Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (The George Gund Foundation Imprint in African American Studies)

I was reading through the reviews below, and found this older review. Really glad I did! It convinced me to buy the book.--I thought I knew.By M.H.on February 25, 2013I 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.Marquez Harris

Black Against Empire is an excellent but a flawed book. 1) It fails to mention the Free Angela Davis Movement and Angela Davis’s ties to the Black Panther Party. I can’t imagine why that was left out. 2) It fails to discuss the importance of the Black Arts Movement / West to the Black Panther Party. For example, there isn’t a discussion of the influence of Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez when they taught at San Francisco State. They fail to mention that the head of the BSU, Jimmy Garret , was a playwright and a member of SNCC before he was a student nor do they explain that the playwrights Marvin Jackman (Marvin X ) and Ed Bullins and the actor Danny Glover were students at SFS and had ties to the Black Panther Party 3) The radical faculty at SFS are not mentioned with the exception of Nathan Hare 4) San Francisco’s radical cultural and radical political traditions are not considered as possible influences and 5) Black Music is never mentioned. How can you write about the 60s without a reference to music?

This is very well written book and enjoyable, if you have no knowledge of the BPP. If you have read multiple books on the subject you will see this about as one sided and Pro Panther as anything out there. The BPP is a hold and heroic story, however it is also a cautionary tale on how young black man and women can get slaughtered in America, and achieve almost nothing. I recommend reading this alongside other narratives, as this book is pure fawning propaganda, wiping away any fault, blame and criminality the party had.

So the FBI did orchestrated the arrests, sabotages, and assassinations of different Black Panther leaders. Ever since Obama stopped being president, our country is slowly going back to bigotry.

Excellent read! At times, I felt like I was reading a Truman Capote 'true-life' novel -- a literary hybrid of investigative journalism (e.g., the assassination of Huey Newton) and historical analysis (set against the backdrop of the radical movements and social turmoil of the 1960's). The book has great depth and fills in so many details of the Black Panther movement (it's formation and evolution) and that tumultuous era in general (a welcome corrective to my ignorance of certain events , players, and motives). But what is most shocking (to this Caucasian reader) is how similar were the issues (police brutality/tactics, protests/public perceptions, political malfeasance, economic disparity/disenfranchisement, etc.) -- and even the stunningly similar political rhetoric -- of that era with the issues of today (specifically, those high-lighted recently by the BLM movement). So little has changed, it can make one depressed. 'Black Against Empire' should be mandatory reading for all students (high school or college) and those who want to understand the historical roots of a 'radical' movement, and, those who care about racial/social justice and the fight for equality and human dignity.

Excellent read that highlights a hidden history of struggle in the US which remains current today. For students of revolutionary struggle and the history of working class people this is a must.

Masterly,scholarly and beautifully written.

The realist detailed in the events in a book

Well researched.

Factually interesting but could have been better. The last chapter is disappointing. The authors reveal their lack of political perspective