Ebook Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, by Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin
Do you understand why you must review this website and also just what the connection to checking out book Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin In this modern age, there are numerous methods to obtain the publication and they will be a lot easier to do. Among them is by getting guide Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin by online as what we inform in the web link download. Guide Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin can be a choice due to the fact that it is so correct to your necessity now. To get the e-book online is very easy by just downloading them. With this chance, you can review guide wherever and whenever you are. When taking a train, waiting for checklist, as well as hesitating for somebody or other, you can review this online publication Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin as a buddy again.
Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, by Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin
Ebook Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, by Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin
Some people might be laughing when looking at you reviewing Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin in your leisure. Some might be appreciated of you. And some might desire resemble you that have reading pastime. What concerning your very own feel? Have you really felt right? Reading Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin is a requirement and a pastime simultaneously. This condition is the on that will certainly make you really feel that you need to read. If you recognize are looking for guide qualified Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin as the selection of reading, you could discover here.
By checking out Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin, you could recognize the knowledge and also points even more, not just concerning just what you get from individuals to people. Schedule Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin will certainly be more relied on. As this Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin, it will actually offer you the good idea to be effective. It is not just for you to be success in specific life; you can be successful in everything. The success can be begun by knowing the basic knowledge and also do activities.
From the combo of understanding and activities, a person could improve their skill as well as capability. It will certainly lead them to live as well as work far better. This is why, the pupils, workers, and even companies ought to have reading behavior for publications. Any sort of publication Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin will give particular knowledge to take all benefits. This is what this Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin tells you. It will include more knowledge of you to life and function far better. Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin, Try it and also confirm it.
Based upon some encounters of many individuals, it is in truth that reading this Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin can help them making far better selection and also offer even more encounter. If you wish to be one of them, allow's purchase this book Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin by downloading and install guide on link download in this website. You can get the soft documents of this publication Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin to download as well as deposit in your readily available electronic gadgets. Just what are you waiting for? Allow get this publication Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin on-line and review them in any time and any type of location you will certainly check out. It will certainly not encumber you to bring hefty publication Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party, By Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin inside of your bag.
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.
- Sales Rank: #109526 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-01-14
- Released on: 2012-11-29
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
"A comprehensive history."--New Yorker
"This meticulously researched history explores the combination of revolutionary commitment and historical circumstance that enabled the emergence of the Black Panther Party. Because they do not shy away from the contradictions that animated this movement, Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin pose crucial questions about the genesis, rise, and decline of the BPP that are as relevant to young generations of activists as they are to those who came of age during that era." --Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz
"The first comprehensive history of the party."--The London Review of Books
"As important as the Black Panthers were to...the African American freedom struggle...scholarship on the group has been surprisingly thin and all too often polemical. Certainly no definitive scholarly account of the Panthers...had been produced to date. Bloom and Martin can now lay claim to that honor. This is, by a wide margin, the most detailed, analytically sophisticated, and balanced account of the organization yet written. Anyone who hopes to understand the group and its impact...will need to read this book."--Doug McAdam, author of Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970
"Finally! A book that clarifies the history of our movement, our aspirations, our struggles, and the bitter challenges we faced. This is a profoundly important and revealing work. Everyone who lived through these events, anyone who wants to understand the Black Panther Party, and especially the younger generations striving to shape the future, must read this book!"--Bobby Seale, Chairman, Black Panther Party
From the Inside Flap
"This is the definitive history of one of the great revolutionary organizations in the history of this country.... Let us learn deep democratic lessons and strong anti-imperial conclusions from this magisterial book!"--Cornel West, Princeton
"This is the book we've all been waiting for: the first complete history of the Black Panther Party, devoid of the hype, the nonsense, the one-dimensional heroes and villains, the myths, or the tunnel vision that has limited scholarly and popular treatments across the ideological spectrum. Bloom and Martin's riveting, nuanced, and highly original account revises our understanding of the party's size, scope, ideology, and political complexity, and offers the most compelling explanations for its ebbs and flows and ultimate demise. Moreover, they reveal with spectacular clarity that the Party's primary target was not just police brutality or urban poverty or white supremacy but U.S. Empire in all of its manifestations."--Robin D. G. Kelley, UCLA
"Bloom and Martin bring to light an important chapter in American history. They carefully mine the archival data to give us an account of the rise of the Black Panther Party, of its successes and the shoals of American politics on which it fractured. In the process they give full credit to the strategic agency of the remarkable revolutionaries at the center of the story." --Frances Fox Piven, President, American Sociological Association
"Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., have written the first comprehensive political history of the Black Panther Party. They present an unvarnished, judicious treatment of a much revered, much maligned, and widely misunderstood revolutionary organization leading the charge for 'Black Power' in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They provide persuasive answers to questions about the Party's rise and fall that others have failed to fully address. All other scholars will henceforth have to grapple with their substantial findings. General readers will find it compelling too." --Tera Hunter, Princeton
"In a stunning historical account, Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin map the complex trajectory of the ideology and practice of the Black Panther Party. Going beyond merely chronicling 'what happened,' the authors situate the rise and fall of the Panthers within the prevailing, and constantly shifting, political climate at home and abroad. Much has been written about the Party, but Black against Empire is the definitive history of the Panthers--one that helps us rethink the very meaning of a revolutionary movement."--Michael Omi, Berkeley
"As important as the Black Panthers were to the evolution of black power, the African American freedom struggle, and, indeed, the sixties as a whole, scholarship on the group has been surprisingly thin and all too often polemical. Certainly no definitive scholarly account of the Panthers has been produced to date, or rather had been produced to date. Bloom and Martin can now lay claim to that honor. This is, by a wide margin, the most detailed, analytically sophisticated, and balanced account of the organization yet written. Anyone who hopes to understand the group and its impact on American culture and politics will need to read this book."--Doug McAdam, Stanford
"This meticulously researched history explores the combination of revolutionary commitment and historical circumstance that enabled the emergence of the Black Panther Party. Because they do not shy away from the contradictions that animated this movement, Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin pose crucial questions about the genesis, rise, and decline of the BPP that are as relevant to young generations of activists as they are to those who came of age during that era." --Angela Y. Davis, University of California
"Remarkable.... As one who lived through the Panther era, I believe this book should become a standard historical work for years to come." --Tom Hayden, author of The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama
"An essential, deeply researched, and insightful study--the best so far--of the complex history, inner workings, and conflicted legacy of the Black Panther Party as it waged its relentless battle for human rights and racial dignity in the streets of urban America." --Leon F. Litwack, President, Organization of American Historians
"Finally! A book that clarifies the history of our movement, our aspirations, our struggles, and the bitter challenges we faced. This is a profoundly important and revealing work. Everyone who lived through these events, anyone who wants to understand the Black Panther Party, and especially the younger generations striving to shape the future, must read this book!"--Bobby Seale, Chairman, Black Panther Party
About the Author
Joshua Bloom is the Dean's Fellow in Social Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. The winner of the 2014 American Book Award, Joshua is coeditor of Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy. Visit him at joshuabloom.net.
Waldo E. Martin, Jr., is a professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of No Coward Soldiers and The Mind of Frederick Douglass.
Ron Butler is a Los Angeles-based actor and voice artist with over a hundred film and television credits (playing everything from brooding doctors to screwball hipsters). Ron works regularly as a commercial and animation voice-over artist and has voiced a wide variety of audiobooks.
Most helpful customer reviews
51 of 52 people found the following review helpful.
I thought I knew.
By M.H.
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.
Marquez Harris
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Gripping, Accurate, Provocative. The Black Panthers Come to Life.
By Publicagent
"You state that the Bureau under the CIP [COINTELPRO] should not attack programs of community interest such as the [Black Panther Party] "Breakfast for Children." You state that this is because many prominent "humanitarians" both white and black, are interested in the program as well as churches which are actively supporting it. You have obviously missed the point..." J. Edgar Hoover
Black Against Empire is one of the most important books of the year. With anti-gun legislation in full swing, the Occupy Movement nowhere to be found, and surviving Black Panthers still around, the first comprehensive history of the Black Panther Party could not have come at a better time. The history and political analysis provided by Martin and Bloom is fresh, compelling and inspiring.
If you talk with two people who claim to know the Panthers, it's evident how controversial they are. Their history is often disputed, and many have strong opinions about their legacy in the context of the revolutionary movement. It's well-known that J Edgar Hoover and the FBI listed the Black Panthers as the number one threat to the internal security of the United States, and sought to destroy the Party through various means, including a massive disinformation campaign. It is precisely because of this disinformation that one has to be careful when considering their source of information about the Panthers.
Black Against Empire contains over eighty pages of extensive notes from a wealth of primary sources that include memoirs, interviews, recordings, the Black Panther Newspaper, newspaper articles, audio reels, COINTELPRO documents, posters, dissertations and more. When reading the book, it immediately becomes evident that the authors know what they are talking about. A historian and sociologist by profession, Martin and Bloom spent fourteen years compiling research for this project.
The rise of the Black Panthers is handled smoothly beginning with mini-biographies of Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The emergence of the Black Panther symbol is traced to its origins, and various black revolutionary organizations before the formation of the Panthers are highlighted. The uprisings in Watts, Detroit, and other urban areas that the media wrongfully dismisses as "riots" are described as cogent uprisings in response to excessive and racist brutality by the police.
Throughout the entire text, everything is placed in historical and political context. The successes and failures of the civil rights movement, the assassinations of Black leaders that inspired people to action, the burgeoning anti-war movement, the changing national politics, and the revolutionary movement that saw the Panthers as the vanguard are all flushed out. The Black Panthers are thus viewed as a creative and intelligent organization that meets the demands of black people where the government and the police not only failed them, but outright killed them.
Classic Black Panther tales of policing the police, escorting Betty Shabazz to the airport, and storming the courthouse in Sacramento with guns are given just enough time as to be thorough without going over extraneous details. When the Panthers expand beyond Oakland, the authors go city-by-city to Chicago, Los Angeles, New Haven, New York, Seattle and elsewhere to provide accounts of the most significant of 68 chapters across the United States.
This book retains a broad and sweeping focus throughout. The issues that it discusses, like the rise of insurgent movements, are primarily kept at a national, and international level. Local issues are discussed that involve key points of Panther history such as the shooting of Denzel Dowell in Richmond, California, only as they are relevant to the larger issues at hand. Even at 400 plus pages, it's impossible to do everybody justice, but most key Panther figures like George Jackson, Geronimo ji Jaga, and Angela Davis arise at some point or another.
A favorite part of mine is the chapter not just about the free breakfast program, but about the free shoes, free clothing, free health clinics, free schools, free ambulance, and free bussing to prisons programs that were among the greatest legacies of the Black Panther Party. The above quote from Hoover indicates just how far COINTELPRO went to discredit the Panthers. Accounts of raids on free health clinics by the police, to take one example, are described. Students of COINTELPRO know this history, but those unaware of the extent of Panther repression may be surprised at what they find.
More time is spent is time on the Black Panther's rise than their demise. This is a judicious choice since it is not their demise, which if anything sounds fairly typical, but their rise to a position of power that is truly extraordinary, and the authors argue, unparalleled. Yet the demise is handled deftly so that it's evident what remains disputed about their unraveling, and what does not. Ideological splits, government concessions, internal strife, agent provocateurs, seemingly endless court cases, imprisonment, and the changing times, are all discussed.
There are other books about the Black Panthers, but from what I can gather, this is the only truly comprehensive account. In addition to conducting their own research, and establishing new archives, the authors read every single book about the Black Panthers where not surprisingly author biases often obscured the truth. The bias here is to set the record straight, and to answer the question of why the Party rose to revolutionary stature as emphatically, briefly, and powerfully as they did.
Waldo Martin and Joshua Bloom have succeeded admirably in getting the job done.
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
Black Panthers, the FBI, and the Vietnam War
By Mal Warwick
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.
Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, by Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin PDF
Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, by Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin EPub
Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, by Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin Doc
Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, by Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin iBooks
Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, by Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin rtf
Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, by Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin Mobipocket
Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, by Joshua Bloom, Waldo E., Jr. Martin Kindle
