Black Power White Blood

Originally published in hardcover to much acclaim, this vividly written biographical drama will now be available in a paperback edition and includes a new epilogue by the author. Conceived within a clandestine relationship between a black man and a married white woman, Spain was born (as Larry Michael Armstrong) in Mississippi during the mid-1950s. Spain's life story speaks to the destructive power of racial bias. Even if his mother's husband were willing to accept the boy-which he was not-a mixed-race child inevitably would come to harm in that place and time. At six years old, already the target of name-calling children and threatening adults, he could not attend school with his older brother. Only decades later would he be told why the Armstrongs sent him to live with a black family in Los Angeles. As Johnny came of age, he thought of himself as having been rejected by his white family as well as by his black peers. His erratic, destructive behavior put him on a collision course with the penal system; he was only seventeen when convicted of murder and sent to Soledad. Drawn into the black power movement and the Black Panther Party by a fellow inmate, the charismatic George Jackson, Spain became a dynamic force for uniting prisoners once divided by racial hatred. He committed himself to the cause of prisoners' rights, impressing inmates, prison officials, and politicians with his intelligence and passion. Nevertheless, among the San Quentin Six, only he was convicted of conspiracy after Jackson's failed escape attempt. Lori Andrews, a professor of law, vividly portrays the dehumanizing conditions in the prisons, the pervasive abuses in the criminal justice system, and the case for overturning Spain's conspiracy conviction. Spain's personal transformation is the heart of the book, but Andrews frames it within an indictment of intolerance and injustice that gives this individual's story broad significance. Author note: Lori Andrewsteaches at Chicago-Kent Law School and has been named one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America by theNational Law Journal. One of the foremost experts on the policy of genetics and reproduction, she is author ofThe Clone Age: Adventures in the New World of Reproductive Technology.

The history of African American studies is often told as a heroic tale, with compelling images of black power and passionate African American students who refused to take no for an answer. Noliwe M. Rooks argues for the recognition of another story, which proves that many of the programs that survived actually began as a result of white philanthropy. With unflinching honesty, Rooks shows that the only way to create a stable future for African American studies is by confronting its complex past.

Ultimately, Black Power reveals a black freedom movement in which the ideals of desegregation through nonviolence and black nationalism marched side by side.

The first book to comprehensively examine how the Black Panther Party has directly shaped the practices and ideas that have animated grassroots activism in the decades since its decline, Black Power Afterlives represents a major scholarly achievement as well as an important resource for today's activists. Through its focus on the enduring impact of the Black Panther Party, this volume expands the historiography of Black Power studies beyond the 1960s-70s and serves as a bridge between studies of the BPP during its organizational existence and studies of present-day Black activism, allowing today's readers and organizers to situate themselves in a long lineage of liberation movements.

This is the first book to place the self-fashioning of mixed-race individuals in the context of a Black Atlantic. Drawing on a wide range of sources and a diverse cast of characters – from the diaries, letters, novels and plays of femme fatales in Congo and the United States to the advertisements, dissertations, oral histories and political speeches of Black Power activists in Canada and the United Kingdom – it gives particular attention to the construction of mixed-race femininity and masculinity during the twentieth century. Its broad scope and historical approach provides readers with a timely rejoinder to academics, artists, journalists and politicians who only use the mixed-race label to depict prophets or delinquents as "new" national icons for the twenty-first century.

This book analyzes the community programs of the Black Panther Party, specifically those of the Milwaukee branch, with the aim of dispelling many of the existing stereotypes about the Party. Misconceptions range from the Party being labeled as bent on the violent destruction of the United States to it being an overwhelmingly sexist group. This book challenges stereotypes such as these by examining the community programs of the Party and by looking at the role of women in the Party. Witt argues that the Party was not an extremist group dedicated to overthrowing the government of the United States, but rather an organization committed to providing essential community services for lower-income and working-class African American communities around the nation.

Race 2008: Critical Reflections on an Historic Campaign brings together a diverse group of scholars and activists to examine the gendered politics, images, rhetorical practices, and racial/ethnic conflicts that served as a backdrop to this momentous election. It features perspectives marginalized or ignored by mainstream media and political pundits, thus providing alternative, critical insights on the social dynamics fueling campaign rhetoric, grassroots activism, and intergroup conflicts in 2008 and beyond.