LAURA FLANDERS & FRIENDS

VESSELS OF REVOLUTION: SCULPTOR AKINSANYA KAMBON ON ART, BLACK PANTHER LEGACY & LIBERATION

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LAURA FLANDERS: When Akinsanya Kambon’s art show opened in Los Angeles in 2025, that city was emerging from some of the worst wildfires in its history. Residents had just experienced the deadly destruction of fire. Kambon’s exhibition showcased something different: the transformative power of flames and smoke when cooked into extraordinary ceramics. Kambon, born in Sacramento in 1946, is a former Marine, Black Panther and art professor. In 2023, at the age of 77, he won the prestigious Mohn Award, the top prize given by the Hammer Museum for his participation in their biennial show “Made in LA.” After that, a selection of Kambon’s works were presented in a solo show in Beverly Hills at the celebrated Marc Selwyn Gallery. This May, I had a chance to visit them there where I learned that his technique is a version of Japanese raku, which causes smoke to interact with glaze in unpredictable ways. The results in this case are intricate, surprising storytelling pieces that focus on suppressed histories of rebellion, vengeance, and rescue. Survival is a constant topic and it’s the standout theme of Kambon’s life too. He suffered polio as a child and turned to drawing to escape bullying and abuse. He served in Vietnam and became a lieutenant for culture for the Black Panther Party. In 1970, he was arrested in connection with the high profile case of the “Oak Park Four”, and spent a year incarcerated accused of a capital crime before being found not guilty at trial and released. He went on to earn a master’s degree from Cal State Fresno and taught art for almost 30 years at Cal State Long Beach, as well as in a free youth art program he ran in his neighborhood. His one-man show will open at the New York Sculpture Center in May 2026. I visited Kambon in his studio in Long Beach earlier this year in a warehouse space with his dogs and kilns out back. The place was overflowing and alive with his work. Here’s a clip from the documentary produced by the Hammer Museum on Kambon’s Life. Akinsanya Kambon: The Hero Avenges.

AKINSANYA KAMBON: Some things, I think, men are just not supposed to understand. I think we just have to go with the flow. I’ve got so many of these things here. I mean, there’s thousands of them and each one of ’em has a different spiritual force. And as long as I’m doing that work, I don’t worry about anything happening to me. I look at meditating and prayers the same thing. The only thing is that when I meditate and pray, I don’t ask God for anything. I thank Him for everything He’s already done. I thank the ancestor spirits for everything they’ve done because they’ve kept me alive and doing this work all these years and I’m still doing it. And there’s nothing, what else can they give me? I got life, man, and that’s a blessing enough.

AKINSANYA KAMBON: So my name is Akinsanya Kambon which is a Yoruba name, Akinsanya is. Kambon is West African and it means “of the people.” So anybody who has that name among the revolutionary segment of our society, if you have the name Kambon or Shakur, those were the revolutionary last names for people in the struggle. I remember I had polio when I was three. The left side of my face and my body was paralyzed. I was thinking that the fact that I had polio when I was three, it left me with all these disabilities that when I got my draft notice, when I told them that I had polio, they should have said, “Okay, we don’t want you, reject.” But they didn’t do that. I told ’em I had polio and they said, “Well, don’t worry about it. We’re gonna put you right up front anyway.” I said, “Oh.” So I stopped complaining.

– AKINSANYA KAMBON: I didn’t understand nothing about the world. I couldn’t even spell communism. They told me we was going to fight communism in Vietnam. They just said, “We gotta go fight the Vietnamese ’cause they trying to take over in Vietnam. They gonna come over here and enslave us again.” That’s what they told us. When I got to Vietnam, they gave me a secondary MOS 1461. I was a combat illustrator. I would go out in the field and fight, and I had to retain all the images that I had seen in the field and I had to draw them when I got back. A lot of the drawings that I did was so gory and bloody that the people I turned them into shredded them, destroyed them, threw ’em in the dumpster.

LAURA FLANDERS: Your survival story didn’t stop there.

AKINSANYA KAMBON: No, it didn’t. I know that I survived the Boy Scouts of America. I was with Troop 407 in Sacramento, California, and we used to watch the white kids on the other side of the street getting ready to go camping. They had tents and sleeping bags and all that kind of stuff, and we’d stand across the street watching them. They were having a big meeting. They wanted everybody to come to this meeting with Boy Scouts from all over Sacramento. And they gave all the Boy Scouts a little cord about that long, little cord. They said, “Okay, everybody, we tying these knots.” So this guy was from Arkansas. He was the regional director for the Boy Scouts for the Southern region. And he gets up on the stage and he has a big old rope. He showed us how to tie the hangman’s noose. And I was so proud of my little hangman’s noose and I held it up like that and he saw me in the back, and he came back there, we’re sitting with my friends. He grabbed me by my little arm. He walked me up on the stage. I thought he was gonna show everybody how good I tied my knot. He got me to the edge of the stage with about three feet, four feet high. He walked to the front of the stage, he put that big rope that he had around my neck and he kicked me off the stage and held it with two hands. And I was choking and I was trying to smile. But then when my breath got cut off and I couldn’t breathe, I started choking. Then, I remember blacking out and I remember coming too. And then, I finally got so scared, I ran. I jumped off the stage and took off running. They tried to catch me, man, but I was getting away. I got out the door and ran out in the field and I laid down and cried. And that just reminds me of stuff that happened. My great-grandmother, Mama Tannehill, she was from Texas. She come out from Dallas, Texas along with the rest of the family because she had a son, she had two sons, Frank and Jesse Tannehill. Frank Tannehill became a musician. He’s a blues musician. His brother Jesse was lynched by the clan. They lynched him and the family had to get the hell out of Texas and they moved to California.

LAURA FLANDERS: There’s another time that the state tried to kill you.

AKINSANYA KAMBON: That was later on. That was for murder. They said I killed a police officer. And it was devastating because I know so much about the history of this country when it comes to the criminal justice system and how unfair it is. And I have never seen anybody, Black accused of that crime, murder, and acquitted. I never saw it and I didn’t plan on seeing it. My father left when I was two years old. I didn’t see him. Just one day, my dad was gone. My mother didn’t know where he was. And going to Vietnam and getting out of Vietnam and being in the Panther Party and getting arrested for the murder of a police officer in Oak Park, I’m fighting for my life.

LAURA FLANDERS: You’re on death row at this point?

AKINSANYA KAMBON: Yes. I was on death row at this point. It’s Sacramento County Jail death row. They have a wing on the third floor for everybody who’s going to San Quentin’s death row if they’re convicted. So that’s where I was, Three West Six, that was my cell. Three West Six, that was my cell number. And when they brought me down to see him and he was looking at me and he started crying and I told him, I said, “Dad, I’m cool. I got this, I got this. You know, don’t-” because it hurt me to see my dad cry, you know?

LAURA FLANDERS: Now, you were acquitted.

AKINSANYA KAMBON: I was.

LAURA FLANDERS: And you were released.

AKINSANYA KAMBON: I was.

LAURA FLANDERS: And I’ve asked you to mention these stories just to remind people in this moment how much a person can survive, how much a person can go through and be here and be making incredible art. When did you first think of yourself as an artist going through all of this? Or did you ever have a moment?

AKINSANYA KAMBON: I thought of myself as an artist even when I was a child because art was therapy for me. When I was in kindergarten, when I would get all the teasing and the bullying on the play yard, I wouldn’t want to go out to play. I’d sit at my desk and stay and draw. But I used to always seem like I would always take the side of the underdog.

LAURA FLANDERS: You continued to tell stories through your art in Vietnam?

AKINSANYA KAMBON: Yes, I did.

LAURA FLANDERS: And afterwards?

AKINSANYA KAMBON: Yes.

LAURA FLANDERS: What was your role in the Black Panthers and how did you get associated with the Black Panthers?

AKINSANYA KAMBON: I heard about the Black Panthers initially when I was in Vietnam. We had these soul sessions every Wednesday. The older brothers who realized that they had drafted a lot of Marines in 1965-’66, and some of us were illiterate. We could not read. So they would read the Stars and Stripes to us and try to let us know what was going on with the war and what’s going on back in the States. And so that’s where I start understanding the importance of knowing how to read is ’cause I knew I couldn’t. So when I got out of the Marine Corps, I had an interest in the Black Panther Party. I was curious. I know they had a funeral for Bobby Hutton and I know that happened when I was in Camp Pendleton and Marlon Brando was at the funeral and I was like, yeah. So I really interested now, you know, because I kinda like Marlon Brando a little bit.

– MARLON BRANDO: I try to dig it because I, myself as a white man, have got a long way to go and a lot to learn. I haven’t been in your place. I haven’t suffered the way you’ve suffered. I’m just beginning to learn the nature of that experience. And somehow that has to be translated to the white community now. Time’s running out for everybody.

AKINSANYA KAMBON: I knew a guy that was in the Panther Party and he was always trying to get me to come to one of their meetings and I’d always, and I ain’t got time. I gotta do this, gotta that. So they were really trying to recruit me. And I know why, because I did a drawing for the group called Association for Black Unity, ABU, I did this drawing of a Panther, a Muslim, a NAACP person, a Urban League person, all shaking hands together, all the different organizations and they liked it. So they were trying to recruit me into the Black Panther Party.

LAURA FLANDERS: And they were successful?

AKINSANYA KAMBON: Yes.

LAURA FLANDERS: So how did your image of the Panthers change from the reality? Like how was your impression before you found yourself a member different from what you discovered once you did join?

AKINSANYA KAMBON: I found they didn’t have the weaponry that I thought they had and they didn’t know how to use the weapons that they had. With the military experience that I had being trained in the Marine Corps, I know how to shoot, I know what side alignment is. I know all that. So I’m qualified to teach that.

LAURA FLANDERS: But what else?

AKINSANYA KAMBON: They had the courage and I saw the courage that these young brothers and sisters had, and I couldn’t believe it. I said, but I can’t let ’em go out there by theyself ’cause they just gonna get killed, which they probably would have. So I started using the stuff that I learned in Vietnam. I learned in the Marine Corps. I started teaching military drill to the Panthers. I started preaching weapon safety to the Panthers. You know, we ain’t never had nobody get accidentally shot by no Panthers.

LAURA FLANDERS: And at the end of the day you become a lieutenant for culture?

AKINSANYA KAMBON: I became a lieutenant of culture, yes.

LAURA FLANDERS: And what did that involve?

AKINSANYA KAMBON: That involved working directly under Emory Douglas, who was the Minister of Culture. And I would turn in my drawings that I did to him and he would publish them in the newspaper. And we got a lot of old publishing. I tried to get the original drawings back and they said, “Well, they were in the barn in somebody’s garage and it caught on fire and the all of ’em burned up.”

LAURA FLANDERS: Well, some things survive.

AKINSANYA KAMBON: Well…

LAURA FLANDERS: The coloring book.

AKINSANYA KAMBON: The coloring did survive, yeah.

LAURA FLANDERS: Talk about that.

AKINSANYA KAMBON: It was a project that I actually did on my own and I took it to Oakland and let Bobby Seale look at it. He got all excited, “Oh, this is great.” I said, but it’s not finished. I said, I’m trying to finish. Oh, it’s finished enough.

LAURA FLANDERS: What was the goal of it?

AKINSANYA KAMBON: The goal was to teach people our history. That’s what I didn’t know. That’s when I learned about the history of the slave rebellions when I was in Vietnam. It made me proud because I learned that our people resisted. We didn’t do, like they said, we just sang and danced and ate watermelon. That’s what they told us. That’s what what you see in all the stepping fetched movies and Shirley Temple and you see all this stuff. And you realize that we rebelled. That kinda gives you a sense of pride that you didn’t just accept the exploitation of your people, you fought against it. We had people that fought against it. So I felt prideful and I felt that other young African American men and women could look at this coloring book as a history book and just see the part where we fought against slavery. That was the main part I tried to emphasize.

LAURA FLANDERS: You’ve got your pictures here, your paintings, but this focus on the ceramic work. What drew you to the ceramics? Is there something about the kiln, the fire, the smoke?

AKINSANYA KAMBON: That process of raku is quite sub… you just get caught. You get brought into that. I’m doing this raku, man, and I pull these things out of the fire. You don’t know what you going to get. You pull ’em out, man, and you get all these metallic lusters and coppers and silvers and golds. It’s so beautiful. And that’s what I’m after. And you get addicted to that, and I’d say I am addicted.

LAURA FLANDERS: I mean it seems metaphorical also in terms of the beauty that comes out of going through the fire.

AKINSANYA KAMBON: Exactly.

LAURA FLANDERS: But maybe I’m being too metaphorical here.

AKINSANYA KAMBON: No, there’s a spiritual thing connected with that fire and then the drums, and I can understand it. We will get drummers over here to sit out there with their drums and some people dancing, drumming and dancing. And the drums call the ancestor spirits into the kiln and they go into the fire and they get in there with the pieces, and they imbue the pieces with its ancestor spirit. And I can feel its presence and I love it, you know? I was out there one time and we pulled a piece out. This is when I was younger, I had two arms at the time. And we put it on this metal table and we hit it with the hose. It was some shackled up men and women. They had chains around their necks. After we hit it with the water, the water started boiling because it was so hot and it had, the mouths were open and you could hear these things start screaming like women and children, women wailing. And I didn’t hear it at first. My dogs heard it. I had two doberman pinchers out there. They heard it. Their ears went up and they took off running. I said, what’s wrong with them dogs? And then I heard it and I called my friend. I said, Derrick, get over here man. Listen to this. And you could hear these women wailing. And I said, oh my God, this thing. And I took it, I brought it down here. After that happened, I sat it on the table. A guy came in from Senegal, a friend of mine brought him in and we’re talking and I told him about the piece. He said, “Yeah, yeah.” He said, “That’s Coumba Castel.” I said, Coumba Castel. I said, what is that? He says that’s the female wailing spirit of Gorée Island where they had the birthing room for the women that were pregnant. Oh my God, man, that. I said, I don’t know where this is coming from, but it’s coming from someplace. I didn’t really realize where it actually came from until 1994 when I actually did go to Gorée Island. Well, I went before that, but I went to Elmina Castle in Ghana. I went to Elmina and Cape Coast Castle. And me and my wife went in there and I went down in there.

LAURA FLANDERS: And that was where the enslaved Africans were held before they were forced onto the Middle Passage?

AKINSANYA KAMBON: Exactly, some spiritual things happened to me in there. So I go in this big dungeon. They said it was over 500 Africans in there and somebody put some candles on the altar up there. And I got on my knees and I started meditating. And I’m not a… even though I was an ordained minister, I am an ordained minister, I’m not that into spiritual stuff like that. Not the Bible and not the Koran, I’m not, I don’t… But I’m down here and I’m on my knees and all of a sudden hear this woman say, “We’ve been waiting for you.” And look, this scared the mess out of me. I looked up and I saw all these spirits around the room and a woman was doing the talking. She said, “We need you to teach our children who was stolen, about our history, about our culture, and about our religions.” And I thought about that and I said to myself, I thought to myself, I didn’t say a word. I said, but I don’t know nothing about that. I thought that. And she said, “Don’t worry.” She could hear what I thought. She said, “We have been guiding your hands.” I said, oh my God. So I backed up. I said, okay, as long as you got my hands, baby, I’m with you. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will. That’s like when we were slaves on the plantation. If it hadn’t have been for Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, Boukman Dutty, and all the ones that rebelled against slavery would still be slaves today. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will.

LAURA FLANDERS: So what’s the role? What’s the work the art does in this context?

AKINSANYA KAMBON: Art educates the masses of people. Not just Black, not Black or white or Asian, this educates the masses of young people to our struggle, to how long this struggling and how it’s connected. Because if you look at some of the work here, you can see how all this stuff is connected. You can see all of it’s connected and you’ll be amazed at some of the things that you see.

LAURA FLANDERS: So my last question I ask everybody on the show is what do you think is the story that the future will tell of this moment looking forward, I don’t know, 50 years, 100 years? What do you think the future will say about us now?

AKINSANYA KAMBON: I think the future’s gonna say of those of us who participated in the struggle on the right side, they got nothing but good things to say about us. But those who were traitors, those who betrayed the peoples’ struggle, they’re not going to have nothing positive to say about ’em. Matter of fact, they might be old in a wheelchair, whatever, and little kids are gonna be throwing rocks at ’em. And that’s what they deserve.

LAURA FLANDERS: All right, now, because you said that, I have one follow-up question. Which is just to young people out there who might look at you and say, well, look at the long, long fight you had and all the aspirations you had and the people that you worked with, and you did the right thing and we’re here. And so what’s the point?

AKINSANYA KAMBON: Well, everybody lives and everybody dies. It’s not how long he or she lives to die. It’s what you do between birth and death. What you do in between. And as long as you are a freedom fighter, you fight for freedom. And that’s what I’m gonna do. I don’t feel like I’ve lost anything. If I would’ve kept living, I was gonna get 78 anyway and I might get 79. Who knows? The way my luck’s been running. I don’t know, but we’ll just see. Let’s just hope that other people pick up the baton and want to carry the fight.

LAURA FLANDERS: And get beautiful in the fire.

AKINSANYA KAMBON: Exactly. Let the fire mold you to whatever you going to be.

LAURA FLANDERS: I could have talked with Akinsanya Kambon for hours as recipients of our free podcast will hear when they receive the full, uncut version of our conversation through their newsfeed. Akinsanya is simply full of stories, especially history stories. He seems to know the name of every freedom fighter there ever was on every continent across the centuries. He cares about history because history means that much to him. Like the history of his great great grandfather who was a participant in the 1811 so-called German Coast uprising, in which enslaved Africans walked off their plantation and were joined by hundreds more marching their way to freedom across Louisiana. Akinsanya’s relative was caught and beheaded, and his head was put on a spike ostensibly to intimidate others to come. But the story didn’t intimidate Kambon. It empowered him and gave him a new sense of what he and his people were capable of. Akinsanya cares as much about history and revealing suppressed and repressed histories as Donald Trump and his administration seemed to care about suppressing them. In this time, we seem to be living through a fire on exactly that topic of history. But spending time with Kambon has me convinced some stories, some history, like some people will never be suppressed and some beauty can come out of all this fire. You can find my full, uncut conversation with Akinsanya through subscribing to our free podcast. All the information is at our website. In the meantime, stay kind, still curious. Stay kind, stay curious. Till the next time. For “Laura Flanders & Friends,” I’m Laura. Thanks for joining us.

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