FOR ALMOST HALF A CENTURY, Jeffrey Henson-Scales thought the FBI had stolen photographs he had taken of the Black Panther Party (BPP) in 1960s Oakland – a reasonable assumption considering the G-men were often staked out in front of his childhood home.
Scales’ parents were artists and activists. His mother, Barbara, was a painter and filmmaker with friends in the Communist Party during the height of the ‘Red Scare’. His father, Emmet Scales Jr., was nightclub in San Francisco during the ‘50s and ‘60s, who was friends with Eldridge Cleaver before he joined the Panthers.
