Framing The Black Panthers

A potent symbol of black power and radical inspiration, the Black Panthers still evoke strong emotions. This edition of Jane Rhodes's acclaimed study examines the extraordinary staying power of the Black Panthers in the American imagination. Probing the group's longtime relationship to the media, Rhodes traces how the Panthers articulated their message through symbols and tactics the mass media could not resist. By exploiting press coverage through everything from posters to public appearances to photo ops, the Panthers created a linguistic and symbolic universe as salient today as during the group's heyday. They also pioneered a sophisticated version of mass media activism that powers contemporary African American protest. Featuring a timely new preface by the author, Framing the Black Panthers is a breakthrough reconsideration of a fascinating phenomenon.

In this comprehensive history of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party (ILBPP), Chicago native Jakobi Williams demonstrates that the city's Black Power movement was both a response to and an extension of the city's civil rights movement. Williams focuses on the life and violent death of Fred Hampton, a charismatic leader who served as president of the NAACP Youth Council and continued to pursue a civil rights agenda when he became chairman of the revolutionary Chicago-based Black Panther Party. Framing the story of Hampton and the ILBPP as a social and political history and using, for the first time, sealed secret police files in Chicago and interviews conducted with often reticent former members of the ILBPP, Williams explores how Hampton helped develop racial coalitions between the ILBPP and other local activists and organizations. Williams also recounts the history of the original Rainbow Coalition, created in response to Richard J. Daley's Democratic machine, to show how the Panthers worked to create an antiracist, anticlass coalition to fight urban renewal, political corruption, and police brutality.

WINNER OF THE EISNER AWARD • A bold and fascinating graphic novel history of the revolutionary Black Panther Party. 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.

15 Rupture -- 16 The Limits of Heroism -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z -- Figures

This new collection of essays, contributed by scholars and former Panthers, is a ground-breaking work that offers thought-provoking and pertinent observations about the many facets of the Party. By placing the perspectives of participants and scholars side by side, Dr. Jones presents an insider view and initiates a vital dialogue that is absent from most historical studies.

An essential document of the Black Panther Party written by three leading thinkers and party activists who were jailed following the FBI'S 1969 mandate to destroy the organization "by any means possible." Still Black, Still Strong is partly based upon the 1989 videotape Framing The Panthers by producers Chris Bratton and Annie Goldson. It recounts the stories of Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Assata Shakur, all of whom were arrested and jailed during the COINTELPRO probe of the Black Panther Party. Dhoruba Bin Wahad, who organized chapters of the Black Panther Party in New York and along the Estern Seaboard and worked with tenants in Harlem and on drug rehabilitation in the Bronx, was accused of murdering two officers while still in his teens and imprisoned for 19 years. He always maintained his innocence and won his freedom by forcing the FBI to release thousands of classified documents proving that he had been framed. The justice department eventually rescinded Bin Wahad’s conviction and he was released in 1990, seven months after the documentary premiered. Mumia Abu-Jamal, a journalist who headed the Black Panther free breakfast program for inner-city school children in Philadelphia, was also accused of the murder of an officer and sent on death-row, where he still is today. Assata Shakur was a college educated social worker in her twenties when she was accused of shooting a cop, then arrested and tortured and denied medical treatment. Her interview was conducted in Cuba where she has been exiled since her escape from a New Jersey women's prison in 1975. Bin Wahad, Shakur and Abu-Jamal offer a little-known history and an incisive analysis of the Black Panthers' original goals, which the U.S. Government has tried to distort and suppress. As one confidential, 1969, memo to J. Edgar Hoover put it, "The Negro youth and moderates must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teaching, they will be dead revolutionaries."

This book examines a range of visual expressions of Black Power across American art and popular culture from 1965 through 1972. It begins with case studies of artist groups, including Spiral, OBAC and AfriCOBRA, who began questioning Western aesthetic traditions and created work that honored leaders, affirmed African American culture, and embraced an African lineage. Also showcased is an Oakland Museum exhibition of 1968 called "New Perspectives in Black Art," as a way to consider if Black Panther Party activities in the neighborhood might have impacted local artists’ work. The concluding chapters concentrate on the relationship between selected Black Panther Party members and visual culture, focusing on how they were covered by the mainstream press, and how they self-represented to promote Party doctrine and agendas.

An inspiring memoir from a legendary activist and political prisoner that “reminds us of the sheer joy that comes from resisting civic wrongs” (Truthout). In 1968, Safiya Bukhari witnessed an NYPD officer harassing a Black Panther for selling the organization’s newspaper on a Harlem street corner. The young pre-med student felt compelled to intervene in defense of the Panther’s First Amendment right; she ended up handcuffed and thrown into the back of a police car. The War Before traces Bukhari’s lifelong commitment as an advocate for the rights of the oppressed. Following her journey from middle-class student to Black Panther to political prisoner, these writings provide an intimate view of a woman wrestling with the issues of her time—the troubled legacy of the Panthers, misogyny in the movement, her decision to convert to Islam, the incarceration of outspoken radicals, and the families left behind. Her account unfolds with immediacy and passion, showing how the struggles of social justice movements of the past have paved the way for the progress—and continued struggle—of today. With a preface by Bukhari’s daughter, Wonda Jones, a forward by Angela Y. Davis, and edited by Laura Whitehorn, The War Before is a riveting look at the making of an activist and the legacy she left behind.