Read the story behind the award-winning film Judas and the Black Messiah On December 4, 1969, attorney Jeff Haas was in a police lockup in Chicago, interviewing Fred Hampton's fiancÉe. Deborah Johnson described how the police pulled her from the room as Fred lay unconscious on their bed. She heard one officer say, "He's still alive." She then heard two shots. A second officer said, "He's good and dead now." She looked at Jeff and asked, "What can you do?" The Assassination of Fred Hampton remains Haas's personal account of how he and People's Law Office partner Flint Taylor pursued Hampton's assassins, ultimately prevailing over unlimited government resources and FBI conspiracy. Fifty years later, Haas writes that there is still an urgent need for the revolutionary systemic changes Hampton was organizing to accomplish. Not only a story of justice delivered, this book spotlights Hampton as a dynamic community leader and an inspiration for those in the ongoing fight against injustice and police brutality.

This pictorial history tells the story of the revolutionary Black Panther Party in the words of its co-founder, Bobby Seale. Coming toward the end of America’s epic Civil Rights Movement, the Black Panther Party was one of the most creative and influential responses to racism and inequality in American history. They advocated armed self-defense to counter police brutality, and initiated a program of patrolling the police with shotguns—and law books. In words and photographs, Power to the People explores the impact and achievements of this revolutionary organization. The words are Seale’s, with contributions by other former party members. The photographs are by Stephen Shames, the Panther’s most trusted documentarian. Power to the People is a testament to their warm association, combining Shames’s memorable images with Seale’s colorful in-depth commentary culled from many hours of conversation. Shames also interviewed major party figures for this volume, including Kathleen Cleaver, Elbert “Big Man” Howard, Ericka Huggins, Emory Douglas, and William “Billy X” Jennings. His photography is supplemented with Panther ephemera and graphic art.

The speeches of a Black Panther that set a movement on fire, in print for the first time

In this comprehensive history of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party (ILBPP), Chicago native Jakobi Williams demonstrates that the city's Black Power movement was both a response to and an extension of the city's civil rights movement. Williams focuses on the life and violent death of Fred Hampton, a charismatic leader who served as president of the NAACP Youth Council and continued to pursue a civil rights agenda when he became chairman of the revolutionary Chicago-based Black Panther Party. Framing the story of Hampton and the ILBPP as a social and political history and using, for the first time, sealed secret police files in Chicago and interviews conducted with often reticent former members of the ILBPP, Williams explores how Hampton helped develop racial coalitions between the ILBPP and other local activists and organizations. Williams also recounts the history of the original Rainbow Coalition, created in response to Richard J. Daley's Democratic machine, to show how the Panthers worked to create an antiracist, anticlass coalition to fight urban renewal, political corruption, and police brutality.

With his colleagues at the People’s Law Office (PLO), Taylor has argued landmark civil rights cases that have exposed corruption and cover-up within the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and throughout the city’s political machine, from aldermen to the mayor’s office. [TAYLOR’s BOOK] takes the reader from the 1969 murders of Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton and Panther Mark Clark—and the historic, thirteen-year trial that followed—through the dogged pursuit of chief detective Jon Burge, the leader of a torture ring within the CPD that used barbaric methods, including electric shock, to elicit false confessions from suspects. Taylor and the PLO gathered evidence from multiple cases to bring suit against the CPD, breaking the department’s “code of silence” that had enabled decades of cover-up. The legal precedents they set have since been adopted in human rights legislation around the world.

This timely special edition, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, features a new preface by the authors that places the Party in a contemporary political landscape, especially as it relates to Black Lives Matter and other struggles to fight police brutality against black communities. In Oakland, California, in 1966, community college students Bobby Seale and Huey Newton armed themselves, began patrolling the police, and promised to prevent police brutality. Unlike the Civil Rights Movement that called for full citizenship rights for blacks within the United States, the Black Panther Party rejected the legitimacy of the U.S. government and positioned itself as part of a global struggle against American imperialism. In the face of intense repression, the Party flourished, becoming the center of a revolutionary movement with offices in sixty-eight U.S. cities and powerful allies around the world. Black against Empire is the first comprehensive overview and analysis of the history and politics of the Black Panther Party. The authors analyze key political questions, such as why so many young black people across the country risked their lives for the revolution, why the Party grew most rapidly during the height of repression, and why allies abandoned the Party at its peak of influence. Bold, engrossing, and richly detailed, this book cuts through the mythology and obfuscation, revealing the political dynamics that drove the explosive growth of this revolutionary movement and its disastrous unraveling. Informed by twelve years of meticulous archival research, as well as familiarity with most of the former Party leadership and many rank-and-file members, this book is the definitive history of one of the greatest challenges ever posed to American state power.

From the man who is practically synonymous with the form of the modern personal essay comes a delightful collection of prose, poems, and never-before-published pieces that span his career as an essayist, novelist, poet, film critic, father, son, and husband. Organized in six parts (Childhood; Youth; Early Marriage and Bachelorhood; Teaching and Work; Fiction; Politics, Religion, Movies, Books, Cities; The Style of Middle Age) Getting Personal tells two stories: the development of Lopate's career as a writer and the story of his life.

Interdisciplinary essays reevaluate the Black Panthers and their legacy in relation to revolutionary violence, radical ideology, urban politics, popular culture, and the media.

A fascinating, first-person account of a historic era in the struggle for black empowerment in America. Long an iconic figure for radicals, Huey Newton is now being discovered by those interested in the history of America's social movements. Was he a gifted leader of his people or a dangerous outlaw? Were the Black Panthers heroes or terrorists? Whether Newton and the Panthers are remembered in a positive or a negative light, no one questions Newton's status as one of America's most important revolutionaries. To Die for the People is a recently issued classic collection of his writings and speeches, tracing the development of Newton's personal and political thinking, as well as the radical changes that took place in the formative years of the Black Panther Party. With a rare and persuasive honesty, To Die for the People records the Party's internal struggles, rivalries and contradictions, and the result is a fascinating look back at a young revolutionary group determined to find ways to deal with the injustice it saw in American society. And, as a new foreword by Elaine Brown makes eminently clear, Newton's prescience and foresight make these documents strikingly pertinent today. Huey Newton was the founder, leader and chief theoretician of the Black Panther Party, and one of America’s most dynamic and important revolutionary philosophers. "Huey P. Newton's To Die for the People represents one of the most important analyses of the politics of race, black radicalism, and democracy written during the civil rights-Black Power era. It remains a crucial and indispensible text in our contemporary efforts to understand the continuous legacy of social movements of the 1960s and 1970s." —Peniel Joseph, author of Waiting Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America "Huey P. Newton's name, and more importantly, his history of resistance and struggle, is little more than a mystery for many younger people. The name of a third-rate rapper is more familiar to the average Black youth, and that's hardly surprising, for the public school system is invested in ignorance, and Huey P. Newton was a rebel — and more, a Black Revolutionary . . . who gave his best to the Black Freedom movement; who inspired millions of others to stand." —Mumia Abu Jamal, political prisoner and author of Jailhouse Lawyers "Newton's ability to see theoretically, beyond most individuals of his time, is part of his genius. The opportunity to recognize that genius and see its applicability to our own times is what is most significant about this new edition." —Robert Stanley Oden, former Panther, Professor of Government, California State University, Sacramento

For those wondering how Bill Clinton could pardon white-collar fugitive Marc Rich but not Native American leader Leonard Peltier, important clues can be found in this classic study of the FBI's COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program). Agents of Repression includes an incisive historical account of the FBI siege of Wounded Knee, and reveals the viciousness of COINTELPRO campaigns targeting the Black Liberation movement. The authors' new introduction examines the legacies of the Panthers and AIM, and shows how the FBI still presents a threat to those committed to fundamental social change. Ward Churchill is author of From a Native Son. Jim Vander Wall is co-author of The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States, with Ward Churchill.