Activist musician and photographer Bev Grant and scholar and writer Suzanne Cope discuss their recent works that help to highlight the legacy of the Black Panther Party’s survival programs in New York City – and the women who helped lead them – as well as the BPP’s influence on other emerging movements like the Young Lords Party, the Young Patriots, the Women’s Liberation Movement and the radical movement. in general. The discussion will be moderated by Linda Villarosa, author, editor, educator and journalist with a focus on the interaction between public health and race.
Books will be available for purchase at the event and from our neighbors at Community Bookstore.
Proof of vaccination is required for all guests and masks must be worn indoors at all times.
The venue is unfortunately not wheelchair accessible.
More about Bev Grant and Bev Grant Photography 1968 – 1972
More about Linda Villarosa and her work
Register on Eventbrite to attend, click here. This event is presented in conjunction with the related exhibition Bev Grant Photography: 1968-1972, on view at the Old Stone House through March 27.
Bios:
Suzanne Cope, PhD, is a narrative journalist and scholar and author of the book POWER HUNGRY: Women of the Black Panther Party and Freedom Summer and Their Fight to Feed a Movement. She has also written for the New York Times, The Atlantic, CNN, BBC, among others. She is also a scholar whose research lies at the intersection of food and political and social change. She has many academic publications and presentations on that topic as well as her other scholarly interests in female leadership and activism, adult learning, and the power of nonfiction narratives and rhetoric. She teaches at New York University.
Bev Grant (born 1942) grew up in Portland, Oregon and moved to New York City in the 1960s. She was radicalized through the Anti-War Movement and became involved in the Women’s Movement and the Civil Rights Movement as an activist, musician, and photographer. Much of Bev Grant’s photography documents political activism and consciousness-raising events from 1968 until 1972. Thereafter, she began to focus more on her music. Her exceptional oeuvre includes photographs of the Black Panther Free Breakfast Program, the Jeanette Rankin Brigade March on Washington, the Fillmore East Takeover, the Poor People’s Campaign, GIs Against the War and the Young Lords Garbage Offensive. Additionally, Grant’s photography depicts her own activism and her involvement with New York Radical Women. Her documentation of the Miss America Protest and W.I.T.C.H. Hex on Wall Street (both in 1968) has been featured in numerous news outlets and exhibitions including the current exhibition at the Old Stone House and recent exhibitions at OSMOS Address in New York City. Grant’s monograph Bev Grant Photography 1968 –1972, was published by OSMOS Books, New York (2021) and edited by Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, with an introduction by artist William Cordova and an essay by author and historian Johanna Fernández.
Linda Villarosa (moderator) is a journalist, author, editor, novelist and educator. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, where she covers race, inequality and health. For several years, she edited the health pages for the New York Times, working on health coverage for Science Times and for the newspaper at large. I was also the executive editor of Essence Magazine—two different times–where I wrote or edited a number of award-winning articles that I am extremely proud of. Awards include The American Medical Writers’ Association, The Arthur Ashe Institute, Lincoln University, the New York Association of Black Journalists, the National Women’s Political Caucus, the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists’ Association and the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center. She is the author or co-author of three books, including Body & Soul: The Black Women’s Guide to Physical Health and Emotional Well-Being. Her first (and only) novel, Passing for Black, was released in 2008 and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. Her latest book, Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation will be published in June 2022 by Doubleday. She is an associate professor and journalist in residence at her alma mater CUNY Journalism School, and also teaches reporting, writing and Black Studies at The City College of New York in Harlem.
