Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and Their Legacy

by Kathleen Cleaver (Editor), George Katsiaficas (Editor)

While the story of history may be most often defined through its winners, long forgotten, defeated movements and their ideals sometimes reemerge with renewed popularity, offering perhaps a better glimpse into society's future. This is the argument put forward by this collection of reflections from scholars and activists that reconsider the historical impact of the Black Panther Party (BPP)- often called the most significant revolutionary organization in the US in the later part of 20th-century.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Race, 21st Century, African American, Essays

319 pages, Paperback

First published March 20, 2001

Reviews

[Leticia Garcia Bradford]

This book is part of my research for the play I'm writing, "Mama Nellie's House", about a 10 year old boy whose life is intersected by the Black Panthers in Oakland in 1 968.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essetial collection of essays about the Black Panther Party.

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

got a chance to meet Ms. Cleaver...she is an inspiring speaker and a beautiful person...

[Dani Fout · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many people remember civil rights because of Martin Luther king jr. But the truth is that there was so much more to it that created so much good for the black community. I hate when something is labeled communist or socialist it is immediately shied away from. The BPP honestly had a very bad reading of Marxist ideas, but still created it into something that could make their people feel seen and heard. The militancy was really just a way to say “don’t mess with us” in a way because at the heart of their goal, they just wanted to protect people from injustice anyway they knew how and it came in the form of revolution.
There are a lot of critics to the party that point out their undemocratic spaces, how unorganized they were, how many panthers dealt with drug abuse and violent pasts. But why do we always question the people fighting back but never the people they’re fighting against. How about we start asking the right questions like, “why did the FBI kill Fred Hampton?”

[Arielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

2017 Reading Challenge - A book with a cat on the cover

There are some enlightening essays in this compilations, there are others that didn't hold my attention very well. I especially appreciated Kathleen Cleaver's chapter on her time in Paris rallying support for Mumia Abu-Jamal and the essay on the Angola 3.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Akinyele Omowale Umoja's opening essay about the BLA sets the tone for this collection: sympathetic to the armed struggle and more radical elements within the Black Panther Party. For me, the most interesting chapters were the ones written by Panthers, like Mumia Abu Jamal, Geronimo ji Jaga, Russel Shoats, Donald Cox and of course Kathleen Cleaver. Also Yippie Stew Albert writes with love and hindsight. The more academic chapters by various professors were also fun, though, and I felt like I learned a lot. Previously, I had read mostly collections of Black Panther writing from the '60s and '70s, and the memoirs of people closer to Newton and the West Coast... I also once had the pleasure of seeing Afeni Shakur talk, mostly about her son the famous rapper... but I didn't really know that much about the Panthers who were closer to Cleaver before reading this book. Ward Churchill has a lengthy entry on of course COINTELPRO, and I have already read even lengthier works by him on the subject, so that was a bit of a depressing slog. It also left me both angry and paranoid and unfortunately screaming at a TV screen while watching some action movie with my kid that featured the guy who was in Get Out as a cop in an FBI-led SWAT team... but, comes with the territory... anyway...
Quite a number of the authors in this work take pot shots at the book "Shadow of the Panther," and one essay is an extended attack that does an excellent job of criticizing "Shadow" while acknowledging that the issues addressed in "Shadow" need to be examined in a more rigorous and productive way.
Although so many Panthers were murdered, or are still wasting away in prisons, this book overall gave me an optimistic feeling. A truly radical, world-wide social movement can erupt on the scene and blow people's minds and feed children breakfast and generally do a lot of good, even on this crummy planet. The last chapter in here, on the Angola 3, was written when they were all still in solitary confinement and look what's happened with that case since then... I strongly recommend this book.