‘Emory Douglas: In Our Lifetime’ Shows the Evolution of a Revolutionary Artist

When it comes to the giants of protest art, few loom as large as Emory Douglas, the 82-year-old graphic artist, illustrator and muralist who served as the Black Panther Party’s minister of culture from 1967 to 1982. Douglas’ covers for the Black Panther Party newspaper defined the look of the radical movements of the ’60s and ’70s, and more than 50 years later, those striking, high-contrast illustrations still offer a timely rebuke to police brutality and imperialism.

Most people know Douglas for iconic pieces like his rifle- and newspaper-toting Paperboy from 1970, and in the decades since, he’s never stopped making art about liberation. It’s that more recent work, digital prints Douglas created within the last 15 years, that fills the first part of a new exhibition called Emory Douglas: In Our Lifetime. The show, co-curated by Rio Yañez and Rosalind McGary, opened last week at San Francisco’s African American Art & Culture Complex. A second part of the exhibition, with Douglas’ archival works, will open at the same venue in February.

While many of Douglas’ classic illustrations of armed Black Panthers focus on the grit and righteous rage required to resist a violent status quo, in these new, vibrant, large-scale digital prints, Douglas softens his gaze and sets his sights on a hopeful future. Many of his subjects are women and children, who he renders in tropical oranges, leafy greens and ocean blues, often wearing West African textiles inspired by his international travels to build solidarity with revolutionary artists from around the world.

In the exhibition, Douglas reimagines his Paperboy as Paper Girl, who, like the original, holds a newspaper that reads “All power to the people.” Instead of a gun, she has an iPhone, a nod to the way social media accelerated more recent movements like Black Lives Matter.

A large poster of Douglas’ Political Artist Manifesto greets visitors at the exhibition entrance, providing a lens through which to take in his commanding visuals. Douglas wrote the document in his Panther days, and it offers 12 points of advice: “Create art of social concerns that even a child can understand,” offers one. “Be prepared if necessary to defend and explain what you communicate through your art,” reads another.

The document invites visitors to reflect on how images can move hearts and inspire collective action. Indeed, it was Douglas’ imagery that helped spread the message of the Panthers’ groundbreaking social programs, cementing not only a sense of empowerment but also a timeless cool that’s drawn younger generations to their legacy and ideas.

By centering children, Douglas’ newer pieces like Mother’s Love — of a little girl kissing her mother on the cheek — evoke the feeling that revolutionary change is an act of love for the next generation. Other images, like a little boy whispering in a girl’s ear in Educate to Liberate, remind viewers that a world in which children can safely learn and play is still out of reach for many in the U.S. and abroad.

Several of the pieces in In Our Lifetime spotlight Palestinians’ resistance against displacement, apartheid and mass killings at the hands of Israel. Free the Land by Any Means Necessary features a Palestinian man in a keffiyeh shooting a slingshot; in another piece a person hugs an olive tree, their legs turning into roots that connect to the land.

There’s a famous quote from author Tony Cade Bambara that often gets repeated in activist circles, that it’s the role of the artist to “make the revolution irresistible.” For over six decades, Emory Douglas has been showing creatives how to do just that. Building upon the 12 lessons in his Political Artist Manifesto, Emory Douglas: In Our Lifetime adds a 13th point: To never stop evolving.

‘Emory Douglas: In Our Lifetime’ is on view at the African American Art & Culture Complex (762 Fulton Street, San Francisco) through October 2026. Part two of the exhibit opens in February.