Ishmael Reed’s “Black Power in the Ghetto: two flags, a stepladder, and a megaphone” [within The East Village Other].

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Single issue of the underground New York City newspaper, The East Village Other, featuring the headline article “Black Power in the Ghetto: two flags, a stepladder, and a megaphone” by newspaper co-founder Ishmael Reed.

The accompanying illustration shows a black man lighting the fuse of a barrel labeled “Black Powder,” the “d” of which he has crossed out to read “Black Power.” Reed criticizes black civil rights activists Stokely Carmichael and Floyd McKissick:

The black man…must gather a consensus about a program suitable to his needs. This cannot be done by somebody with two flags and a ladder selected by NBC [an NBC television interview with Carmichael accompanies the article] any more than it can be done by the editorial boards of The New York Times and Life photographers in their self-chosen task of imposing the night club comedians, boxers, football players, playwrights and the whole phalanx of live ghosts and associate ghosts upon the black masses as “leaders.” (p14)

This issue features a number of 1960s countercultural touchstones: a critical review of novelist Norman Mailer (“Mailer or Mauler? Christian or Cannibal?”), an article on musical band groupies, a review of the New York Film Festival, an interview with poet Naphtali “Tuli” Kupferberg, founder of the band The Fugs, and an interview with comedian/satirist Lenny Bruce. Plus great ads, including a full page ad for record albums by Bob Dylan including his 1966 release, Blonde on Blonde.

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