Jama Lazerow is Professor of History at Wheelock College. He is the author of Religion and the Working Class in Antebellum America. Yohuru Williams is Associate Professor of History and Director of Black Studies at Fairfield University. He is the author of Black Politics/White Power: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Black Panthers in New Haven.
Acknowledgments ix
Editors’ Note xi
Introduction: The Black Panthers and Historical Scholarship: Why Now? /
Jama Lazerow and Yohuru Williams 1
Part I. The Panthers through the Historian’s Lens
The Black Panther Party and the Long Civil Rights Era / Robert O. Self 15
Part II. The Panthers as American Revolutionaries
Introductory Comment: The Panthers and the Question of Violence / Rod Bush
59
In the Shadow of the Gun: The Black Panther Party, the Ninth Amendment, and
Discourses of Self-Defense / Bridgette Baldwin 67
Part III. From the Bottom Up and the Top Down: Personal Politics and the
Black Panthers
Introductory Comment: The Panthers and Local History / James T. Campbell 97
“A Rebel All His Life”: The Unexpected Story of Frank “Parky” Grace / Jama
Lazerow 104
WACing Off: Gossip, Sex, Race, and Politics in the World of FBI Special
Case Agent Williams A. Cohendet / Roz Payne 158
Part IV. Coalition Politics: The Panthers as a “Revolutionary Vanguard”
Introductory Comment: White Tigers, Brown Berets, Black Panthers, Oh My! /
Yohuru Williams 183
Invisible Cages: Racialized Politics and the Alliance between the Panthers
and the Peace and Freedom Party / Joel Wilson 191
Leading the Vanguard: White New Leftists School and Panthers on Black
Revolution / David Barber 223
Brown Power to Brown People: Radical Ethnic Nationalism, the Black
Panthers, and Latino Radicalism, 1967–1973 / Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar 252
Part V. Revolutionary Politics: The Black Panthers in the American
Imagination
Introductory Comment: “Culture Is a Weapon in Our Struggle for Liberation”:
The Black Panther Party and the Cultural Politics of Decolonization /
Davarian L. Baldwin 289
The Arm(ing) of the Vanguard, Signify(ing), and Performing the Revolution:
The Black Panther Party and Pedagogical Strategies for Interpreting a
Revolutionary Life / Tim Lake 306
Media Culture and the Public Memory of the Black Panther Party / Edward P.
Morgan 324
Contributors 375
Index 377
