Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party

by Joshua Bloom, Waldo E. Martin Jr.

This timely special edition, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, features a new preface by the authors that places the Party in a contemporary political landscape, especially as it relates to Black Lives Matter and other struggles to fight police brutality against black communities.
 
In Oakland, California, in 1966, community college students Bobby Seale and Huey Newton armed themselves, began patrolling the police, and promised to prevent police brutality. Unlike the Civil Rights Movement that called for full citizenship rights for blacks within the United States, the Black Panther Party rejected the legitimacy of the U.S. government and positioned itself as part of a global struggle against American imperialism. In the face of intense repression, the Party flourished, becoming the center of a revolutionary movement with offices in sixty-eight U.S. cities and powerful allies around the world.

Black against Empire is the first comprehensive overview and analysis of the history and politics of the Black Panther Party. The authors analyze key political questions, such as why so many young black people across the country risked their lives for the revolution, why the Party grew most rapidly during the height of repression, and why allies abandoned the Party at its peak of influence. Bold, engrossing, and richly detailed, this book cuts through the mythology and obfuscation, revealing the political dynamics that drove the explosive growth of this revolutionary movement and its disastrous unraveling. Informed by twelve years of meticulous archival research, as well as familiarity with most of the former Party leadership and many rank-and-file members, this book is the definitive history of one of the greatest challenges ever posed to American state power.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Race, African American, American History, Social Justice

562 pages, Paperback

First published January 14, 2013

About the author

Joshua Bloom is the Dean's Fellow in Social Research at UCLA, and winner of the American Book Award. He studies the dynamics by which innovative forms of social practice generate novel sources of power.

Reviews

[Carly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't say this type of thing much, but here goes: I believe that if you live in the US, this is one of those books you should read.

"The issues are not complex. The objective is seizure of power. Until we seize power, not visible power where a black man looks like he's running things--but real, actual power; everything else is bullshit [...] Peace and order are bullshit; they are meaningless without justice."
--Leroy Goodwin

I believe we have entered another Civil Rights era, and I have a perhaps naive hope that this one will finally complete the mission that was left incomplete during the time of MLK and Malcom X and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense: full, meaningful equality. Equality that is reflected in housing, in the police force, in education, in integration of society, in self-determination for all.

The Black Panthers believed that such a world could only come through true revolution.

I believe that we must share a common context for what has happened before we can shape what should happen. We must understand the past in order to shape the future.

And here's the problem: mainstream America still has a woefully inaccurate view of the BPP, even though at this point, it's widely acknowledged that the Black Panther Party was the target of an insidious, targeted, widespread, often illegal onslaught by the U.S. government, including a concerted policy of propaganda and isolation and infiltration and misinformation. And yet despite continuing revelations about the extent of COINTELPRO-BLACK-HATE, Operation CHAOS, and all the rest, the Black Panther Party remains an uncomfortable and often misunderstood political movement. Independent of whether you agree with the stances taken by the BPP during its evolution, it's crucial to understand their contexts.

It's easy to laud a nonviolent movement, at least once the movement is over. It's safe. Putting nonviolent figures on a pedestal is comfortable. It's probably why my childhood education repeatedly ignored all other aspects of the Civil Rights movement to focus on MLK. Maybe that's why we remember, say, Harriet Tubman as a kindly figure of the Underground Railroad rather than an active supporter of John Brown's raid and a vocal supporter of war against the South. It's even harder to go back and look at revolutions where violence was a relevant factor, particularly when those revolutions were lost. But this battle will be fought again and again until it is won, and I believe that a crucial aspect is for all Americans to try to understand the history and context of the unrest of today.

Black Against Empire is a fact-driven, unemotional examination of the social history and context of the Black Panther Party. Although a little dry at times, the sense of impartiality is one of the most impressive aspects of the book. It's a massive tome because the BPP has a long and fascinating history.

Often, as the rhetoric on each side mounts, it's difficult to read. But it illuminates on aspect that I, at least, was missing before reading this book: the BPP saw itself as a revolutionary force representing a disenfranchised nation occupied by a hostile invading force. The BPP's Ten Point Program even paraphrased the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, and that all men are created equal that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [...] But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, and their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards of their future security.

This aspect alone goes far in explaining the rationale behind armed defense. As George Mason Murray put it in 1968:

The Black Panther Party recognizes the critical position of black people in the United States. We recognize that we are a colony within the imperialist domains of North America and that it is the historic duty of black people in the United States to bring about the complete, absolute and unconditional end of racism and neocolonialism by smashing, shattering, and destroying the imperialist domains of North America.

Wondering if this book is relevant? As the news is awash with warnings of another "Bloody Summer" in Chicago and elsewhere, consider Bobby Seale's words in 1967:

“If one would look closely, and check this three year history, he will find that in damn near every rebellion a racist cop was involved in the starting of that rebellion [...] by inflicting brutality or murdering some black person within the confines of one of our black communities. Black people will defend themselves at all costs. They will learn the correct tactics to use in dealing with the racist cops […] The racist military police force occupies our community just like the foreign American troops in Vietnam. But to inform you dog racists controlling this rotten government and for you to let your pig cops know you ain’t just causing a ‘long hot summer,’ you’re causing a Black Revolution."

TL;DR: if you live in the US, and maybe even if you don't, this is a book worth reading.

[Mh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read a lot about the Black Panthers including most of the memoirs (Seize the Time, Taste of Power, This Side of Glory, Soul on Ice, Assata, Panther Baby) and several good books on narrower pieces of the history (Living for the City, Survival Pending Revolution, Murder of Fred Hampton). So I was looking for a big picture, and didn’t expect to learn much detail here. But I was shocked. There was something new on every page. Who knew that the FBI paid a highly placed agent (William O’Neal) to write stories in the Black Panther encouraging party members to torture suspected informants? Or that the commonly reproduced “October 1966” ten point program is actually from July 1968? Or that women Black Panthers hotly contested gender dynamics in the Party at the United Front on Fascism Conference? And even the events I was very familiar with (like the early police patrols in Oakland, or storming the Assembly in Sacramento) the authors put these in a whole new light, placing the events in a broader context and relation to one another in a way that it all makes sense.

Most important for me was the analysis. The authors show HOW the Black Panther Party built POWER, step by step. In Part I, they trace the roots of the Panthers’ political practices, and explain their initial successes patrolling the police. It’s telling that when black people figured out how to use gun laws to build political power, Reagan and the Republicans enacted laws to restrict the right to bear arms! In Part II, the authors show how the Party shifted gears once they couldn’t legally run the armed patrols any more. They go through this on all levels (theoretical discussion, lots of historical detail). I especially liked hearing about how the Party got organized in New York, Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, and cities across the country. It is hard to believe how quickly the Party grew. In Part III they discuss the service programs, the repression, and mobilization by allies. I hadn’t realized the breakfasts and other community programs only came about in 1969. The authors show that the Party kept growing even when the government was attacking it the hardest. The Panthers were able to sustain their armed self-defense because they attracted support from so many sources. Not just radicals! I couldn’t believe organizations like the Urban League or mainstream politicians like Willie Brown were taking real action to oppose the repression of the Panthers. So much has changed today. And I knew there were Asian, and Latino, and even white groups that had copied the Black Panther Party. But I didn’t understand how important broader allies were in organizing on the ground support for trials, and community programs, and the newspaper, and keeping the Party growing. Part IV the authors talk more about those alliances, and some of the incredible international work the Panthers did, with China, Algeria, Vietnam, Cuba.

As a long-time activist, these were the most important lessons for me. We can’t just take up arms and take over our communities. Anyone with sense knows that wouldn’t work today. But neither can we just march and sit in and demand civil rights and turn the other cheek. More black people are in jail today than were slaves before the Civil War. How can we do something about that? The authors don’t give easy answers to these questions. But they really helped me think about what it would take. If we are going to resist authority, we will be repressed. So who is going to help us face that repression?

The last few chapters where the Party unravels were the hardest part of the book for me to read. So sad that things had to come to that. But ignorance is bliss, right? I was really grateful that the book didn’t pull any punches. And I think I am convinced by the authors’ arguments that the tensions that tore the Party apart were larger than the personal and organizational conflicts through which they played out, and had a lot to do with growth of the black middle-class, and the repeal of the draft.

Thank you Drs. Martin and Bloom! Your book really changes things for me.

[The Conspiracy is Capitalism · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Good:
--Very accessible; the 500 pages of blow-by-blow historical details with intermittent theory flew by. Given the easy flow, audiobook format also works well. The Conclusion (final pages) provides an excellent summary.

--Framework for understanding history: what were the historical factors that contributed to the rise and demise of the BPP?
1) Black support: during the rise (1967-70), assassinations (X, MLK, Hampton) and urban riots provided broad support for BPP’s message of armed self-defense. This eventually unraveled when State concessions allowed for a black middle class and some political representation.

2) Anti-war movement: BPP were early resistors of the draft for war on Vietnam, and became allied with the growing anti-war movement. This eroded as Nixon scaled back the draft (Chomsky: when the draft ended, US army became a mercenary army of the poor) and mainstream Democrats started opposing the war (Chomsky: the elite remains to this day opposed only for financial/geopolitical reasons, see Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance, while the public encompasses moral reasons)

3) International revolutionary governments: BPP framed black America as a colony struggling against the empire, and built alliances with anti-imperialist countries (read and listen to Vijay Prashad! https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS...). This declined as other governments sought diplomacy with the US (note: from the US purposefully shocking the world economy via Nixon Shock + Volcker Shock, which wiped out Third World Industrialization):
-The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy
-The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
-The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World

--Other important themes throughout the historical account: the relationship between level of repression and opportunities/consequences for insurgency, strategy and the range from reform to revolt.

The Missing:
--I was surprised there was little mention of The War on Drugs (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, and more broadly: Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs).
--Demography (particularly in relation to capitalist boom/bust cycles, i.e. political economy) keeps rising up my list of areas to research. This book provided another reminder: the domestic context for black nationalism include urban ghettos (WWII jobs boom led to mass migration to north/west cities; after war, returning soldiers and de-industrialization brought stagnation... also reminded of women entering waged work during wartime/Feminist movements).
--For a brilliant overview of post-WWII political economy, see the aforementioned "Global Minotaur".

[tout · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took a exceptionally long time to read this because I read it with my partner. We'd take turns reading a chapter or two and then talk about it. Sometimes a month would go by in between other distractions. Over the last month we both set a goal to finally finish it so that it wouldn't take us an entire year to read. But because of this long reading it has been in the background and a kind of refrain for the last year an a half of the anti-police movement or "black lives matter."

It has often felt that in many conversations about why the black panthers fell apart or were defeated that repression and especially COINTELPRO were largely the key factor in this. This book gives a narrative that doesn't underscore the importance of a systematic campaign to discredit and eradicate the panthers, but it sees that repression as also part of the growth of the organization, primarily because the political prisoner campaigns to Free Huey, the trial of Bobby Seal and countless martyrs allowed the panthers to find allies in the new left, moderate blacks, and other anti-colonial struggles. The authors argue instead that the BPP fell because tensions within the organization, between those who wanted to carry out immediate insurrectionary measures (which turned into the Black Liberation Army / BLA) and those who emphasized, in the most vulgar sense, community building via food programs and revolutionary communizing and later turned more and more into neutered social democratic and traditional political campaigning. The split, partially caused by Huey's release from prison, declines in popular or allied support for various reasons (concessions to moderate blacks and waning liberal support through the slow end of the US involvement in South East Asia) pushed the core militants mostly toward insurrection and the leadership toward social democracy. What some call the inherent sameness of "living and fighting" had been broken and thus doomed them to dissolution.

A big part of the failure of revolutionary imaginations during the 1960s was, in my opinion, due to the form of struggle being cast within the shadow of larger anti-colonial and national liberation struggles that had little to do with the real political situation in advanced capitalist countries. An application of the same methods — armed struggle — was bound to fail. But its failure is what we should learn from. Like Autonomia (the red brigades and others), Greece in 2008 (cells of fire), and many other revolutionary situations, the warriors break out on their own form of revolutionary suicide with the state only when the movement is in decline. It seems to signal the end, however long the end may be.

This book is important for anyone interested in what revolution could look like or might look like in the US. Since slavery and race are the foundation of this machine that casts out a group as both necessary yet superfluous, as means to define the human community, as surplus population, etc, we will keep coming back to variations of the same problems the panthers and others faced. Most importantly how do we construct a "survival kit", as Huey Newton said while maintaining a resolute conflict with the existing hell we inhabit?

I found the sections on urban uprisings and insurrectionary situations before and after MLK Jr's assassination and sections on things like the SF State strike to be especially interesting.

[lexluvsb00ks · Rating 5 out of 5]

the way this book took me 13 months to finish… anyways…. If you’re looking for a textbook on the black panther party, this is it. with all the details you could ever desire — but be prepared for that as it is hefty.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The new standard history of the Black Panther Party. It's still crucial to read direct from those involved, Huey Newton, Assata Shakur, Safiya Bukhari, and others, but more than any other single volume Black Against Empire lays out the entire history of the BPP and its political development. Comprehensive, rigorous and yet at the same time extremely compelling, easy reading. Masterful history.

Essential reading for anyone involved in liberatory struggle in the US.

[Sara Salem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and extremely detailed history of the Black Panther Party that shows how the global context of the 1960s was a large part of why such a radical organisation could become so successful. The book also explains why a movement like this is unlikely to emerge in the US anytime soon.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Between 1968 and 1970 the Black Panther Party was the vanguard of the revolutionary moment the United States was experiencing. They got there over a period of years of solid organizing, and through a charismatic leadership that positioned the Party as the armed defenders of ghetto communities they likened to occupied zones within the imperium. Huey Newton and company pointed the finger at police brutality, and pointed guns when necessary. It was by following California gun laws to an end no one expected, and then following through with social programs, a somewhat inchoate but powerful Marxist rhetoric, and a willingness to build power through cooperation and in some cases cooptation with and of other black power and civil rights organizations. It didn't hurt that the US was absolutely ripe for the moment, fighting an unpopular war in VietNam, a war of ghetto oppression, and a war repressing the liberal peace movement. The established power structure really didn't know what was hitting it, and it responded as power does when it's threatened. And, as if it were textbook, repression built resistance. The BPP thrived. But, the BPP was a mixed bag of programs, and an internal mess of power plays in which gangsterism would raise its head along side vital community service, in which factions vied for autonomy, and leadership, in which gender and gay equality fought and won battles within, and in which the national organization led with a very heavy hand.

Eventually, the Party imploded, and the radical community has been picking up the pieces ever since.

Black Against Empire is another attempt to pick up the pieces. It's a fascinating story, made more fascinating for me because of my proximity to the Party and its activities. I was in Chicago. There were two factions in the politics I was attracted to: those who wanted to end the war, and those who wanted to smash the state. I wanted to smash the state, and the Panthers, SDS and the Weathermen, Rising Up Angry, and the Yippies (my gang) were the milieu in which I liked to raise my fist. We did think we were making a revolution. Fred Hampton's assassination proved it, the trial of the Chicago 8 proved it, the Days of Rage proved it - well, those things proved we had a moment, the student uprisings and the revolutionary gangs of Europe, and Mexico reinforced the moment, the reaction of the authorities gave us phrases like "chaos builds community," but we were wrong, and were easily co-opted.

The BPP was not an insurgency, and neither were the other groups I loved so much. Once state power figured out that giving in on a few thing would weaken us faster than all the SWAT teams in the world, we quickly fell apart, took our cookies, and went back to school, or work, or the farm, or wherever.

Anyway, I'm going on now as obnoxiously as we did then.

My biggest quibbles with Black Against Empire lie in the field of language, and an inflated importance of events.. Riots were not insurrections or rebellions, the over blown titles of authority the Panthers gave themselves were ridiculous, then and now, and the movement was really a moment - longer lasting than the Occupy moment, but a moment - none the less. Black Against Empire tries to make it bigger than that, but the fact is, it was big enough. That we're still enthralled has to tell us something.

Given that, this was a good read, and a good look at the scope of the Party in its heyday. Its scope was great, and shines in the history of US radicalism, and its good for us to know about it - and to celebrate what was good. And, hey, berets and black leather - amen.

[Gabriel Avocado · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a 4.5 rounded up. Great way to start off black history month but it was so long and emotionally taxing (for me anyway) that I ended up spending the whole month on it. The Black Panther Party is an iconic yet misunderstood part of leftist and black American history. Before I really get into the details of the book I recommend every read at least the epilogue, which neatly summarizes the important lessons of the party.

Anyway, Black Against Empire does a fantastic job at summarizing the history of the BPP without too much editorializing. The authors don’t spend time moralizing about their politics or members but merely presenting the reality of the panthers. They might mention what worked and why but I never got the impression the authors were joyful in their downfall or that they endorsed any particular action. That being said, the authors were respectful and seemed like they truly wanted the panthers to succeed.

This is a hard book to review per se because I recommend it for the history alone. It’s also very well written and engaging. My only criticism is that I found it a little repetitive at times, which I think unnecessarily added to the length while also not adding much clarification. Still, if you’re a Marxist looking to brush up on your US labor history, black against empire is an essential read. I guarantee you don’t know the panthers like you think you do.

[Wendy Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I borrowed this from the San Francisco Public Library earlier this year, back when libraries were still open. It was part of the 'one city, one book' program. It sat, forgotten, on my bookshelf for months; when the protests against police brutality began, I remembered that I had this book and figured it might be relevant to these times. It was indeed. Highly recommended for anyone interested in race, policing, and Bay Area history.

[Mal Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Black Panthers, the FBI, and the Vietnam War

When I moved to Berkeley in 1969, the Black Panther Party was in its heyday. Only three years earlier, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale had begun building the party around an image and a name they’d appropriated from other Black organizations then active in those turbulent years of the Vietnam War and exploding ghettoes. Yet before the decade of the 1970s was out, the Black Panther Party had all but disappeared. Black Against Empire, Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin’s excellent study of the Panthers and their politics, makes clear why and how they grew into such a force — and why the party collapsed so few years later.

The pivotal event in the history of the Black Panther Party was the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. Before that day, the Party was just one of hundreds of activist African-American organizations, most of them vanishingly small, in Black ghettoes and on university campuses all across the country. The Panthers were set apart from others by their distinctive black outfits, by carrying guns in public to defend themselves against police brutality, by their outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War, and, perhaps most of all, by their willingness to encompass people of other ethnicities. As a result, they had grabbed headlines locally and were growing at a fast pace, attracting African-Americans in their late teens and twenties who were disillusioned by the timidity of their elders in the Civil Rights Movement — but the party’s activities were largely limited to Oakland, Berkeley, and nearby cities. However, when Rev. King was murdered, the Black Panther Party quickly emerged as the leading organization nationwide with the credibility and the activist ideology that could channel the fury and the hope of young African-Americans and attract alliances with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and other largely non-Black radical organizations. The Party quickly began opening offices around the country — a total of 68 cities by 1970 — and for three years remained a powerful and ever-present force in the activist politics of the day.

Soon, however, the party’s rapid decline began in earnest. Bloom and Martin emphasize two key factors — the Panthers’ establishment enemies and the shrinking U.S. engagement in Vietnam under Richard Nixon — to which I would add a third: the explosive personality dynamics of the Panthers’ leaders themselves.

The Black Panther Party’s sworn enemies included the FBI, the Oakland police, and, later, police in Chicago and many other cities. J. Edgar Hoover personally led the FBI’s campaign against the Panthers, introducing informers and agents provocateur to trigger violence and sow dissent within their ranks. The Bureau’s efforts went so far as to hand out explosives, spread destructive rumors to undermine the marriages of Panther leaders, and arrange the assassination of key Panther activists. The Oakland police used violent and often illegal tactics, invading Panther homes and offices without search warrants and arresting individual Panthers on transparently trumped-up charges. The most egregious incident took place in Richard J. Daley’s Chicago, when police, acting on information from an informer, illegally burst into an apartment in the middle of the night and murdered Fred Hampton, the local chapter leader, sleeping in his bed. All told, police murdered dozens of Panther activists around the country.

Richard Nixon played a pivotal role, too. “Nixon was the one who rolled back the draft, wound down the war, and advanced affirmative action.” The cumulative effect of these strategic moves was to erode the foundation of the Panthers’ support both in the Black community and among white radicals (whose popularity among young people, it became clear, was largely grounded in fear of the draft). Once regarded not just by themselves but by other self-appointed revolutionary organizations as the vanguard of the revolution, the Panthers increasingly found themselves alone as liberals attacked them and the revolution on the nation’s campuses went the way of the draft. The party was officially dissolved in 1982.

So far as it goes, this analysis of the principal forces that undermined the Black Panther Party is right on target. However, I would argue that the personality dynamics of the party’s leadership played a significant role as well. Judging from my own observations as well as the evidence advanced in Black Against Empire, the three leading figures in the party were all brilliant men. It’s idle to speculate what roles they might have played in society had they been born white in middle-class families — but it’s clear that their life experiences as African-Americans growing up in America in the 1950s and 60s, not to mention the cruel frauds worked on them by FBI agents and informers during the late 1960s and early 70s, wreaked havoc on their mental health. Of the three, only Bobby Seale survived the Panther years whole and sane. Both Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver were, by all accounts, unhinged in the final years of their lives. So far as I’m concerned, no further proof is needed than the bitter feud that erupted between the two of them, which led to dangerous and sometimes violent splits within the Panther organization.

For anyone who lived through those unsettling times on the margins of the day’s events, Black Against Empire is illuminating. Though I crossed paths with a number of the individuals named in the book, and we had a great many mutual friends, I was quite unaware of the Panthers’ early history and of the party’s years of decline. If you have any interest in East Bay history, Berkeley politics, or African-American history and politics, you’ll find Black Against Empire essential reading.

Joshua Bloom, the principal author, is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at UCLA. His collaborator, Waldo Martin, is a Professor of History at UC Berkeley specializing in African-American history.

[JRT · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a detailed account of the history of the revolutionary Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. More specifically, it is an analysis of the BPP’s political ideologies and development, and the forces that culminated in its rise and eventual demise. At its core, the BPP was an anti-imperial, anti-colonial, Black Power organization focused on self-defense and community empowerment. The BPP believed that Black folks—being a colonized group in America—could never secure safety and security from the state, as the police are an occupying force designed to entrench the imperatives of colonialism, and capitalists and politicians are solely intent on exploitation, extraction, and the concentration of power. Thus, Black freedom and survival was contingent on organized self-defense and radical internationalism.

Unlike the more traditional coalition of Civil Rights organizations, the BPP was not pursuing Black folks’ “share” of the American pie. Rather, they sought to liberate Black Americans from a racist and exploitative system of white supremacist and capitalist oppression. The politics of the BPP was unique in that it fused revolutionary armed self-defense (for purposes of creating an armed and militant Black resistance movement), with nationalist / nation building politics that centered on providing for community members’ basic needs, and raising the consciousness of the community through political education. To that end, one of the most unique aspects of the Panthers’ politics was the way they blended community service with revolutionary action. The Panthers were intent on providing for the basic needs of poor Black community members in cities across the country, but it wasn’t for charitable or altruistic reasons. The Panthers understood that addressing the many needs of the community (1) shows how inept and neglectful the State was towards Black folks, and (2) presents an opportunity to stamp a revolutionary impact on Black communities. The Panthers made that impact by engendering the loyalty of the people they were serving, and by raising their political consciousness via political education. This is why the FBI went to such great lengths to decimate the community programs. The state understood its revolutionary potential.

One of the defining features of the BPP’s politics was the emphasis on cross-racial coalition building in the “New Left.” The Panthers, while uncompromising on the goal of Black liberation, believed that such liberation could not be achieved through outright separatism. Coalitions with non-Black orgs that opposed imperialism and capitalism was a necessary condition for Black liberation. Perhaps my favorite chapter of the book discusses the deep ties the BPP had with other non-Black radical organizations, such as the Students for Democratic Society (SDS), the Young Lords, the Young Patriots, the Red Guard, and Los Siete de la Raza. The Panthers’ solidarity efforts culminated in the National Committees to Combat Fascism, nation-wide, multi-racial organization designed to support radical organizations and individuals of every racial and ethnic background.

The story of the Black Panther Party is ultimately a tragic one. Their fall was swift and decisive, and according to the author, can be traced to the changing of the political climate that made the politics of self defense / violent direct action untenable. Nevertheless, the BPP was undoubtedly one of the most venerable Black organizations of the 20th Century, and has much to teach current and future radical organizations.

[Marc Xuereb · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an exciting and inspiring book: no wonder BLM co-founder Alicia Garza cites it as critical to her decision to create the Black Lives Matter organization.

These authors advance a compelling theory of social movements - *revolutionary* social movements - that is at once academically sound and very enjoyable to read. I loved reading their accounts of the early development of the Black Panther Party in Oakland and its flourishing into a national organization with chapters in 68 cities and its eventual dissolution into infighting and decline. The stories - like how Panthers used U.S. gun laws to legally fight back against police repression in Black neighbourhoods, or how thousands of young people burned their draft cards making connections between police repression at home and US wars in Vietnam and elsewhere - made this radical reader excited and inspired.

But the most satisfying outcome of the book was its compelling thesis: that the Black Panther Party was successful because it advanced a revolutionary political analysis and proposed actions to advance its aims that took advantage of specific political context. Once the conditions that made its armed self-defence actions resonate broadly - i.e. mandatory draft into the army, little Black representation in public institutions, widespread distrust of police in Black communities - dissipated, its influence declined.

In addition to being an entertaining account of a fascinating time period in American history, Black Against Empire provides a useful analysis for strategizing for the next revolutionary movement that today's world sorely needs.

[Skip · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote my high school senior research paper on the Black Panthers so this is a subject that has interested me for 40 years. Although I cannot find it, I am virtually certain that this comprehensive, well-researched profile of the Black Panther party is better than mine.

The meteoric rise of the BPP in the aftermath of MLK's assassination in 1968 was matched by its equally stellar collapse in the early 1970s, occasioned by three or four developments: the Panthers' establishment enemies (particularly the FBI, and law enforcement generally), the shrinking U.S. engagement in Vietnam under Richard Nixon (breaking up anti-establishment support), and bitter divisiveness among party leaders and criminal activities in the rank and file. Many people forget about all of the positive things that the BPP did for black communities: protecting them from police brutality, social programs, especially food and medical, promoting black studies, etc. and that they did not reject non-black support.

There were a couple of things about the book, which I did not like: (1) the author's need to list dozens upon dozens of people, who were at an event or had minor roles and (2) the book was organized topically, rather than chronologically, so there was significant repetition of seminal events, challenges, etc.

[Mehrsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great history. Needs some editing. The last chapter is succinct and incredibly insightful.

[Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for anyone interested in true revolutionary vanguard politics but v depressing to read abt the decline of the party

[Radical Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have spent most of my life being vaguely familiar with the name of the Black Panther Party, but never quite sure what they actually stood for or had done. Asking people equally unfamiliar never provided me with an adequate answer and due to what I now know was COINTELPRO, often a completely inaccurate vision of the party.

Black Against Empire sated that curiosity and as a scholarly work, provided me with as much information as any layman would need to know about the operation of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. The book is long, dense, and full of historical documents, recollections, and photos of the party, their exploits, and their political allies. I mostly listened to it as an audiobook but picked up a physical copy which is an entirely different experience due to the additional visual content. It was worth the time and money, as it is the most complete academic work chronicling in a mostly unbiased way the history of the party as well as its controversies.

With that being said, I can firmly say that I am not a Black Panther nor were the roleplayers at the George Floyd protests, because such a revolutionary party does not exist anymore and may not in the way that it did again. The idea of Black Separatism/Nationalism doesn't sit well with me, because I do not believe that people who look like me are a colonized peoples in America: we are the people. The lack of revolutionary will and the massive and oppressive ability of the State to physically subjugate the citizenry make armed resistance today seem juvenile, but it wasn't at that specific moment.

Although the party lasted until 1982 officially, its heyday was in the ~3.5-4 years from 1968 to 1971 where they captured the political hearts and minds of the black community and garnered favorable international and domestic support. The party was radical, they were revolutionary, and they did have the capacity for violence, but that was not what the Panthers stood for. They were pro-black armament, pro-working class, education, healthcare, and equality. They were not a racist organization in any manner, and worked alongside several prominent white, Jewish, and Asian contemporary activists. Many of the social programs operated by the Panthers predated any State appeasement, which gave them further legitimacy at the time.

Broken up by splintering ideologies, rising insurrectionary action, controversy, subterfuge, the withdraw from the Vietnam war, mainstream Black appeasement from the government, and in-fighting, none of this could detract from what they had accomplished in their short time. The Panthers inspired "black power," from a point of great despondence rather than "black supremacy," and their numerous social programs were established at a point of immense government indifference to the plight of Black Americans.

Their radical nature sets them apart from the more liberal, mainstream, and revolutionary Civil Rights Movement and instead served as a counterbalance and occasional collaborator to it. Unfortunately, there were too many variables for their survival to be realistic, and the splintering of the group and propensity to violence of the more insurrectionary half caused a fall from public grace and the eventual transition for half of the Panther Party to more social democratic means.

If any of this interests you, I highly recommend picking up this book for more of the particulars of what they accomplished in their brief existence and to also dispel any misconceptions you may have previously held. If you're young, radical, and want to organize, Black Against Empire also serves as a realistic wake up call and a cautionary analysis of the methods that they used and why the political landscape requires innovation and flexibility.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chronicles the rise and fall of the Black Panther Party, of its "core" members and opponents, of its ideology, and the broader historical context in which it stood.

It gives history an honest treatment and looks at the parties internal struggles with: from ideological disputes, that ultimately lead to a split in 1971, to its struggle with male chauvinism and its ever increasing embrace (and ofttimes pioneering) of one would call intersectional politics. And ultimately its struggle with the repressive police state – painfully evident in the brutal murder of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.

From community breakfast programs for children, to sickle-cell anemia research centers, to armed revolutionary struggle (of Maoist persuasion) the Black Panther Party is fascinating to study and learn from. This book does an excellent job of giving the reader information to understand why the Black Panthers ultimately faded into history, and were ultimately demonized.

Any revolutionary movement that seeks to emerge from the US will have to take a closer look and understand what happened to the Black Panther Party, the lessons, both positive and negative, to be learned from it are indispensable. Of course, choosing the right ideology from which to launch the critique will be the most difficult part, and I will refrain from doing it in this review.

If one wishes to gain any meaningful understanding of the Black Panther Party then reading this book is almost a necessity.

[Alonzo Vereen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without question, Black Against Empire is one of the most thoroughly researched accounts of the Black Panther Party I’ve come across. Everything you want to know about the organization’s rise and fall is documented inside: Huey and Bobby’s intellectual influences; the coalitions they built across race and nationality; Eldridge Cleaver’s questionable role in the Party; Fred Hampton’s state-sanctioned murder. And there’s more, because these scholars not only analyze the organization’s political trajectory, but also contextualize it in American history. I couldn’t give this text a higher recommendation.

[Alma Lindén · Rating 5 out of 5]

Denna boken är exakt det man vill att en bok om svarta pantrarna ska vara. Peppig, imponerande, kontextuell, analyserande och problematiserande. Boom!

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of people like to remember the 1960s as a time when the counter=cultures of America believed in world peace. But then you might want to ask yourself how the pacifist Civil Rights Movement transformed into the gun-toting militancy of the revolutionary Black Panther Party and the Black Power movement. Bloom and Martin’s Black Against Empire: The History and Politics Of the Black Panther Party answers this question and a whole lot more. In the end, whether you choose to accept or reject the militancy of the Black Panthers is not so important because what this history book does is it contextualizes this political movement so we can adequately understand how and why the Black Panthers formed, why they got support as the vanguard party of the New Left, and why they lost all their support almost as soon as they won it. Bloom and Martin go beyond telling the story of these activists and provide a critical analysis and theory of what happened with them at the end of the 1960s.

The story begins with a brief overview of the post-slavery African-American community in the American South, a painful history that involved segregation, Jim Crow laws, and lynchings, all of which were either legal or considered acceptable by all levels of the American government. It also covers the migration of African-Americans from the South to the industrial cities of the North and California where they settled into ghettos and impoverishment after post World War II factory layoffs. The Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr.’s brand of non-violent resistance culminated in the assassination of King and a growing sense of frustration in the Black community regarding non-violent resistance. While King’s SCLC succeeded in getting landmark legislation in favor of civil rights passed at the federal level, people again and again saw non-violent demonstrators getting attacked by police thugs with vicious dogs, billy clubs, and water hoses so they began to turn away from non-violence and embrace a more pro-active revolutionary stance. When King was assassinated in Memphis, riots broke out all across the country; Black people loved Martin Luther King Jr. even though they were not happy with his practice of passive resistance. Besides, a couple years earlier, their other prominent leader, Malcolm X had also been assassinated and it appeared that African-Americans were always being beaten down by violence. They were at a crossroads where they could either stay on their knees or stand up and fight. Many of them chose the latter path, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes enthusiastically.

This is where Huey Newton and Bobby Seale enter the story. It is an understatement to say that the relation between the police in Oakland and the African-American community there was one of predator and prey. Police harassment, brutality, and murder were routine in California so the two friends, both of which were scholars and intellectuals at heart, took to studying the law to see what the boundaries of their rights really were. They began policing the police and carrying law books and rifles with them so they could read the laws out loud to cops who were overstepping their legal limits. Newton and Seale were also street smart and knew how to understand and communicate with the most downtrodden members of the Black neighborhoods. They were also savvy at making alliances with members of the white activist community. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defence was born.

After giving this background story, this enjoyable, inspiring, and often infuriating tome breaks from the chronological narrative and goes into a critical analysis of different aspects of the movement. According to the authors, the Black Panthers rode a wave of political activism to prominence and there were three societal changes that fed into this wave. One was the shortcomings and slow progress of the Civil Rights Movement. Another was the peace movement and the opposition to the war in Vietnam. The third was the Third World Liberation movement in which former colonies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America were freeing themselves from Western domination and establishing their identities as independent nations. Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and later Eldridge Cleaver were syncretic enough in their thinking to link the Black Power movement to these political trends and forge a bond between the predicaments of the African-American community and oppressed people throughout all the world. Contrary to popular belief, mostly due to public disinformation campaigns by the mass media, the Black Panthers were not against white people; they were deeply committed to integration, the post-hajj integrationist theories of Malcolm X, and their long term goal was racial equality. They did believe that violence might be necessary to achieve that goal, however, and that scared some segments of the white establishment. But in that fear, the Black Panthers found power. They also claimed to be Marxist, most specifically, Maoist but whether they were communist in practice or just in name only is a debatable point.

The Black Panthers were all about building bridges and some of the bridges that were built brought such disparate groups as college students and street gangs like the Blackstone Rangers together along with other Latino, Asian-American, Native American, and feminist organizations. In opposition to this loose coalition was J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI who used the COINTELPRO program to take the Black Panthers down. With approval from Richard Nixon, the FBI engaged in what was nothing short of a state-sponsored terrorist campaign against the African-American people. COINTELPRO utilized infiltration, misinformation, surveillance, harassment, violence, intimidation, and assassination, all dishonest and illegal actions that have had no legal consequences to this day. Although bogus charges in the Black Panther 21 trials were mostly dismissed, the police murders of Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were never prosecuted.

Aside from all the violence, most of which was committed by the police and the American government against the Black Panthers, there was a whole other side to the movement. In chapters all across America, they had free breakfast programs for poor children, the charitable distribution of clothes and shoes, free medical clinics open to people of all races, and clinics that catered to illnesses and diseases like sickle-cell anemia that are unique to people of African descent. These programs served different functions. One was to use them as a platform to educate people about their history and the movement. They also strengthened social ties in the African-American community, building trust and encouraging self-determination. They also filled gaps in the provision of social services, stepping in to help communities where the government failed to do their job. Of course, the police did everything they could to break up these programs, further injuring the societies they were meant to serve.

Finally, the authors analyze the reasons why the Black Panther Party fell apart so quickly. Internal conflicts and factionalism were endemic. Eldridge Cleaver wanted to escalate the violence into street combat and urban guerilla warfare while Huey Newton and Bobby Seale wanted to go more in the direction of community organization and hardline diplomacy. Ironically, as Huey Newton made more calls for peace he began to struggle with mental illness and drug addiction, even being involved in two murders. Eldridge Cleaver also descended into a hell of inexplicably bizarre behavior and ideas (the authors neglect to mention his penis pants and the attempt to start a cult called The Church Of the Holy Sperm before becoming a Mormon and a Republican). Bobby Seale emerged as the most level-headed member of the original leadership committee but he became ineffectual in keeping the organization together. Feminists like Elaine Brown took over until the party disbanded in 1982. But the authors argue that leadership problems were not what caused the decline of the Black Panther Party, rather it was changing social conditions. The Vietnam War de-escalated and the draft was ended. The government began enfranchising the Black community through voter registration and community outreach programs. Affirmative Action was signed into federal law by Richard Nixon. The pet causes of the Black Panthers were nullified by the government that realized it was safer to have Black people working within the system than it was to have them fighting against it. This slick political maneuvering was a death blow to the activists of the time. This might have wisely averted a violent revolution, but it only treated the symptom and not the cause of African-American repression in the white supremacist establishment of America.

Aside from being fast-paced, highly detailed, and endlessly fascinating, one great thing about this book is how the authors handle the theory and practice of the Black Panthers in light of who they were as people. They underline the beliefs and practices of the group without over-emphasizing the troubled biographies of the members. The authors do not shy away from writing about the problematic, sometimes criminal, behaviors, but they do not indulge in too many sordid details either, of which there are many. They do not try to downplay the less savory aspects of the party, but they do find a good balance between showing who they were, both positively and negatively, and what they did. No excuses are offered for their bad behavior even though it is described. You can draw your own conclusions but mine is that humans are complex and flawed and sometimes great things can be done by confused people with unbalanced minds. The Black Panthers weren’t bad people but some of them did some bad things. What counts in the end whether the intentions and results were more positive or negative and, in my estimation, I think the Black Panthers did more good for society than bad. The terrorist campaigns being directed against them by the police and the FBI certainly didn’t help them to bring out the angelic sides of their nature either. What would you be like if the police were constantly trying to intimidate and kill you?

The 1960s are remembered as a golden age of world peace but what a lot of people fail to understand is that people in that time were so preoccupied with peace because there was so little of it in the world then. The American government was indulging in violence and warfare both against American people at home and against populations abroad. The post-Holocaust generation was not happy with this. Their parents had seen the atrocities of World War II and didn’t like seeing America starting wars of aggression that mimicked what Hitler had done twenty years earlier. Black Against Empire shows how the Black Panther Party for Self-Defence were prescient enough to tie all the strands of the New Left together in a united front against the political injustices of the world. Historians will explain that the present is a product of the past and understanding where we came from will explain where we are today. Anybody who doesn’t understand why the murder of George Floyd by the police was such an contentious event for the African-American community needs to read this book for an understanding of why police brutality is such an incendiary issue for African-American people and those of us in solidarity with them. It could convincingly be argued that the Black Panthers inspired people without accomplishing much, but inspiring people is an accomplishment and we owe it to them to learn from their mistakes, pick up where they left off, and pursue their dream for a more peaceful, more integrated, and more just society, not just for America but for the whole world. And I’d like to close by saying Fuck the Police (or at least fuck the ones who are guilty of brutality and corruption because, sadly, there are all too many bad cops out there). Violence begets violence so don’t complain if you point your gun at some activist and then see the barrel of their gun aimed directly between your eyes.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Think of the 1950’s as the Black migration to California – it sees an 8X black population increase while NYC sees a 2.5X increase and Detroit sees a 3X increase. Newton and Seale create an effective revolutionary program for California that is quickly outlawed by the Mulford Act in Sacramento, where the BPP’s highly successful tactics of policing the police had been taken from them. In 1966, the Pentagon admitted that “proportionately more Negroes have been killed in Vietnam ground combat than other Americans.” Draft resistance begins in 1967, and the draft ends in 1973. U.S. draft resisters during WWI, were “beaten, tortured, locked in solitary, and some were sentenced to death.” In WWII, some draft resisters were used as human medical testing subjects. The government takes away Ali’s passport, just as they took away Paul Robeson’s when he was too successful. Revealed by the NYT only days before his murder, President Johnson stopped talking to MLK once he came out against the Vietnam War.

If you were black, the Black Panther Party offered you dignity - no wonder the FBI wanted to stop the BPP from breaking successful U.S. “patterns of racial submissiveness and deference”. The FBI made it both their job to keep moderate blacks and whites from being attracted to the BPP, and keep the BPP well-stocked with douchebag FBI agent provocateurs advocating violence and saying, “Hey, would anyone like explosives?” In 1968, the BPP under Bobby Seale, began the community programs like free breakfasts for children. FBI Crossdresser J. Edgar Hoover got his woman’s panties in a bunch, when the BPP began successfully feeding a whopping 10,000 free breakfasts a day to children; how do you spin that act of charity badly to moderate Americans?

In this book, you will read Hoover and FBI’s written demands to “neutralize” all BBP efforts and “create suspicion among the leaders”. Clearly stated is the FBI demand to “prevent the rise of a (black) messiah” as well as make the white community think the BPP has been discredited. Nixon wins the election by conflating “crime, ghetto rebellion, civil rights and student protest.” The FBI then carries out 295 actions against the US black community, of which 79% attacked only the BPP. The FBI sent forged letters to supermarkets, and faked being parishioners with churches, to destroy the free child breakfast program. Imagine FBI agents telling their incredulous families at the dinner table, “Yeah, I spent this week trying to destroy a free breakfast program for only poor children, pass the potatoes.” To combat the black demand for basic rights and respect, the SWAT teams made their first appearance forcing a race war into a real war. The brutal murder of Fred Hampton while clearly lying down was a case in point; brutally shot multiple times for the crime of being a good example to his community (82-99 police rounds were recovered at the site) - a justice question: how many more times would they have shot Fred if he had dared served children free lunch as well? And why wasn’t Ray Kroc (McDonalds) gunned down for selling millions of American children breakfasts? Oh, I forgot, he was white, the food was worse, and he charged for each breakfast. Lots of Panthers were thrown in jail for long periods on charges that could never be proved. Kent State showed America that if even whites momentarily stepped out of line, they could easily be murdered like Black Panthers or Vietnamese. Even so, four million students across the US protested on campus. At Jackson State, two black students were murdered, further fueling the anti-war forces. By 1969, nearly 300 colleges had joined the protests.

“Racism comes out of a class struggle”, said Carlton Yearwood of the BPP – that is why the BPP gave breakfasts to all poor kids, not just black ones. Newton realized the BPP had to court women’s and gay liberation movements as well. And supporting peace becomes also supporting third-world liberation struggles. It became hard to continue to advocate for armed confrontation with the state when the war ended and blacks began getting slightly better conditions. At this time liberals began turning against the BPP. There went the mainstream financial support. The calls for “Revolution Now!” faded. Those involved in armed insurrection could not be involved in the breakfast program. 30 to 40% of the BPP left after the killings of Robert Webb and Samuel Napier. The BPP then ceased being national and again became a local Oakland organization, so even more left the party. No longer offering “a viable pathway to power” the Black Panther Party closes in 1982; its zenith had been in 1970.

Part of the allure of the BPP was that blacks were teaching other blacks to not kowtow to anyone else - the teaching of self-esteem through racial unity and pride. What hurt the party the most was when it began unraveling, the internal corruption and violence became its worst PR. For a bit of time, the Revolutionary principles of the BPP resonated with a broad segment of the U.S., because police brutality cannot be defied with just a sit-in. but after the end of the draft and the Vietnam War, the ground shifted towards addressing racial/economic grievances no longer in the streets, but through the present day hoping yet another classy well-dressed war-loving neoliberal like Obama will somehow go against his capitalist class and help reduce the insane structural economic disparity in the U.S. for blacks. Ignored in that hope is the fact that in 2000, white U.S. families owned 10 times more assets than black families, but now whites own almost 20 times the assets of what black families own. Know that there are more blacks incarcerated today than were slaves in 1850. I am really glad I read this important book.

[Susan Steed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book.

I have been really interested in how the formation of the Panthers supported the Civil Rights movement and the concept of armed self defence and policing the police. I learned tons from this book and I felt there was a lot that could be applied to other anti-capitalist movements such as forming international alliances and working on local community action programmes. Also a lot to think about in terms of race issues, what the role of white people can/should be in these movements, etc.

Book is not easy going and it can be hard to follow in parts as it jumps about in time. Obviously it’s not a light topic. It goes into a lot of detail into cases of police brutality and things that make uncomfortable reading, e.g. no white person ever been convicted of murdering a black person in Detroit prior to 1965.

It also doesn’t paint the Panthers as saints and doesn’t shy away from challenges faced by the party. In the later years treading a weird line between standing up to police brutality when many Panther members were also the perpetrators of cases of brutality. The reasons for their early successes and the reasons for their later conflict, division and demise are lessons that can be applied to many revolutionary social movements.


This isn’t review, just the stuff I found really interesting:
• the importance of their alliance with anti-war groups and their role in the Anti-Vietnam War movement.
• The strength of their international alliances, as well as with other groups in the US such as the New Left Movement. Includes strong alliance with China more obvious links with Cuba and African countries.
• Their community programs such as providing breakfast and ambulance services.
• How influenced they were by Marx. For example in July 1969 they changed point 3 of their ten point program from ‘we want an end to the robbery of the WHITE man of our Black Community” to “we want an end to the robbery by the CAPITALIST of our Black Community”. (p300)
• View on separatism, different viewpoints on this by different people in the movement. Bobby Seale challenged black separatism. “Black racism is just as dangerous as white racism”. He explicitly emphasized the importance of class to revolution “It is a class struggle”.


I was particularly interested in their community programs and how these linked into their role as a revolutionary movement. Bobby Seale, maintained that the programs were not reform programs but “revolutionary, community, socialistic programs… A revolutionary program is one set forth by revolutionaries, by those who want to change the existing system to a better one” whereas a reform program is set up by the existing exploitative system as an appeasing handout, to fool the people and to keep them quiet. Examples of these programs are poverty programs, youth work programs, and things like that”.



The book also goes into some detail of how much of a threat they were seen by the CIA. The CIA went to some length to stoke up and cause conflict between the panthers and also with them and other organisations. It also covers the challenges faced by the party and the divides and conflicts which led to their demise.

I also really like this quote from George Murray (a graduate student in English and Black Panther Minister of Education) in an article in Rolling Stone Magazine.

“To say you’re Black and you’re proud, and still go to Vietnam to fight our Vietnamese brothers or go and entertain soldiers who are exterminating the Vietnamese people is a crime against all of us descendants of slaves in the US… When we talk about becoming free, we have to talk about power, getting all the goods, services, and land, and returning them equally to the oppressed and enslaved Mexicans, Blacks, Indians, Puerto Ricans, and poor whites in the U.S. and to the rest of the oppressed and hungry people in the world…. Listen to this: freedom is a state not limited to a particular culture, race or people, and therefore, the principles upon which a struggle for human rights is based must be all inclusive, must apply equally for all people. Freedom, equality is not relative. “

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Agonized over this review a bit — on one hand it very much is a one-of-a-kind work that historicizes the incredible legacy of the Black Panthers; on the other it still takes too idealistic a view of certain figures in Panther history (especially Elaine Brown and Richard Aoki) around whom credible allegations of FBI involvement exist.

To be fair, many of these allegations arose after the book was published in 2013, but the issue remains nonetheless that parts of the book now feel historically imprecise. Would be interested to see if the authors release an updated version in the coming years.

[Isabella :) · Rating 5 out of 5]

revolution in the united states is pounding. fuck this rotten porcelain country built on stolen land and the massacre of many. Black liberation from imperialism in sight. such useful context for how we got here, what’s different, and what has stayed the same. this book tells the history of the panthers and thanks to them we know what a revolutionary america has looked like.

[Thomas Coogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent overview of the rise and fall of the BPP that contextualizes them in the domestic rebellions of the 60s/70s and their place amongst third-world revolutionaries.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If one would look closely, and check this three year history, he will find that in damn near every rebellion a racist cop was involved in the starting of that rebellion. And these same pig cops, under orders from the racist government, will probably cause 50 or more rebellions to occur the rest of this year alone, by inflicting brutality or murdering some black person within the confines of one of our black communities. Black people will defend themselves at all costs. They will learn the correct tactics to use in dealing with the racist cops. . . . The racist military police force occupies our community just like the foreign American troops in Vietnam. But to inform you dog racists controlling this rotten government and for you to let your pig cops know you ain’t just causing a “long hot summer”, you’re causing a Black Revolution."

It is impossible I suspect to read a history of the Black Panthers now without feeling the weight of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the murders which make it necessary, settling over you as you read. You wonder how these young revolutionaries would react to thousands of people chanting: "Hands Up, Don't Shoot", and the depressing reality that despite the fact that Black kids play on the White House lawn, most of their peers live with endemic poverty, more Black boys will go to jail than university; Black kids die in wars overseas in disproportionate numbers in wars whose gains they will never see; and Black men and women are gunned down by police with regularity. Of what the originators of the Black Pride movement, the young Panthers who patrolled police, would think of parents teaching their children how to be polite to cops at all times, how to keep their hands away from their pockets, how to stay safe through compliance. (There is no implied criticism here, just a musing on what changes, and what doesn't). Of course, the Panthers themselves, the authors contend, faced dilemmas over militancy vs mass support at mobilisations, choosing increasingly to hold fire to conserve support and stay alive, in both a literal and metaphorical sense.

This history itself is fairly straightforward - there is some broad theses about the reasons for the rapid growth and rapid decline woven through - but mainly the authors have produced a dense-but-readable, roughly-chronological-while-grouping-themes-and-locations history of the Panthers (no small feat given the diversity to cover). It's not a ripping yarn. The authors are more concerned with dynamics than personality, accuracy than anecdote, and if the writing remains unmemorable, the book is still the more thought provoking for the approach.

While some things - the focus on police violence as a key mechanism of Black oppression - remain familiar, others contrast to current politics. In particular, the book places a strong emphasis on the importance of Third World Liberation struggles in formulating the Panthers critique, particularly the experiences of Cuban, Algerian, Chinese and Vietnamese revolutionaries. Far from adopting terms like African-American, the Panthers' overtly identified the interests of Blacks with these struggles against the USA, and rejected an identification with the US as a whole. Their use of the capitalised Black chose to emphasise the commonality with people of colour (African-American wasn't in use till the 80s). This broader, global perspective, a rejection of nationalist rhetoric, or the underlying idea that Black people should be fighting for incorporation into the American state is evident throughout their approach. From the formation of alternate sources of community organisation - from schools to health clinics to law enforcement - through to a strategy of intense alliance building. The Panthers described in this book certainly weren't seperatists, quite the opposite, they saw the Black struggle as part of something much larger, global in scope but also taking in the struggles of others whose interests were not aligned with the State, from other racial groups like the Young Lords, through to the emerging LGBTI movement and the women's liberation movements. Working with peace organisations was a natural for the Panthers, as they saw common cause with the Viet Cong, and the entire Third World Bloc. One of the biggest, and most welcome, surprises for me in this book was the extent to which the Panthers helped, funded and underpinned other movements, including those dominated by white activists, while maintaining clear leadership and focus on Black liberation.
This may not be an accurate comment - coming as it does from an Australian librarian - but it felt is stark contrast to current US politics, where the Black Lives Matter movement seems largely self-contained, a struggle others have not effectively connected to or supported. Bernie Sanders initial remove from this movement, lack of connection to Black activists and movements seemed to indicate this. Or not.
And of course, nothing was that simple. It is fascinating, and far too briefly touched on, how the Panthers formal support for Women's Liberation, and alliances with Women's Lib organisations, sits alongside an internal culture which was, in most cases and places, overwhelmingly sexist. The book covers this briefly, but densely, with a scattershot of comments from leading Panthers - many of whom are influential feminist leaders now and then - about the expectations upon women to serve, to have sex and to have children with the Brothers. The topic clearly needs a proper book long treatment, throwaway references to the painful difficulty of trying to deal with sexist violence when racist violence is deadlier just touch on what kinds of complex struggles women Panther leaders navigated and won gains on. I highlighted most of these comments - which should be visible as quotes from this book in my Goodreads account somehow.
The book has a few minor flaws - the organisation seems as if the different authors took different chapters: some of the material overlaps in an awkward way (the same quotes used twice a few times, the same info presented, like chatting to someone who forgets what they have already told you). I like Gramschi, I do, but his omnipresence in framing revolutionary analysis lately reminds me of the inescapability of Foucault in my postgraduate courses in the late 90s (yes, Gramschi is better than Foucault, just y'know, not the only thinker out there). But on the whole this is an amazing feat, a key reference and readable story.

[Jonathan Blanks · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating history of the Black Panthers and their role in the Black Power Movement. The book captures how the organization was both riveting and frustrating, and is probably too sympathetic to the revolutionary musings of militant Maoist twenty-somethings, but nevertheless it is a solid history of what, how, and why of the organizations rise and fall between 1968 and 1971.

There is a too much repetition of Panther propaganda—the repeated self-assertion that the Panthers were the “vanguard” of revolution sticks out as well as dorm-room level philosophizing about the society some Panthers asserted they were fighting for—and the authors never examine the inherent difficulties and contradictions of deferring to the collective in all social, political, and economic matters in order to secure “true freedom.” But it is a very thorough analysis of the political and organizational successes and failures of the Black Panthers as both national and local organizations.

[Liv Townsend · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most comprehensive histories of a social movement/activist group I've ever read. The insane marginalisation of the BPP in Civil Rights history and American history in general will never not piss me off , this book tells their own story from their perspective whilst weaving them back into national and international historical narratives at the same time. Didn't shy away from their inherent problems of serious misogyny either !

[Cait]

"even if I were to believe the lies of president johnson, if I were to believe his lies—that we are fighting to give democracy to the people in vietnam—as a black man in this country, I wouldn't fight to give this to anybody."

an incredibly thorough account of the history of the black panther party from the childhoods of huey p. newton and bobby seale through the party's dissolution.

it's just fucking nuts to think about how we only know about cointelpro because activists successfully burgled the fbi! vile!

I built on previous understandings and learned much more than I had known previously both about the bpp and, more broadly, about what constitutes a truly revolutionary group and the mechanism of how they are able to function.

assemblage of miscellaneous things I noted for a variety of reasons:
- just gotta fuckin love hearing about watts being targeted :|
- "nestle acquiesced, telling the press later that the panthers were 'quite hip on the law'"
- police as agent of occupying army
- although I knew about threads of connection between domestic struggles for black liberation and the anti-war movement, you would honestly think based on the way it's presented today that all the anti-war efforts of the vietnam era were predominately spearheaded by white people, which, lol :|
- just hearing the ideological similarities with and in some cases wording identical to, say, thoreau or king is so interesting
- taught me a lot more about what the party actually had to say, and didn't have to say, about the idea of revolutionary masculinity
- a lot of using following the law to the letter as a tool
- "CAPITALISM + DOPE = GENOCIDE"—people who formerly struggled with substance abuse motivated by revolutionary ideology to "get clean" and stop using drugs
- "in the party's view, black political activism and black public health activism were interwoven"
- "after a while, I began to see the war as another kind of racism. all we ever heard was [vietnam war slurs], same way our daddies heard [wwii slurs]. you got to make people subhuman before you kill 'em."
- "king's assassination exhausted the myth that you could get what you want without fighting, that when the plantation foreman cracks the whip you turn the other cheek."
- "but liberal readers of the new yorker and new york magazine were much more apt to embrace ridicule of the black panthers' anti-imperialism once their children were not likely to be drafted and killed in vietnam."

insights about revolutionary movements in general:

- revolution CANNOT function 'within the system' (as a dues-paying member of DSA who thinks that DSA is deeply flawed, way too white, and shameful in its avoidance of a concretely anti-imperialist stance, all the getting DSA candidates elected in the world will never a revolution make)

- "the level of repression interacted with the political reception of insurgent practices to affect the level of mobilization. in other words, potential allies' political reception of panther insurgent practices determined the effects of repression on mobilization. during the time that panther practices were well received by potential allies, in 1968 and 1969, repressive measures fostered further mobilization. but as these allies became less open to panthers' revolutionary position in 1970 and 1971, repressive actions by the state became increasingly effective."

- "but when a movement succeeds in this task [seize the political imagination, offer credible proposals to address the grievances of large segments of the population, arouse and organize the collective will], the dominant political coalition usually defeats the challenge through the twin means of repression and concession. the ruling alliance does not simply crush political challenges directly through the coercive power of the state, but makes concessions that re-consolidate its political power without undermining its basic interests. a revolutionary movement becomes significant politically only when it is able to win the loyalty of allies, articulating a broader insurgency. in this second, political sense, there are no revolutionary movements in the united states today."

- "no revolutionary movement of political significance will gain a foothold in the united states again until a group of revolutionaries develops insurgent practices that seize the political imagination of a large segment of the people and successively draw support from other constituencies, creating a broad insurgent alliance that is difficult to repress or appease. this has not happened in the united states since the heyday of the black panther party, and may not happen again for a very long time."