Comrades: A Local History of the Black Panther Party

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in Oakland, California, in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. It was perhaps the most visible of the Black Power groups in the late 1960s and early 70s, not least because of its confrontational politics, its rejection of King-style nonviolence, and its headline-catching, gun-toting militancy. Important on the national scene and highly visible on college campuses, the Panthers also worked at building grassroots support for local Black political and economic power. Although there have been many books about the Black Panthers, none has looked at the organization and its work at the local level. This book examines these local initiatives in Baltimore, Winston-Salem, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. It finds local organizations committed to a program of community activism, working on community problems of social, political, and economic justice. The contributors are Kevin L. Brooks, Omari L. Dyson, Malcolm Foley, Benjamin R. Friedman, Floyd W. Hayes III, Judson L. Jeffries, Tiyi M. Morris, Ryan Nissim-Sabat, and Andrew Witt.