New York Black Radical Periodical "Liberator", February 1970 Issue on the Young Lords, Black Panthers, and Life in Harlem

Daniel H. Watts Black Panthers

Periodical

[Black Activism][Black Panthers] Watts, Daniel H. Liberator Vol. 10, No. 2, a February 1970 Black radical magazine covering the Young Lords, Addison Gayle Jr., and Selwyn R. Cudjoe, at a time of intensified Black and Puerto Rican political organizing in New York. The cover announces “The Young Lords,” “Dreams of a Native Son,” and “Beyond the Panthers". Articles include Watts’s editorial “Let It Crawl,” Henry Gerard Chery’s “Recipe for a Riot,” Akbar Balagon Ahmed’s “Harlem Farewell,” and Clayton Riley’s theatre review. Issued just after the Young Lords’ occupation of the First Spanish United Methodist Church in East Harlem, the magazine records neighborhood campaigns around garbage, food programs, police confrontation, Black political education, and the continuing political presence of Malcolm X through Gayle’s essay and its full-page portrait captioned “El Hajj Malik El Shabazz / May 1925 - February 1965.”

Liberator. Vol. 10, No. 2. New York: Liberator, February 1970. About 23 pages. Radical monthly magazine edited by Daniel H. Watts. The issue opens with Watts’s editorial “Let It Crawl,” followed by Gayle’s “Dreams of a Native Son”. Rich Balghur’s Young Lords feature begins on page 11 and includes group portraits and documentary captions including “The breakfast program,” “Supporters from the community bringing food and clothing,” and “The bust,” while the accompanying text identifies the organization as founded in 1969 and recounts its garbage campaign, church occupation, eviction by New York police, children’s breakfast programs, and health work. Additional contents include Ahmed’s “Harlem Farewell,” illustrated with a Harlem streetscape; Cudjoe’s “Beyond the Panthers,” opening beside protest placards reading “FREE THE BLACK PANTHERS”; Chery’s “Recipe for a Riot,” paired with a Harlem rat protest photograph; Othello Mahone’s review of Julius Lester’s Revolutionary Notes; Clayton Riley’s theatre review; and letters including “Black University” from The Black Students, Nashville, Tennessee. Cover price 40 cents.

The issue belongs to Liberator’s final major decade as an independent Black-owned monthly, and page 19 states that history explicitly in Watts’s signed appeal noting publication of writers including LeRoi Jones, Nathan Hare, Eldridge Cleaver, Addison Gayle, Clayton Riley, Douglas Turner Ward, Toni Cade, and Malcolm X. That same page records a subscription increase from $3.00 to $4.00 and a single-copy increase from 35 cents to 40 cents because of rising postal, manufacturing, and labor costs, fixing the number within the material economics of Black independent publishing in 1970. 23 pages; tanning throughout; some staining and pin hole on back wrapper; otherwise very good condition. A strong issue for Black Power print culture, African American periodical history, and Young Lords organizing in New York.

Item #23232

Price: $450.00