The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation

The rise of the New Black Panther Party and ensuing disputes over the party’s name and legacy throughout the 1990s did more for returning the Panthers’ name to the popular consciousness than even the passing of Huey Newton in 1989. Ignoble as that distinction may be, such paved the way for books like The Black Panther Party: Service to the People Programs to reach a new audience.

Offered by the Huey P. Newton Foundation, with David Hilliard as editor, The Black Panther Party goes beyond the headlines to relate the ways rank-and-file party members did projects like the BPP’s famed Free Breakfast for Schoolchildren Program and other service work. The Panthers’ approach to social service as a means of starting a political conversation within communities has been explored thoroughly over the years, but how those programs were actually implemented is oftentimes forgotten.

Fair credit for this book must go to Editor David Hilliard, former BPP Chief of Staff, newspaper principal, Newton Foundation and party co-founder and collaborator on nearly a dozen Panther-oriented books and media initiatives. In Hilliard’s hands, The Black Panther Party is magical because it avoids treading on where other books have been. Like This Side of Glory, Hilliard’s superb memoir of his Panther years, you get to discover what made the BPP such a magnetic force in the Black community — its desire to put the “serve the people” slogan to daily practice, and its willingness to do so in innovative, non-dogmatic ways. The Black Panther Party shares grassroots organizing campaign details without the internal drama that marked some of Glory and other books available. It also dishes on some of the less-than-sexy details, for which the Panthers are far less appreciated.

If you have read any of the scores of texts about the BPP or seen any of the DVDs documenting the organization, unflagging radicalism and firebrand politics are what you pretty much expect. Newton and party stalwarts were ideologues in many respects and did not shy away from examinations of Marxism, capital and Black oppression. The Black Panther Party is an ingenuous release because it tells the Panthers’ story in a way few other books have and likely could. It’s the purely pedestrian action items that prove to be a delight. Where else might you discover the People’s Free Pest Control Program cost $12,776.10 to set up? Or find the BPP’s blueprint for winning local elections as well as its Position Paper on the Elimination of the Offices of President and Vice President? How many people remember plans for Son of Man Temples as an ecumenical agitation tool? Popular and more obscure programs getting space makes The Black Panther Party engrossing.

The Black Panther Party does not wholly tell the story of how programs came together on a daily basis; while there are lots of bits outlining how things should happen, books like Elaine Brown’s A Taste of Power or even Hilliard’s own Glory, can be relied on for how things did happen. Still, The Black Panther Party gives a priceless peek into a world that is today the stuff of revolutionary legend.

Reviewed by Ernesto Aguilar… (más)