Joshua Bloom - Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party

Praise for Black against Empire

This is the book weve all been waiting for: the first complete history of the Black Panther Party, devoid of the hype, the nonsense, the one-dimensional heroes and villains, the myths, or the tunnel vision that has limited scholarly and popular treatments across the ideological spectrum. Bloom and Martins riveting, nuanced, and highly original account revises our understanding of the Partys size, scope, ideology, and political complexity and offers the most compelling explanations for its ebbs and flows and ultimate demise. Moreover, they reveal with spectacular clarity that the Partys primary target was not just police brutality or urban poverty or white supremacy but U.S. empire in all of its manifestations.

Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

As important as the Black Panthers were to the evolution of black power, the African American freedom struggle, and, indeed, the sixties as a whole, scholarship on the group has been surprisingly thin and all too often polemical. Certainly no definitive scholarly account of the Panthers has been produced to date or rather had been produced to date. Bloom and Martin can now lay claim to that honor. This is, by a wide margin, the most detailed, analytically sophisticated, and balanced account of the organization yet written. Anyone who hopes to understand the group and its impact on American culture and politics will need to read this book.

Doug McAdam, author of Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 19301970

Bloom and Martin bring to light an important chapter in American history. They carefully mine the archival data to give us an account of the rise of the Black Panther Party, of its successes, and the shoals of American politics on which it fractured. In the process they give full credit to the strategic agency of the remarkable revolutionaries at the center of the story.

Frances Fox Piven, President, American Sociological Association

An essential, deeply researched, and insightful studythe best so farof the complex history, inner workings, and conflicted legacy of the Black Panther Party as it waged its relentless battle for human rights and racial dignity in the streets of urban America.

Leon F. Litwack, President, Organization of American Historians

Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., have written the first comprehensive political history of the Black Panther Party. They present an unvarnished, judicious treatment of a much-revered, much-maligned, and widely misunderstood revolutionary organization leading the charge for Black Power in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They provide persuasive answers to questions about the Partys rise and fall that others have failed to fully address. All other scholars will henceforth have to grapple with their substantial findings. General readers will find it compelling too.

Tera Hunter, Professor of History and African American Studies, Princeton University

Black against Empire puts the Black Panthers in dialogue with the varieties of political unrest across the country. Through a fresh analytical framework that helps us understand the revolutionary fervor of the 1960s, Bloom and Martin make clear that the Panthers were not an aberration or figment of the popular imaginary. They were the vanguard among black people seeking a way out of nowhere.

Jane Rhodes, author of Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon

In a stunning historical account, Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin map the complex trajectory of the ideology and practice of the Black Panther Party. Going beyond merely chronicling what happened, the authors situate the rise and fall of the Panthers within the prevailing, and constantly shifting, political climate at home and abroad. Much has been written about the Party, but Black against Empire is the definitive history of the Panthersone that helps us rethink the very meaning of a revolutionary movement.

Michael Omi, coauthor of Racial Formation in the United States

THE GEORGE GUND FOUNDATION
IMPRINT IN AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES

The George Gund Foundation has endowed
this imprint to advance understanding of
the history, culture, and current issues
of African Americans.

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the African American Studies Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation, which was established by a major gift from the George Gund Foundation.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley Los Angeles London

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University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England

2013 by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bloom, Joshua.
Black against empire : the history and politics of
the Black Panther Party / Joshua Bloom and Waldo E.
Martin, Jr.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-520-27185-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Black Panther PartyHistory. 2. African
AmericansPolitics and government20th century.
3. African AmericansCivil rightsHistory20th
century. 4. Civil rights movementsUnited States
History20th century. 5. United StatesRace
relationsHistory20th century. 6. United States
Race relationsPolitical aspectsHistory20th
century. I. Martin, Waldo E., 1951. II. Title.
E 185.615. B 5574 2013
322.4'20973dc23 2012021279

Manufactured in the United States of America

21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Rolland Enviro100, a 100% postconsumer fiber paper that is FSC certified, deinked, processed chlorine-free, and manufactured with renewable biogas energy. It is acid-free and EcoLogo certified.

To
Hana, Mikhayla, Julius, Theodore, Eva, Emila, and Kian;
Jetta, Coral, and Kayla
and
Che Patrice Lumumba, Darryl, Dassine, Dorian, Ericka,
Fred Jr., Jaime, Joju Younghi, Maceo, Mai, Malik Nkrumah
Stagolee, Patrice, Romaine, Tupac, and all the cubs (here
and gone)
and
young revolutionaries everywhere.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to disolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and natures god entitled them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;