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"Founded in Oakland, California, in 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was a radical political organization that stood in defiant contrast to the mainstream civil rights movement. This gripping illustrated history explores the impact and significance of the Panthers, from their social, educational, and healthcare programs that were designed to uplift the Black community to their battle against police brutality through citizen patrols and frequent clashes with the FBI, which targeted the Party from its outset. Using dramatic comic book-style retellings and illustrated profiles of key figures, The Black Panther Party captures the major events, people, and actions of the Party, as well as their cultural and political influence and enduring legacy."--book jacket.… (more)
User reviews
My passing impression of the Black Panther Party reduces them to violent militants, so I was surprised to
There is strong irony in how quickly California passed gun control legislation when Black Panthers showed up at the state capital with guns and how little action we have taken in the last year despite armed White militants parading and protesting.
This introduction to the Black Panther Party was very enlightening and leaves me wanting to pursue more information about the topic.
Walker writes in his afterword, “It is worth nothing that, more than 50 years after Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party and drafted the Ten-Point Program as their guiding manifesto, every single concern they addressed is still relevant. Every single inequality, injustice, and form of oppression impacting the Black community in 1966 is still going strong, well into the 21st century. What the Panthers wanted in 1966, we still want now. What they believed, we still know to be true” (pg. 173). Amid the racial reckoning of 2020 and the inevitable conservative pushback against progressive goals, Walker and Anderson’s The Black Panther Party is a great foundational text for those who want to know more about the organization’s history and the people that shaped its role in society during the revolutionary era of the 1960s and 1970s. As we find ourselves facing another era of great social change, Walker and Anderson’s book is critically vital to learn from the past in order to improve the future. Finally, Walker and Anderson’s careful research makes this a useful text for history teachers to help their students engage with the history of the Black Panthers and their place in the larger Civil Rights Movement.