Black Against Empire

Black Panther Convention, Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C., 1970 (LOC)

Black Against Empire by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr

This hefty, meticulous book documents the rise and fall of the Black Panther Party. Beginning with the end of the Civil Rights Movement and the rise of fledgling Black Power organizations throughout the U.S., authors Bloom and Martin carefully trace the forces that conspired to create the Black Panther Party. They go on to document the Party’s evolution and growth from a scrappy Oakland community group to a nationally and internationally influential organization that ran a wide range of social programs, went on diplomatic trips to foreign countries, maintained a considerable budget, published a newspaper that circulated to some 150,000 people, and drove considerable political and social change across the U.S. Bloom and Martin also necessarily document the extreme repression that the U.S. state deployed against the B.P.P, systematically explaining how police and FBI tactics were used against the B.P.P. in different cities across the U.S.; how the B.P.P. collaborated with other leftist organizations, including the Young Lords, the draft resistance movement, and Asian-American activists to effect broader and deeper change; and how a changing political landscape and intrapersonal rifts and tensions within the Party led to its eventual decline and dissolution.

An inspiring, informative, and inclusive look at this under-documented and misunderstood political movement, Black Against Empire is necessary reading not only for those interested in the Black Panther Party or social change in the 60s, but for all who wish to understand the history of insurgent movements in the U.S. as well as U.S. history more broadly.

Subjects this book includes that some readers may be sensitive to: detainment and imprisonment; harassment, assault, and searches by security forces; gun violence; torture, murder, and assassination.