Leonard Bernstein： timeline；On September 23, 1962,、John Berger and Black Panthers

When Leonard Bernstein partied with the Black Panthers

29 March 2018

As a special Front Row programme on Leonard Bernstein marks the centenary of his birth, we recount the fashionable soiree at the composer’s apartment in which the wealthy elite of 1970s New York mingled with members of the Black Panther Party. Here was the birth of 'radical chic'.

Leonard and Felicia Bernstein with Field Marshall Donald Cox, a leader of the Black Panther Party, at their New York penthouse apartment on 14 January 1970 | © Stephen Salmieri

On 14 January 1970, Leonard Bernstein, the famed New York Philharmonic conductor and West Side Story composer, hosted a gathering along with his wife Felicia in their apartment in Manhattan's Upper East Side. In attendance were some of the wealthiest movers and shakers of the New York arts world, including Otto Preminger, Sidney and Gail Lumet, and Barbara Walters, as well as several members of the Black Panther Party.

The Black Panthers were an organisation fighting for equal rights for African-Americans, but whose radical socialist rhetoric was the cause of much concern for many Americans, and particularly the American government. FBI Director J Edgar Hoover called the Black Panther Party "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country" – for them to be invited to the home of an American celebrity was very strange indeed.

https://leonardbernstein.com/about/timeline

• October 18, 1961
  

  West Side Story was released by United Artists (now part of MGM), and became the second highest grossing film in the United States that year. The film was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won 10, including Best Picture (as well as a special award for Robbins), becoming the record holder for the most wins for a movie musical.
• September 23, 1962
  

  Led inaugural concert of the New York Philharmonic in Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen Hall) at Lincoln Center in New York City.

On September 23, 1962, Leonard Bernstein and the

New York Philharmonic

performed the inaugural concert in their new home at

Lincoln Center

, Philharmonic Hall (now

David Geffen Hall

).

The program featured the Star Spangled Banner,

Ludwig van Beethoven

's Gloria from Missa Solemnis, Aaron Copland’s Connotations (premiere), Ralph Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music, and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with soloists including

Eileen Farrell

,

Shirley Verrett

, Jenny Tourel, Donald Bell, Richard Tucker, and George London.

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'I have to turn this prize against itself'—John Berger on accepting the Booker Prize for Fiction, 23 November 1972

In 1972, John Berger won the Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel G. He shared half of the proceeds with the Black Panthers, "the black movement with the socialist and revolutionary perspective that I find myself most in agreement with in this country". The other half funded A Seventh Man, his study of migrant workers in Europe.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2280-stokely-carmichael-s-black-power-address

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Stokely Carmichael's Black Power Address

In late 1966, Stokely Carmichael was arrested during a Mississippi rally in the aftermath of the Selma campaign. On his release, he advocated Black Power, representing a break with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Strongly influenced by the work of Frantz Fanon and his landmark book Wretched of the Earth, along with others such as Malcolm X, Carmichael led SNCC to become more radical. He resigned as chairman in May 1967 and became more closely aligned with the Black Panther Party. To celebrate the anniversary of his birth, we publish the text of his speech delivered at the University of California at Berkeley expounding on his aims forty-nine years ago in October 1966.