BigShinyThing

According to the Daily Telegraph (of all places), the hot sauce has sparked off a row between Frederika Newton and her partner David Hillard (a Black Panthers founder) and fellow party members, who accuse the pair of “ripping off the movement’s legacy” and trying to “privatise the party so only they can use it”.

In her defence, Frederika claims that proceeds from sales will go to fund anti-violence and educational programmes for the young. She says that the idea:

just popped into my head a couple of years ago. I thought, that would be a catchy name for a hot sauce. It would be a really good fund raising tool and a way to educate people about the Party at the dinner table.

She said that the brand would challenge the historical image of the Party as “gun-toting vigilantes”.

The phrase Burn Baby Burn is most closely associated with the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles which left 30 dead and thousands injured. Billy Jennings, who runs It’s About Time - Black Panther Party Legacy and Alumni - said, “It’s a shame what they have come down to, trying to make a buck on the backs of 30 people who died in the struggles. They are not interested in the legacy. What they are doing is wrong.”

Huey Newton was shot dead by a drug dealer in 1989. The foundation established in his name in 1993 as a non-profit organisation describes itself as the “guardian of the true history of the Black Panther Party” and it is through this foundation that Frederika is selling the Burn Baby Burn sauce. The website urges those interested to “contact us and be one of the first to get a taste of the 60s.” However, other links prove Frederika’s marketing savvy in exploiting her late husband’s name. There are Black Panther tours on offer as well as:

The original Huey P. Newton wicker chair poster is on sale in our catalog. This poster is recently featured in the platinum album “God’s Son” by Nas.

It appears that the Black Panthers are destined to become just another logo, like the famous Alberto Korda photograph of Che Guevara. I wonder what ex Panther Angela Davis, now 61 and a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, would have to say.