Here and Now for Bobby Seale. Essays by Jean Genet
[New York]: Committee to Defend the Panthers, [1970]. Side-stapled volume, measuring 11 x 8.5 inches: [20]. Original black-and-white photographic wrappers, black and white photographs throughout text.
First edition of this collection of four essays by Jean Genet in defense of Bobby Seale and the Black Panthers, translated from the French. In March 1970, the Black Panther Party, under legal siege in the United States, appealed to French writer Jean Genet in Paris for help. Author of the anti-colonialist plays The Blacks (1959) and The Screens (1966), Genet had been impressed by the Panthers he met in Chicago when he covered the Democratic National Convention in 1968. Denied an entry visa, Genet embarked on an underground two-month American speaking tour, urging college students across the United States to support the legal defense of Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, and the Panther 21: “Bobby Seale’s trial will be a test for young white revolutionaries. It is their turn to prove how clearly they can analyze the situation and how skillfully they can go about finding the means for action. This, here and now, is the moment of truth – for Bobby Seale, for the Black Panthers, for young white Americans.” The collection includes “Bobby Seale, the Black Panthers and Us White People,” “I Must Begin with an Explanation of my Presense [sic] in the United States,” “Here and Now for Bobby Seale,” and “The Black Panthers Are Preparing the Revolution with Precipitous Care. The Revolution Will Come; Time Is at Their Service.” Genet’s essays are followed by the Black Panther Party statement on “What We Want: What We Believe,” and a subscription form for the Panthers’ Black Community News Service. See Robert Sandarg, “Jean Genet and the Black Panther Party,” Journal of Black Studies, 16:3 (1986). A fine copy.
Price: $300.00