Liberated Territory: Untold Local Perspectives on the Black Panther Party

With their collection In Search of the Black Panther Party, Yohuru Williams and Jama Lazerow provided a broad analysis of the Black Panther Party and its legacy. In Liberated Territory, they turn their attention to local manifestations of the organization, far away from the party’s Oakland headquarters. This collection’s contributors, all historians, examine how specific party chapters and offshoots emerged, developed, and waned, as well as how the local branches related to their communities and to the national party. The histories and character of the party branches vary as widely as their locations. The Cape Verdeans of New Bedford, Massachusetts, were initially viewed as a particular challenge for the local Panthers but later became the mainstay of the Boston-area party. In the early 1970s, the Winston-Salem, North Carolina, chapter excelled at implementing the national Black Panther Party’s strategic shift from revolutionary confrontation to mainstream electoral politics. In Detroit, the Panthers were defined by a complex relationship between their above-ground activities and an underground wing dedicated to armed struggle. While the Milwaukee chapter was born out of a rising tide of black militancy, it ultimately proved more committed to promoting literacy and health care and redressing hunger than to violence. The Alabama Black Liberation Front did not have the official imprimatur of the national party, but it drew heavily on the Panthers’ ideas and organizing strategies, and its activism demonstrates the broad resonance of many of the concerns articulated by the national party: the need for jobs, for decent food and housing, for black self-determination, and for sustained opposition to police brutality against black people. Liberated Territory reveals how the Black Panther Party’s ideologies, goals, and strategies were taken up and adapted throughout the United States. Contributors: Devin Fergus, Jama Lazerow, Ahmad A. Rahman, Robert W. Widell Jr., Yohuru Williams

Table of Contents:
Introduction. From Oakland to Omaha: Historicizing the Panthers / Yohuru Williams 1 1. Bringing the Black Panther Party Back In: A Survey / Jama Lazerow and Yohuru Williams 33 2. The Black Panthers at the Water's Edge: Oakland, Boston, and the New Bedford "Riots" of 1970 / Jama Lazerow 85 3. "The Power Belongs to Us and We Belong to the Revolutionary Age": The Alabama Black Liberation Front and the Long Reach of the Black Panther Party / Robert W. Widell Jr. 136 4. Marching Blind: The Rise and Fall of the Black Panther Party in Detroit / Ahmad A. Rahman 181 5. "Give Them a Cause to Die For": The Black Panther Party in Milwaukee, 1969-77 / Yohuru Williams 232 Epilogue. The Black Panther Party in the Disunited States of America: Constitutionalism, Watergate, and the Closing of the Americanists' Minds / Devin Fergus 265 Contributors 295 Index 297

About the Author :
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. Jama Lazerow is Professor of History at Wheelock College. He is the author of Religion and the Working Class in Antebellum America. They are co-editors of In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement, also published by Duke University Press. Jama Lazerow is Professor of History at Wheelock College. He is the author of Religion and the Working Class in Antebellum America.

Review :
"Liberated Territory is a very impressive anthology. Its focus on the local histories of the Black Panther Party helps to fill a yawning gap in scholarship and adds to the expanding corpus of innovative scholarship on the black power movement. By developing a broader understanding of the party's local chapters, people, and politics, the essays shed light on the provincial nature of the party while providing important context for understanding the national organization."--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity "Liberated Territory helps to decenter the Oakland top-down approach to studying the Black Panther Party by critically engaging with the stories of rank and file party members in locations far beyond Oakland. Yohuru Williams and Jama Lazerow have produced a collection that will quickly become a model for others to emulate."--Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, author of America's First Black Town: Brooklyn, Illinois, 1830-1915