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

by Joshua Bloom, Waldo E. Martin Jr.

Overview

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 U.S., 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 68 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.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520953543
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	01/14/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	560
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Joshua Bloom is a Fellow at the Ralph J. Bunche Center at UCLA. He is the co-editor of Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy and the collection editor of the Black Panther Newspaper Collection.
Waldo E. Martin, Jr. is Professor of History at UC Berkeley. He is the author of No Coward Soldiers: Black Cultural Politics in Postwar American, Brown Vs. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents, and The Mind of Frederick Douglass.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Introduction
Part One. Organizing Rage
1. Huey and Bobby
2. Policing the Police
Part Two. Baptism in Blood
3. The Correct Handling of a Revolution
4. Free Huey!
5. Martyrs
6. National Uprising
Part Three. Resilience
7. Breakfast
8. Law and Order
9. 41st and Central
10. Hampton and Clark
11. Bobby and Ericka
Part Four. Revolution Has Come!
12. Black Studies and Third World Liberation
13. Vanguard of the New Left
14. International Alliance
Part Five. Concessions and Unraveling
15. Rupture
16. The Limits of Heroism
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Vivid renderings of scene make this scholarly tome thoroughly accessible; a "you are there" tone adds immediacy to the ideological concerns underpinning Black Panther Party history. . . . [the authors] make comprehensible both the movement and the times." STARRED REVIEW—Publishers Weekly

"Twelve years of archival research helped the authors produce this first comprehensive book on the Black Panther Party, its members, its leaders, and its resistance to the politics of the American government."—Los Angeles Magazine

Editorial Reviews

”Why did revolutionary black nationalism—and Black Power mobilization generally—become so influential in the late 1960s, and why did it unravel so disastrously in the 1970s?” Historians Bloom (collection editor of the Black Panther Newspaper Collection) and Martin (No Coward Soldiers) undertake the formidable task of a comprehensive history of the Black Panther Party and a theoretical analysis of “revolutionary ideologies” in the U.S. A prodigiously researched work, utilizing academic literature, personal memoir, and conversations with former Black Panther members and associates, the book offers a densely detailed account of the transformation of “a scrappy local organization” into “a major international political force.” While the authors’ primary concern is the “evolution of political practices,” their vivid renderings of scene make this scholarly tome thoroughly accessible; a “you are there” tone adds immediacy to the ideological concerns underpinning Black Panther Party history: armed resistance, anti-imperialism, gender roles, the war in Vietnam and the draft, community service projects, and government repression. While the authors conclude that “there is no movement like the Panthers in the United State today because the political context is so different from that in the late 1960s,” they make comprehensible both the movement and the times. 50 b&w photos. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"The book offers an opportunity to look to the past to understand contemporary police brutality and the kinds of strategies that emerge from movements against it. Another strength of Black Against Empire is the sheer volume of research that went into producing the book. The breadth and depth of the sources amassed to construct the history of the party are nothing short of impressive."

Social Forces - Joyce M. Bell

"A prodigiously researched work, utilizing academic literature, personal memoir, and conversations with former Black Panther members and associates…" ---Publishers Weekly Starred Review

From the Publisher

 The Panthers have been finding an interested audience in a new generation of activists looking to redress police violence, massive inequality, and a political establishment unresponsive to the desires of the vast majority of American citizens. The Beyoncé event comes on the heels of Stanley Nelson’s film The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, which like The Black Power Mixtape has reanimated a discussion on the legacy of the Panthers. If Zirin is going to be proven correct, and discussions about the Panthers are going to be “bracing” and constructive, participants will need a better understanding of the complex politics of the Party. There is no better place to begin this reassessment than Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin’s comprehensive account of the movement, from its inception out of the Civil Rights Movement to its undoing in the mid-70s."

Full Stop - Michael Schapira

"Black against Empire is easily the most impressive, sweeping, and substantive scholarly history of the BPP. . . . Black against Empre is a masterful work. It is analytically sophisticated, superbly researched, and a fine addition to the disparate histories of the most audacious and significant black leftist group of the period."

Journal of American History - Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar

"The first high-quality history of the Black Panther Party. . . . For the first time, one can read, in a single volume, a well-researched history that explains the origins of the Panthers in the context of Oakland neighborhood politics and the group’s transformation into a social service organization. For that reason alone, the book will become a classic in the growing black power scholarship."

American Historical Review - Fabio Rojas

"A bracingly narrated, voluminously researched history of the Black Panther Party. It plumbs rare archives and provides trenchant analysis of how and why the Panthers tapped the historical moment and emerged as a potent force." FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2013

Progressive - Christopher D. Cooke

"Future historians of the Panthers and American radicalism will find Black Against Empire a foundational text."

Southern California Quarterly - Michan Connor

"A riveting and thoughtful narrative of the Party’s formation and ideational evolution. . . . Black Against Empire is essential reading for those looking to understand the rise and fall of movements for social change."

Confluence - Mary Potorti

"
In their thoroughly researched, definitive history of the rise and fall of the Black Panther Party, Bloom and Martin offer a fascinating, compelling analysis of the politics of armed self-defense against police brutality. . . . Exceptional. A must read."

Choice - W. Glasker

"The first comprehensive history of the party, a history which, as Bloom and Martin explain, has been mostly ‘forbidden’."

London Review of Books - Fredrick Harris

"Black Against Empire may well become the definitive document of one of the most important American social movements of the 20th century."

Smooth Magazine - Justin Remus

A comprehensive history.

New Yorker

What Bloom and Martin have given us is as authoritative, respectful and complete a record of the Black Panther Party’s workings as we are likely to get.

Pop Matters - Mark Reynolds

A welcome addition to the literature about the Oakland-born organization that spread across the country like a prairie fire in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968 and that altered the consciousness of African Americans.

San Francisco Chronicle - Jonah Raskin

Black against Empire breaks new scholarly ground in providing the first comprehensive history of the Black Panther Party.

History News Network - Jeremy Kuzmarov

An account that should be called, above everything else, ‘definitive.’ . . . A downright scientific analysis of a subject that leaves most readers understandably unable to stay neutral.

Bookforum - Cord Jefferson

Lets you understand what happened—and why.

American History

Twelve years of archival research helped the authors produce this first comprehensive book on the Black Panther Party, its members, its leaders, and its resistance to the politics of the American government.

Los Angeles Magazine

A comprehensive and compelling history of the Black Panther Party . . . it is the book I would recommend to anyone wanting to read just one book about the Black Panthers.

Counterpunch - Ron Jacobs

There have been at least a half dozen books and films by former Panthers, or about them, over the last decade. ‘Black Against Empire,’ however, is unique among them in the scope and depth of its scholarship.

Los Angeles Times Book Review - Héctor Tobar

“There have been at least a half dozen books and films by former Panthers, or about them, over the last decade. ‘Black Against Empire,’ however, is unique among them in the scope and depth of its scholarship.

Los Angeles Times Book Review - Hector Tobar

Bloom, a Fellow at UCLA's Ralph J. Bunche Center, and Berkeley history professor Martin join forces (as Bobby Seale and Huey Newton once did) to offer a comprehensive history of the Black Panther party and its rejection of the American "empire."

Library Journal