Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party

Kathleen Cleaver, currently Professor of Public Policy at Emory University, worked full time with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and afterwards became the Communications Secretary of the Black Panther Party. Returning to the United States after sharing years of exile with her former husband Eldridge Cleaver, she subsequently earned both a B.A. and J.D. from Yale University. George Katsiaficas is a long-time activist as well as Editor of the journal New Political Science and author of The Imagination of the New Left: A GlobalAnalysis of 1968. His book, The Subversion of Politics:European Autonomous Social Movements and theDecolonization of Everyday Life, won the APSA's 1998 Michael Harrington book award. He teaches at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston.

"... a fresh and realistic look at the Black Panther Party and its historical impact. - Library Journal, 11/2000.""The most important collection of work on the Black Panther Party to date. It covers the full range of the complex politics that shaped their struggles for freedom and justice and we learn just how far away we are from achieving their vision of liberation. - Hazel V. Carby, , Chair, Department of African American Studies, Yale University.""The history of the Black Panther Party is an indispensable part of the dramatic account of black struggle in this country, and this book is an important contribution to that history. The essayists have impressive credentials as either members of the Party or keen observers of its activities, and because they carry the story into the present day the book becomes especially valuable. -Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States.""If this volume of essays only offered us documentation and insight into the contributions and wide-ranging influence of the Black Panther Party, it would have immense historical significance. But Kathleen Cleaver's and George Katsiasficas's collection does much more. It creates intriguing and provocative conversations among scholars, activists, contemporary political prisoners and original members of the BPP that invite us to extricate ourselves from the numbing nostalgia that often accompanies invocations of black berets and leather jackets. It invites us reimagine our relationship to this past and to think critically about the meaning of liberation today." -- Angela Y. Davis, Professor, History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz"If this volume of essays only offered us documentation and insight into the contributions and wide-ranging influence of the Black Panther Party, it would have immense historical significance. But Kathleen Cleaver's and George Katsiasficas's collection does much more. It creates intriguing and provocative conversations among scholars, activists, contemporary political prisoners and original members of the BPP that invite us to extricate ourselves from the numbing nostagia that often accompanies invocations of black berets and leather jackets. It invites us reimagine our relationship to this past and to think critically about the meaning of liberation today. -Angela Y. Davis, Professor, History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz."

• Introduction by George Katsiaficas I. Revisiting the Liberation Struggle Repressions Breeds Resistance: The Black Liberation Army and the Legacy of the Black Panther Party, Akinyele Umoja Global Solidarity: The Black Panter Party in the International Arean, Michael L. Clemons and Charles E. Jones A Life in the Party: A Historical an dRetrospective Examination of the Projections and Legacies of the Black Panther Party (excerpts), Mumia Abu-Jamal Mobilizing For Mumia Abu-Jamal In Paris, Kathleen Neal Cleaver II. Understanding the Fight for Freedom Every Nation Struggling to be Free has a Right to Struggle, a Duty to Struggle, geronimo ji Jaga To Disrupt, Discredit, and Destroy: The FBI'S Secret War Against the Black Panther Party, Ward Churchill The Split in the Party, Don Cox Women, Power, and Revolution, Kathleen Neal Cleaver Black Fighting Formations: Their Strengths, Weaknesses and Potentialities, Russell Shoats III. Capturing the Imagination of the Movement Organization and Movement: The Case of the Black Panther Party and the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention of 1970, George Katsiaficas The Influences of the Black Panter Party (USA) on the Vanguard Party of the Bahamas, 1972-1987. John T. McCartney Cuba, The Black Panther Party and the US Black Movement in the 1960s: Issues of Security, Ruth Reitan Revolutionary Art is a Tool for Liberation: Emory Douglas and Protest Aesthetics at the Black Panther, Erika Doss White Radicals, Black Panthers and a Sense of Fulfillment, Stew Albert IV. Continuing the Resistance Shadow of a Clue, Errol Anthony Henderson Tracking Down the Empirical Legacy of the Black Panther Party (or Notes on the Perils of Pursuing the Panthers), Claudia Dahlerus and Christian Davenport Remembering King's Assassination, Kathleen Neal Cleaver Louisiana Panthers Endure 27 Years of Solitary Confinement for a Murder They Did Not Commit, Scott Fleming Afterword: Rediscovering the Black Panther Party, Victor Wallis Documents: The Ten Point Platform and Program of the Black Panther Party (1966) Workshop Reports from the Revolutionary Peoples Constitutional Convention (1970) NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS