I have covered many aspects of the Civil Rights Movement in America – focusing on such luminaries as Malcolm X, John Lewis, Angela Davis and James Baldwin – while also examining events at Selma, and the ‘Freedom Riders’.

The Black Panther movement needed to be addressed. Inspired by the seminal photography of Stephen Shames – I produced a small collection of portraits – Kathleen Cleaver, Bobby Seale, The ‘Hoover Boys’ and the support outside court for the infamous Panther Trial in May 1971 (156 allegations and charges, 156 Not guilty verdicts).

The movement eventually collapsed, a ‘tragic evolution’ – due to infighting and corruption – often initiated by the U.S. government through their ‘COINTEL PRO’ program (set up to ‘neutralize black nationalist hate groups’).

Hoover’s initiatives to discredit, weaken and corrupt their movement along with the ‘Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’ and the ‘Nation of Islam’ eventually achieved their destructive aims.