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Revolution In Our Time

by Kekla Magoon, 2021

Published: 2022.03.30

Home > Book Reviews > Kekla Magoon > Revolution In Our Time

 

Photo by Wil C. Fry.

★★★★★ (of 5)

(* 305 pages does NOT include Author’s Note [309-315], Acknowledgements [317], Key People [318-323], Timeline [324-325], Glossary [326-328], Further Reading [329-332], Source Notes [333-364], Bibliography [365-375], Image Credits [376-381], Copyright Acknowledgements [382], or Index [383-390].)

 

This book is a history of the Black Panther Party (BPP), a socialist Black Power organization founded in Oakland, California, in 1966 with the initial core goal of “copwatching” (following the Oakland police on their patrols in order to prevent and/or document instances of police brutality). The group grew exponentially over the next few years — reaching a peak of thousands of members with offices in 68 cities and morphing into more of a community support organization, feeding thousands of hungry children, starting free health clinics, and even a school. The BPP quickly drew the attention of powerful white supremacist organizations like the United States government’s FBI, which declared the party “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country”, orchestrated the assassination of Fred Hamption (a powerful BPP leader), and mounted an extensive and illegal campaign called COINTELPRO in order to surveil, harass, infiltrate, discredit, and criminalize the party. Eventually, with many leaders either in prison or gone underground to avoid false arrest, mounting legal fees, and consistent negative portrayals in mainstream North American media, the party dwindled away and disappeared from public view by the late 1970s. It formally dissolved in 1982.

The black raised fist, a symbol of Black Power.

Award-winning author Kekla Magoon begins the book with the May 2, 1967, incident that brought the small Oakland group into the national limelight for the first time: the BPP’s protest of the proposed Mulford Act a California state law written with the sole intent of disarming the Panthers (unironically supported by the NRA and then-governor Ronald Reagan) that would ban the public carrying of loaded firearms without a permit.

Writing for a younger audience, Magoon then goes back for quick history lessons on Black people in the Americas, starting with the European colonization and exploitation of Africa (she includes instances of brave African resistance like that of Queen Nzinga of Ndongo). Then she quickly covers the North Atlantic slave trade that brought millions of enslaved Africans to the Americas, the American revolution that freed white colonists from British rule but left the African Americans in chains, various slave revolts, the Civil War and reconstruction, the reign of white terror in the early 1900s, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. She deftly connects each era of history to the next, illuminating the constant thread of white supremacy that pushed back with each apparent gain made by Black people.

In the 1960s, after the federal government passed landmark Civil Rights laws, it quickly became apparent that little had changed — in a sense it was almost inevitable that a group like the Black Panther Party would form.

The book is filled with many dozens, perhaps hundreds, of photographs of the Panthers and their activities, from the early days to near-present. Sources are well documented in the extensive Source Notes and Bibliography sections, and terms are explained both in the text and in the glossary. The whole thing felt like a history textbook (perhaps late middle school or early high school level), except written better than any textbook I was ever assigned.

Magoon admits she had trouble concluding the book. The BPP kind of faded away, with the few surviving members occasionally holding reunions — some of them continue their activist work either by writing, speaking, or as members of other, newer organizations. Other groups took up the mantle. The nation continued to deal with race in strange and unsettling ways, including the War On Drugs and mass incarceration, continued overpolicing of Black communities, all while pretending we were colorblind and it was all okay because we elected a Black president. Then the national attention was caught in the 2010s by a series of highly-publicized police killings of Black citizens, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the resulting violent police response at protests and vigils. There was the Unite The Right rally where white supremacists once again openly gathered, and increasingly racist rhetoric in the political sphere. In many ways, it looked once again like nothing had changed in the United States.

Magoon ends with encouraging words about the power of youth to make change in society, but I felt like this was the one weak point of the book. And it’s not truly her fault that there was no firm conclusion, it’s just that the hill is still dauntingly before us, taller than ever.

 

Conclusion

It was a hopeful coincidence that the current president signed the first federal anti-lynching law (source) the week I read this book. The same week, the nation’s first Black woman nominee to the Supreme Court was working her way through the gauntlet of the U.S. Senate, sidestepping sputtering racists the whole way. Whatever the endpoint of this long struggle, I am glad to be better educated about it now that I’ve read Magoon’s wonderful book.

 





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