Still Black Still Strong

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 The justice department eventually rescinded Bin Wahad’s conviction and he was released in 1990, seven months after the documentary premiered.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 explores the relations among blackness, antiblackness, and Black people within the discourse of the blackness of black. This critical discourse developed during the last two decades as scholars explored what Saidiya Hartman describes as the afterlife of slavery. Hartman’s concept, which argues for a troubling continuity between the status of enslaved and emancipated Black people, is the pivot between discursive tributaries and trajectories. Tributaries of the discourse of the blackness of black comprise five foundational concepts: Frantz Fanon’s “phobogenic blackness,” Orlando Patterson’s “social death,” Cedric Robinson’s “racial capitalism and the black radical tradition,” and Hortense Spillers’ “flesh.” The book traces three trajectories within the afterlife of slavery: Frank Wilderson’s “ Afropessimism,” Fred Moten’s “generative blackness,” and Calvin Warren’s “black nihilism.” This ensemble of concepts enable us to understand what is at state in how we understand the relations among blackness, antiblackness, and Black people.

This is the third volume in Judson L. Jeffries’s long-range effort to paint a more complete portrait of the most widely known organization to emerge from the 1960s Black Power Movement. Like its predecessors (Comrades: A Local History of the Black Panther Party [2007] and On the Ground: The Black Panther Party in Communities across America [2010]), this volume looks at Black Panther Party (BPP) activity in sites outside Oakland, the most studied BPP locale and the one long associated with oversimplified and underdeveloped narratives about, and distorted images of, the organization. The cities covered in this volume are Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, and Washington, D.C. The contributors examine official BPP branches and chapters as well as offices of the National Committee to Combat Fascism that evolved into full-fledged BPP chapters and branches. They have mined BPP archives and interviewed members to convey the daily ups-and-downs related to BPP’s social-justice activities and to reveal the diversity of rank-and-file BPP members’ personal backgrounds and the legal, political, and social skills, or baggage, that they brought to the BPP. The BPP reportedly had a presence in some forty places across the country. During this time, no other Black Power Movement organization fed as many children, provided healthcare to as many residents, educated as many adults, assisted as many senior citizens, and clothed as many people. In point of fact, no other organization of the Black Power era had as great an impact on American lives as did the BPP. Nonetheless, when Jeffries undertook this project, chapter-level scholarly investigations of the BPP were few and far between. This third book, The Black Panther Party in a City Near You, raises the number of BPP branches that Jeffries and his contributors have examined to seventeen. Contributors: Curtis Austin, Judson L. Jeffries, Charles E. Jones, Ava Kinsey, Duncan MacLaury, Sarah Nicklas, John Preusser.

A timely reconsideration of the history of the profession, Outside Literary Studies investigates how midcentury Black writers built a critical practice tuned to the struggle against racism and colonialism. This striking contribution to Black literary studies examines the practices of Black writers in the mid-twentieth century to revise our understanding of the institutionalization of literary studies in America. Andy Hines uncovers a vibrant history of interpretive resistance to university-based New Criticism by Black writers of the American left. These include well-known figures such as Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry as well as still underappreciated writers like Melvin B. Tolson and Doxey Wilkerson. In their critical practice, these and other Black writers levied their critique from “outside” venues: behind the closed doors of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in the classroom at a communist labor school under FBI surveillance, and in a host of journals. From these vantages, Black writers not only called out the racist assumptions of the New Criticism, but also defined Black literary and interpretive practices to support communist and other radical world-making efforts in the mid-twentieth century. Hines’s book thus offers a number of urgent contributions to literary studies: it spotlights a canon of Black literary texts that belong to an important era of anti-racist struggle, and it fills in the pre-history of the rise of Black studies and of ongoing Black dissent against the neoliberal university.

An American Rastafarian “offers a vibrant examination of American and African history with an anti-colonial patina . . . engaging” (Kirkus Reviews). Revolutionary Threads offers an American Rasta’s retelling of episodes in American history with an anticolonial thrust, accented by Bobby Sullivan’s own personal experiences. The book ties together various subjects while returning each time to the culture of Rastafari, social justice movements, and cooperative economics. From how we perceive history in general, America's precolonial past, and global capitalism’s early development and the resistance to it, to political prisoners and a celebration of religious tolerance, the book approaches North America with an African-centric perspective. Sullivan dispels the oversimplification of our perceptions of Rastafari, as well as other cultures, in the age of the Internet, where the loudest voices are often the most extreme and divisive. Revolutionary Threads aims to serve as a unifying agent for our all-too-connected global village, and for the resistance to the consolidation of global capital and all its excesses. “A post-hardcore rock star, community activist, and social justice intellectual offers an alternative look at countercolonial history through the lens of the Rastafari movement.” —Kirkus Reviews “Outlining his philosophical influences and backpacking through history and criss-crossing continental borders, Sullivan puts his enlightenment journey and way of life, which includes activism for social justice, prison outreach, and cooperative economics, on paper.” —The Gleaner (Jamaica) “[Sullivan] meticulously sources his work throughout, whether providing a Howard Zinn-like take on the settlement of America by Africans predating Columbus, or in discussing political prisoners like Marilyn Buck . . . an engaging, lively, well-thought book which provides a picture of Rastafarianism in action, for punks and beyond.” —Razorcake

Since its founding in 1801, African Americans have played an integral, if too often overlooked, role in the history of the University of South Carolina. Invisible No More seeks to recover that historical legacy and reveal the many ways that African Americans have shaped the development of the university. The essays in this volume span the full sweep of the university's history, from the era of slavery to Reconstruction, Civil Rights to Black Power and Black Lives Matter. This collection represents the most comprehensive examination of the long history and complex relationship between African Americans and the university. Like the broader history of South Carolina, the history of African Americans at the University of South Carolina is about more than their mere existence at the institution. It is about how they molded the university into something greater than the sum of its parts. Throughout the university's history, Black students, faculty, and staff have pressured for greater equity and inclusion. At various times they did so with the support of white allies, other times in the face of massive resistance; oftentimes, there were both. Between 1868 and 1877, the brief but extraordinary period of Reconstruction, the University of South Carolina became the only state-supported university in the former Confederacy to open its doors to students of all races. This "first desegregation," which offered a glimpse of what was possible, was dismantled and followed by nearly a century during which African American students were once again excluded from the campus. In 1963, the "second desegregation" ended that long era of exclusion but was just the beginning of a new period of activism, one that continues today. Though African Americans have become increasingly visible on campus, the goal of equity and inclusion—a greater acceptance of African American students and a true appreciation of their experiences and contributions—remains incomplete. Invisible No More represents another contribution to this long struggle. A foreword is provided by Valinda W. Littlefield, associate professor of history and African American studies at the University of South Carolina. Henrie Monteith Treadwell, research professor of community health and preventative medicine at Morehouse School of Medicine and one of the three African American students who desegregated the university in 1963, provides an afterword.

It's terrible to get old? Life is all downhill after fifty? That's what our youth-centered culture may think but don't be duped. Selected as a finalist for 2006 Independent Publisher Book Awards, this book can change how you think about aging, even make you feel good about getting old! “. . . a liberating change is happening, a change as momentous as the liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. It brings respect for older people, appreciation for maturity, and the promise of a more balanced culture.”—from the Introduction by Margaret Karmazin and Janet Amalia Weinberg. Discover a new, positive way of looking at aging with Still Going Strong: Memoirs, Stories, and Poems About Great Older Women. This exuberant, inspiring anthology celebrates the vitality of older women and shows them having adventures, facing loss, enjoying romance, and feeling more capable and confident than ever. The 42 authors included in the collection know that life after middle age is not the diminished state dreaded by our youth-centered culture, but rather, a time of growth and fulfillment, enriched by the wisdom of experience and perspective. Get a taste of the passion, wit, and wisdom of some of these women: From “Why Vermont” by Elayne Clift: “It was great not to be driven by achievement. I was learning the art of laid-back living. Spending a day writing, or reading, was heavenly and I was reminded of my freedom whenever a friend said, ‘I'd give anything to be doing that!’” From “Gray Matters” by Marsha Dubrow: “. . . finally [I] have decided to enjoy being a gray. It links me with a powerful sisterhood, complimenting each other on our gray badge of courage. A woman with dreadlocks resembling pillars of salt approached me on the street and said, ‘You go, girlfriend. We're gray and we're proud—and gorgeous.’ We smacked high fives.” From “Katherine Banning: Wife, Mother, Bank Robber” by Melissa Lugo: “Crazy, you say? Well, wait till you hit 90 and realize you still want to live, that even though you're way past menopause you want another child, and that even though your breasts make tracks in the mud, you still want a lover, and that even though your hands shake, there are still things that you didn't get to do (like going to the Olympics and bringing home the gold) things you want to do, that you will do. Then, see what you're capable of. And you'll be perfectly sane. Senility, temporary insanity, it's all bull. Old folks know exactly what they're doing. One of the good parts about being an old fart is that you have a license to be loony tunes, to live the wild way you didn't have the balls for before. At 90, you see, your dignity's gone the way of dirty diapers, and your life is heading the same way fast. You have nothing to lose except the moment.” From “A Different Woman” by Joan Kip: “My relationship with Seth is, I tell him, my great experiment. He calls me on every one of my tightly-held protections, and his pleasure in meeting my body is matched by my own freedom to respond. Ours is a relationship with no hidden agenda, no commitments. Our occasional evenings of uncomplicated delight are the intertwining of two desires who touch down and embrace one another, knowing they will meet again, sometime, somewhere. And while sex is not absent from our meetings, it is, rather, my compelling ache to be touched and held and to touch and hold that pulls me back each time to Seth. Like the newly-born whose being depends upon the enfolding presence of a parent, those of us who are now so old, glow more warmly when we, too, may share our tenderness.” Still Going Strong counters demeaning stereotypes of “little old ladies” by offering positive, empowering views of women over fifty. It is a hopeful voice that speaks to any woman facing her own future.