucously demonstrated at
several crack houses throughout Brooklyn to shut them
down. The BMMAC also included several members of the
EAST such as Seitu.</p>
<p>Starting his own private security firm in 1992, Seitu
was contracted by the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) to protect
buildings being rehabilitated in East New York for low
income residents. One building in particular was on a
block notorious for being a drug infested area. Within
months of accepting the position, Seitu was <a
href="http://www.corenyc.org/omeka/items/show/305">shot
and killed</a> trying to peacefully resolve a
situation with local drug dealers. (7)</p>
<p>While shining a light on a neglected aspect of the
Black Power movement, Seitu’s story speaks to the role
government agencies/agents and big business played in
the rise of the drug trade and its consequences, in
particular the increase in mass incarceration of
Blacks and Latinos.</p>
<p>Black Power activists were among the first to raise
questions and build awareness about the complicity of
corporate America and government agencies in the growth
and continuation of the drug trade. This can be seen in
several of the Black News cover illustrations by Seitu.
There was an emphasis in his work placed on the role of
law enforcement. The police in the view of activists
could not be counted on because the police were part of
the problem in that officers often supported and
protected the dealers.</p>
<p>Sonny Carson for example directly implicated local law
enforcement (specifically the 73rd and 75th precincts)
with protecting and assisting drug dealers. These
charges were verified by the 1994 Mollen Commission and
the arrests of several officers from those precincts as
depicted in the documentary <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Five">The
Seven Five</a>. (8) The 75th precinct is also the same
area where Seitu was murdered.</p>
<p>Even <a
href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-warblacks-hippie/index.html">John
Ehrlichman</a>, former domestic policy chief for
President Nixon, has admitted that Nixon’s war on drugs
was really a war on Blacks and the anti-war left.
By criminalizing drugs heavily, “we could disrupt those
communities.” “We could arrest their leaders, raid their
homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night
after night on the evening news. Did we know we were
lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” (9)</p>
<p>There is no reason to believe that Seitu’s murder was
anything but an unintended consequence of such policies.
However, the question still needs to be asked –
what responsibility do government agencies and corporate
America have in helping to create such an environment?
Given the role played by law enforcement how should that
affect the release of many of those in prison on drug
charges? How much was the rise of the drug trade in the
1970s and 1980s a response to the Black Power movement?
How much of the decline of the movement was an intended
consequence or merely a byproduct? Seitu lived his art.
In doing so, his story allows us to see the bigger
picture from a local perspective.</p>
<p>The story of the intersection of Black Power and the
drug game is complicated and will be difficult to tell.
The inclusion of Seitu’s work at the Schomburg in such a
significant exhibit, regardless of the exhibit’s
mistake, is a reminder of the need to do the history
of this aspect of the movement in order to help correct
problems of today. We have to have access to critical
responses. Seitu’s work provides them.</p>
<p><em><strong>L.E.J. Rachell</strong> is pursuing a PhD
in History. His work focuses on the history of the
Civil Rights and Black Power movements in New York
City, specifically the Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE). Much of this research can be seen on <a
href="http://www.corenyc.org/">CORENYC.org</a>.</em></p>
<p>Footnotes.</p>
<p>1. <a
href="http://www.corenyc.org/omeka/items/show/301">http://www.corenyc.org/omeka/items/show/301</a></p>
<p>2. <a
href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Panther.html?id=Q4_rAAAAMAAJ&sou%C2%A0rce=kp_cover">https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Panther.html?id=Q4_rAAAAMAAJ&sou rce=kp_cover</a></p>
<p>3. <a
href="http://www.corenyc.org/omeka/items/show/320">http://www.corenyc.org/omeka/items/show/320</a></p>
<p>4. <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/12720">https://muse.jhu.edu/book/12720</a></p>
<p>5. <a
href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.5323/jafriamerhist.95.3-4.0392">https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.5323/jafriamerhist.95.3-4.0392</a></p>
<p>6. <a
href="http://www.corenyc.org/omeka/items/show/305">http://www.corenyc.org/omeka/items/show/305</a></p>
<p>7. <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/04/nyregion/on-a-frontier-of-hope-building-homesfor-%C2%A0the-poor-proves-perilous.html">http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/04/nyregion/on-a-frontier-of-hope-building-homesfor- the-poor-proves-perilous.html</a></p>
<p>8. <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Five">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Five</a></p>
<p>9. <a
href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-warblacks-hippie/index.html">http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-warblacks-hippie/index.html</a></p>
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