Black Against Empire ─ The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party

"Finally! A book that clarifies the history of our movement, our aspirations, our struggles, and the bitter challenges we faced. This is a profoundly important and revealing work. Everyone who lived through these events, anyone who wants to understand the Black Panther Party, and especially the younger generations striving to shape the future, must read this book!"--Bobby Seale, Chairman, Black Panther Party



"This is the definitive history of one of the great revolutionary organizations in the history of this country. In this age of the Occupy Movement, let us learn deep democratic lessons and strong anti-imperial conclusions from this magisterial book!"--Cornel West, author of Race Matters



"This meticulously researched history explores the combination of revolutionary commitment and historical circumstance that enabled the emergence of the Black Panther Party. Because they do not shy away from the contradictions that animated this movement, Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin pose crucial questions about the genesis, rise, and decline of the BPP that are as relevant to young generations of activists as they are to those who came of age during that era." --Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz



"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 Panthers--one that helps us rethink the very meaning of a revolutionary movement."--Michael Omi, co-author of Racial Formation in the United States



"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, 1930-1970



"This is the book we've 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 Martin's riveting, nuanced, and highly original account revises our understanding of the party's 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 Party's 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



"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