Making Revolution: My Life in the Black Panther Party

by Field Marshal Don Cox

For the first time in paperback, a powerful and raw glimpse behind the scenes of the Black Panther Party

Making Revolution is Don Cox’s revelatory, even incendiary account of his years in the Black Panther Party. He had participated in many peaceful Bay Area civil rights protests but hungered for more militant action. His book tells the story of his work as the party’s field marshal in charge of gunrunning to planning armed attacks—tales which are told for the first time in this remarkable memoir—to his star turn raising money at the Manhattan home of Leonard Bernstein (for which he was famously mocked by Tom Wolfe in Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers ), to his subsequent flight to Algeria to join Eldridge Cleaver in exile, to his decision to leave the party following his disillusionment with Huey P. Newton’s leadership. Cox would live out the rest of his life in France, where he wrote these unrepentant recollections in the early 1980s, enjoining his daughter to promise him that she would do everything she could to have them published.

Genres: Memoir, History

264 pages, Paperback

Published August 17, 2021

Reviews

[Leanne Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir was written in 1981, so Cox has the perspective of time, but is not so distanced from the events that it doesn't read as immediate. He chronicles (too briefly) his political evolution, which seems inspired more by national events than personal ones (except for unfair wages and opportunities), and goes from civil rights organizations like CORE to the Panthers without much detail. Cox isn't too reflective but goes right into the struggles of the Party - making the case that the Stalinist structure ruined everything by making the Central Committee too powerful and rigid, thus leaving it easy to abuse by cult-of-personality types like Newton and others. Individual chapters didn't have the authority to make community-based decisions, which is where the strength resided, for example, with food services, education, and local activism. The Central Committee was too concerned with party loyal (at the expense of the cause, Cox writes) and publicity. As a marketing/advocacy tool, the Panthers worked, but infighting (literal) and a lack of political direction doomed the effort. The FBI contributed to the decline by playing chapters off each other, but the paranoid structure of the party doomed it from the start. Stalin is no role model for anyone.

[Alexander Parra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enthralling memoir. Read it from front to back, and really felt I was there for the ride. Cox makes a great argument for the need for education and community support.

Got the book signed by Kimberly Cox Marshall!

[5 Star Delta · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good perspective and true first hand accounting of his experience in the party. I appreciate the honesty about the highs & lows of the party and Party Leaders.

I read the original copy titled “Just Another N****R”

[Homey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cox regularly highlights the internal contradictions that certain members of the BPP had at the time. He also goes into detail of some of the "activities" he was involved in. Really good read.

[Shekara Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read! This book is a beautiful and honest retelling of the important and organized work, and eventual demise, of the Black Panther Party.