Kristian Whitehead’s interest in the Black Panther Party dates back to a tenth-grade history class and a teacher as progressive as his curriculum. Now a rising senior studying history at Morgan State University, she recently concluded her role as co-curator of “Revolution in Our Lifetime”: The Black Panther Party and Political Organizing in Baltimore, 1968-1973, exhibited at The Peale — an unexpected but rewarding experience for Whitehead, a first-generation college student.
On extended view through July 7, Revolution in Our Lifetime centers on the Black Panther Party’s Baltimore chapter. It is the first comprehensive exploration of the movement’s short-lived yet revolutionary presence in the city.
On extended view through July 7, Revolution in Our Lifetime centers on the Black Panther Party’s Baltimore chapter. It is the first comprehensive exploration of the movement’s short-lived yet revolutionary presence in the city.
The exhibition not only examines the Baltimore Panthers’ ideological roots and community-oriented programs, but also contextualizes the chapter’s relationship to neighboring political organizations and social justice movements nationwide amid the 1960s and ’70s. Intertwined in the Baltimore Black Panther Party’s legacy is the Baltimore Police Department’s efforts to undermine and dismantle it.
Whitehead organized this free exhibition alongside Kai Clemons, a recent graduate of Morgan’s African American studies master’s program, as well as recent graduate Emma Petite and rising senior Gerardo Fontes, both from Johns Hopkins University.
This exhibition features rare artifacts, documents, photographs, and copies of the Black Panther Party Newspaper from the JHU Sheridan Libraries, the University of Baltimore Special Collections and Archives, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County Special Collections, among others.
With the guidance of Hopkins staff and faculty members Heather Furnas, Victoria Harms, and Stuart Schrader, the students researched and developed their own sections. These sections cover youth and incarcerated activists as well as individual actors like JHU’s Rev. Chester Wickwire and John Clark, a local Black Panther leader who adapted Maoism in his community organizing.
Despite now making full use of The Peale’s Moses Williams Center, an exhibition wasn’t initially on the agenda, Schrader says. Instead, when JHU’s Sheridan Libraries acquired an archive of the party’s newspaper in 2022, a process in which he and Furnas played critical roles, their main goal was to promote the near-complete collection for public use.
Harms’ background as a senior lecturer in Hopkins’ history department positioned her as an inevitable collaborator. Since 2019, Harms’ undergraduate course on global revolutions in 1968 has invited local luminaries to share their lived experiences — notably including the late Black Panther leader Eddie Conway, who was incarcerated for nearly 44 years as a political prisoner before his 2014 release.
Following Conway’s passing in February 2023, the newspaper collection became a compelling resource to unify academic and cultural institutions in the spirit of the lifelong organizer’s work.
“[Schrader and Harms] had a vision of what the project was to be; we just ended up being the perfect pieces for it all,” says Fontes about how he and his peers became involved with Revolution in Our Lifetime. His relationship with Harms through a library fellowship, and his aligned research into Panthers ally Rev. Wickwire, ushered him into the project.
Petite took classes with Schrader and Harms, but had yet to research the Baltimore Black Panther Party.
Meanwhile, Whitehead and Clemons were both firmly interested in the Panthers and joined through a series of independent, coincidental connections. Last April, Clemons met her future advisors at an event with The Real News Network, where Conway worked before his death. The pair subsequently completed the student-curator team last summer through fellowships with Inheritance Baltimore, a reparations program at Hopkins focused on preserving local Black history and curating arts-based public engagement.
“The pieces fell into place. The exhibition would’ve been impossible to plan this way,” says Schrader. “It was really fortuitous circumstances.”
Each uniquely acquainted with the project, the students were tasked with drawing a cohesive narrative from their research interests. “How can we be in conversation with each other? How do we tell a [bigger] message that leaves the audience with pieces of what we want from our sections?” reflects Clemons on the team’s process.
The result: each section thoughtfully illuminates histories through essay-like labels and media that fill the gallery’s space. Guests can also walk around the room counterclockwise for a chronological overview of the Baltimore chapter.
All students were swift in sharing what artifacts resonated with them most. For Clemons, whose opening section explores the role of Baltimore youth, it’s an image sourced from the I. Henry Photo Project of children protesting for the release of Conway and fellow comrades James Powell and Irving Young. “The Panthers capitalized on the children’s youthfulness to make the movement what it was,” she says.
All students were swift in sharing what artifacts resonated with them most. For Clemons, whose opening section explores the role of Baltimore youth, it’s an image sourced from the I. Henry Photo Project of children protesting for the release of Conway and fellow comrades James Powell and Irving Young. “The Panthers capitalized on the children’s youthfulness to make the movement what it was,” she says.
Fontes appreciated the humanity he saw in the scribbled notes of his subject, Rev. Wickwire, from meetings for the Baltimore Committee for Political Freedom, a citywide partnership that included notable religious and neighborhood organizations.
Petite pointed to cartoons of resistance and the party newspaper’s many front pages that seamlessly connected to the team’s research, including hers on prison uprisings across Baltimore and Maryland.
Focusing on internationalism, Whitehead chose a map that demonstrates the Baltimore chapter’s intellectual influence. Produced by SinoMaps Press, then known as China Cartographic Publishing House, this artifact shows red torches marking protests across America in response to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. A speech bubble also hovers over Baltimore, one of only six cities with speech and torch graphics. China’s Mao Zedong commended the chapter’s resistance to the city police department and National Guard and voiced confidence in their continued fight.
“I thought it was a great example of reciprocal solidarity,” says Whitehead. “Not only did African Americans look to China for inspiration, but they were looking to Black activists and supporting them, too.”
For Harms, Baltimore’s case study not only directly frames present structural challenges, but also sheds light on broader power dynamics and grassroots movements that mirror struggles across the globe and transcend time. “Rarely are domestic stories truly just domestic,” Harms says. “They often have a global dimension that really comes out in the history of the Baltimore Panthers.”
She and Schrader expressed pride in the student curators for their diligent research, as well as gratitude for everyone who has engaged with the exhibition since its opening on April 12.
Yet advisors and students alike emphasize that countless untold stories about the Black Panther Party’s Baltimore chapter — and, ultimately, about the world — are hidden among local archives, ready to be further excavated and amplified.
Revolution in Our Lifetime is on view at The Peale, 225 Holliday Street, through July 7. Community members can access the Black Panther materials at JHU’s Sheridan Libraries upon request.
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