The History of the Black Panther Movement: A Book Launch and Conversation w/ Robyn Spencer

Join us in Jersey City for a book launch/discussion to celebrate Professor Robyn C. Spencer’s new book The Revolution Has Come. Professor Spencer will be in conversation with a special guest, to be announced.

In The Revolution Has Come, Robyn C. Spencer traces the Black Panther Party’s organizational evolution in Oakland, California, where hundreds of young people came to political awareness and journeyed to adulthood as members. Challenging the belief that the Panthers were a projection of the leadership, Spencer draws on interviews with rank-and-file members, FBI files, and archival materials to examine the impact the organization’s internal politics and COINTELPRO’s political repression had on its evolution and dissolution. In this book, Spencer shows how the Panthers’ members interpreted, implemented, and influenced party ideology and programs; initiated dialogues about gender politics; highlighted ambiguities in the Panthers’ armed stance; and criticized organizational priorities. Centering gender politics and the experiences of women and their contributions to the Panthers and the Black Power movement as a whole and providing a panoramic view of the party’s organization over its sixteen-year history, The Revolution Has Come shows how the Black Panthers embodied Black Power through the party’s international activism, interracial alliances, commitment to address state violence, and desire to foster self-determination in Oakland’s black communities.

Free