Edited by Diane C. Fujino and Matef Harmachis
Haymarket Books
10/13/2020, paperback
SKU: 9781642591262
The first book to comprehensively examine how the Black Panther Party has directly shaped the practices and ideas that have animated grassroots activism in the decades since its decline, Black Power Afterlives represents a major scholarly achievement as well as an important resource for today's activists. Through its focus on the enduring impact of the Black Panther Party, this volume expands the historiography of Black Power studies beyond the 1960s-70s and serves as a bridge between studies of the BPP during its organizational existence and studies of present-day Black activism, allowing today's readers and organizers to situate themselves in a long lineage of liberation movements.
Reviews:
"Black Power Afterlives gives us concrete insights into the continuing significance of the Black Panthers without the common iconization and stereotypes. Through carefully chosen writings and interviews we are reminded of the transformative power of movements and real people that envision a far more just and equitable future for humanity and the planet." -- Claude Marks, director, The Freedom Archives
"Tender and determined, these meditations on the enduring afterlives of the Black Panther Party illuminate the incandescent dreams of freedom joining one revolutionary generation to another. The essays and conversations--on art and prison, ecology and the spirit--focus on the lessons rank-and-file Panthers have to offer today's rank and file. They remind us of the eternal dedication and determination required of us all." -- Dan Berger, author of Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era
"What Fujino and Harmachis have done with this collection of articles is comparable in scope to Charles Jones' The Black Panther Party (Reconsidered), and Judson Jeffries' Comrades, both superb and deeply critical anthologies, but with a provocative twist: what would be the historical impacts of the Black Panther Party half a century hence? As a young member of the original collective, I can say without contradiction, we were so busy, and often so nerve-wracked that we barely thought about the next 50 minutes, much less 50 years! Fujino and Harmachis show us that history is never done. It runs like a river, sometimes rushing, sometimes meandering, but always moving." -- Mumia Abu-Jamal, author of We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party
About the Contributors:
Diane C. Fujino is an activist-scholar teaching and writing about Asian American radical struggles, Black Power struggles, and Afro-Asian solidarities and is professor of Asian American Studies and former director of the Center for Black Studies Research at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Professor Fujino has long participated in political prisoner, education, and US Third World liberation solidarity struggles and is active with the Ethnic Studies Now! Santa Barbara Coalition. She is author of Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama (2005) and Samurai among Panthers: Richard Aoki on Race, Resistance, and a Paradoxical Life (2012); and editor of Wicked Theory, Naked Practice: A Fred Ho Reader (2009).
Matef Harmachis is a social scientist teaching high school, a former journalist, and a long-time activist working in pan-African and Third World decolonization solidarity, education, labor, and political prisoner liberation movements. He is active with the Ethnic Studies Now! Santa Barbara Coalition, which recently won the passage of an ethnic studies course requirement for high school graduation in the Santa Barbara school district.