Black Against Empire

Starred review from November 12, 2012
”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.

November 1, 2012

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."

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