The Black Panther Party

Category: Poverty

  • Three Black Men

    A film by Sienna McLean-LoGreco

    Three Black Men

    A Journey into the Magical Otherwise

    Three Black Men: A Journey into the Magical Otherwise
    Closing
    Night
    Baltimore
    Sunday · Oct. 11 · 6:45 PM
    Baltimore International Black Film Festival
    Pikes Studio Cinema · Theatres 1 & 2

    The Black Panther Party

    What happens when Blackness is approached not simply as history — but as a living source of possibility?

    Three Black Men: A Journey into the Magical Otherwise follows visionaries Resmaa Menakem, Bayo Akomolafe and Orland Bishop on a transformative journey along the transatlantic slave route in reverse.

    Their voyage moves from Los Angeles to Salvador da Bahia in Brazil and finally to Accra, Ghana — destinations holding crucial pieces of Black history and representations of the forced migration, survival and demise of the millions who crossed the Atlantic.

    But this is not simply a journey backward. Together they engage with Black and multicultural communities through discourse, play, ritual, art and spiritual expressions of resistance and hope — searching for new pathways toward futures full of possibility.

    Can a journey open new possibilities for Blackness?

    A Journey
    in Reverse

    Three Black men embrace Blackness as a living source of connection, creation, and renewal.

    Los Angeles Salvador da Bahia Accra

    Resmaa Menakem, Bayo Akomolafe and Orland Bishop trace the transatlantic slave route in reverse, crossing places that hold histories of forced migration, survival, resistance and transformation.

    Along the way they collaborate with Black and multicultural communities, engaging in discourse, play and ritual alongside artistic and spiritual expressions of resistance and hope.

    Three Black Men turns movement through geography, history and memory into an invitation to imagine Blackness beyond survival alone.

    Director / Producer

    Sienna
    McLean-
    LoGreco

    Filmmaker · Storyteller

    For us, this one is personal. Sienna McLean-LoGreco is our friend, and we are proud to put a spotlight on the work she has brought to the screen.

    Three Black Men is ambitious in both geography and idea: three thinkers crossing continents, histories and traditions while asking what Black life can create when possibility — rather than limitation — becomes the starting point.

    Baltimore audiences now have an opportunity to experience that journey together on Closing Night of the Baltimore International Black Film Festival.

    Watch the Trailer

    Enter the
    Magical Otherwise.

    Three men. Three continents. A journey through history, memory, ritual and possibility.

    If the Vimeo player is unavailable, watch the trailer directly on Vimeo →

    Baltimore · October 8–12, 2026

    See It at BIBFF

    Three Black Men is presented as the Closing Night Feature of the 13th Annual Baltimore International Black Film Festival.

    13th Annual Baltimore International Black Film Festival, October 8 through 12, 2026
    Baltimore International Black Film Festival 2026 schedule featuring Three Black Men as the Closing Night Feature

    Discover the Film

    A journey through memory.
    A search for possibility.

    Visit ThreeBlackMen.com →

    THREE BLACK MEN: A Journey into the Magical Otherwise
    Directed and produced by Sienna McLean-LoGreco

  • 1968: The Report That Warned America

    1968: The Report That Warned America

    1968: The Report That Warned America

    What the Kerner Commission Said—and Why It Still Matters

    In 1968, the United States government conducted one of the most important investigations in its history.

    It asked three questions:

    • What happened?
    • Why did it happen?
    • What can be done to prevent it from happening again?

    The answers were clear. The warning was direct.

    America, the report concluded, was moving toward two separate and unequal societies.

    More than fifty years later, that warning still echoes.

    1968: The Report That Warned America breaks down the findings of the Kerner Commission and places them in context—what led to the unrest, what the government discovered, and what was never fully addressed.

    This is not an academic text.

    It is a focused, accessible look at a turning point in American history—and the questions that remain unresolved today.

    For readers seeking clarity, context, and a deeper understanding of the forces that continue to shape the country, this book offers a direct path into the conversation.

    JUSTICE & EQUALITY

    Cover of 1968: The Report That Warned America

    Buy on Amazon
    Read on Apple Books

  • Fannie Lou Hamer – An American Hero

    Fannie Lou Hamer – An American Hero

    Fannie Lou Hamer

    Born: October 6, 1917 – Montgomery County, Mississippi

    Died: March 14, 1977 – Mound Bayou, Mississippi

    Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the most powerful grassroots leaders of the American Civil Rights Movement. She was not a lawyer, preacher, or politician. She was a sharecropper who decided she’d had enough.

    Early Life

    • Youngest of 20 children in a family of sharecroppers.
    • Began working in cotton fields at age 6.
    • Received limited formal education due to poverty.
    • In 1961, she underwent a forced hysterectomy without her consent — a common racist practice in Mississippi known as a “Mississippi appendectomy.”

    Turning Point – 1962

    At age 44, she attended a meeting organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

    She learned Black Americans had a constitutional right to vote — something she had effectively been denied her entire life.

    She attempted to register to vote.

    For that:

    • She was fired from the plantation where she lived and worked.
    • She received death threats.
    • She was harassed repeatedly.

    She did not back down.

    1963 – Arrest and Beating

    In Winona, Mississippi, she was arrested for trying to desegregate a bus station.

    While jailed, she was brutally beaten by other inmates under police orders. She suffered permanent kidney damage and a blood clot in her eye.

    Afterward, she famously said:

    “They could beat me as long as they want, but they couldn’t beat God out of me.”

    1964 – National Spotlight

    She helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).

    The MFDP challenged Mississippi’s all-white delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.

    Her televised testimony before the credentials committee shook the country. She described beatings, terror, and voter suppression in Mississippi.

    She asked:

    “Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

    President Lyndon B. Johnson tried to interrupt the broadcast because he feared how powerful her words were.

    Millions still saw it.

    Famous Quote

    “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

    That line became one of the most enduring slogans of the movement.

    Later Work

    • Organized Freedom Farms Cooperative to help Black families gain economic independence.
    • Worked to increase political representation in Mississippi.
    • Helped pave the way for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
    • In 1972, she became a delegate to the Democratic National Convention — this time officially recognized.

    Legacy

    Fannie Lou Hamer represents:

    • Grassroots political power
    • Moral courage
    • Rural Southern Black women leading change
    • Faith-driven activism
    • Refusal to be intimidated by systemic violence

    She never held major elected office.

    She never became wealthy.

    But she permanently shifted American democracy.

  • Americans Live on $6 a Day

    Americans Live on $6 a Day

    This is what hunger looks like.

    JJ:

    You ever seen a grown man cry over a grocery bill?

    Monique M:

    Twice this week. One of them was a vet. Other one had three kids and a busted radiator. She was asking how to stretch forty-three dollars across thirty days.

    JJ:

    Forty-three dollars.

    Monique M:

    That’s the average cut some folks saw this year. Pandemic-era boosts gone. Rent’s up. Eggs are still five bucks a dozen in half the cities I track.

    JJ:

    You tracking suffering like data?

    Monique M:

    I’m tracking survival. It’s my job to hand out lifeboats, but they keep shrinking the damn boats.

    JJ:

    Who’s shrinking them?

    Monique M:

    Congress. State-level administrators. Budget hawks who’ve never missed a meal. People who say “bootstraps” like it’s gospel. You know the drill.

    JJ:

    I know the drill. It was pointed at my uncle’s head when he got denied for assistance back in ’99. Said his disability check disqualified him. Said being poor wasn’t poor enough.

    Monique M:

    We lose staff every month. Burnout. Guilt. Some of us stay because walking away feels worse.

    JJ:

    So you’re inside the machine that’s grinding your own people.

    Monique M:

    I’m trying to jam it. I tell folks how to appeal, where the loopholes are, who to call when the office “loses” their paperwork for the third time. But it’s not enough. We need noise. We need backup.

    JJ:

    Forty-three dollars gone means forty-three meals gone. That’s a missed breakfast before school. That’s hunger making a child mean in class. That’s a mother eating instant noodles so her baby can have fruit.

    Monique M:

    And if she complains, the world says she’s lazy. Says she’s a leech. Says she should be grateful.

    JJ:

    Grateful for what?

    Monique M:

    A system that feeds her kids every other week and starves them in between.

    JJ:

    We’ve seen this game before. Starve the people. Blame the people. Punish the people for daring to survive.

    Monique M:

    So what do we do?

    JJ:

    We speak. We write. We show up. We use this page, this name, this legacy. No more waiting for things to get worse before we call it what it is: war by policy.

    Monique M:

    And you think that’ll change something?

    JJ:

    I know it will. It already is. You’re here. You came to speak. That’s how it starts.

    Monique M:

    Then let this be the start.

    JJ:

    Let it be the start, and not the end.

    Food is a human right. The cuts to SNAP are not “budgeting.” They are violence by pen. This page stands with Monique M, and every worker, parent, elder, and child caught in this cycle. Forty-three dollars is a number. But behind it are names.

    — Justice Jones