Marcus Kwame Anderson

David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson’s The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History recounts the history of the Black Panthers in the context of the larger twentieth-century Civil Rights movement. The book begins with the long view of Black History in America, tracing the racial inequalities of the United States back to its original sin of slavery and pointing out how efforts to correct that sin, such as the Civil Rights Amendments during Reconstruction, fell short in practice leading to new systems of racial oppression and fledgling efforts to resist that oppression. Walker and Anderson engage with the complex history of the Panthers, from their initial foundation amid various other groups also called the Black Panthers through their early efforts to resist police brutality and their shift toward more community support programs. They also touch on internecine conflict within the organization, some of which occurred at the instigation of the FBI and their COINTELPRO operations. The result is a fully realized picture of the Panthers’ history.

Walker writes in his afterword, “It is worth nothing that, more than 50 years after Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party and drafted the Ten-Point Program as their guiding manifesto, every single concern they addressed is still relevant. Every single inequality, injustice, and form of oppression impacting the Black community in 1966 is still going strong, well into the 21st century. What the Panthers wanted in 1966, we still want now. What they believed, we still know to be true” (pg. 173). Amid the racial reckoning of 2020 and the inevitable conservative pushback against progressive goals, Walker and Anderson’s The Black Panther Party is a great foundational text for those who want to know more about the organization’s history and the people that shaped its role in society during the revolutionary era of the 1960s and 1970s. As we find ourselves facing another era of great social change, Walker and Anderson’s book is critically vital to learn from the past in order to improve the future. Finally, Walker and Anderson’s careful research makes this a useful text for history teachers to help their students engage with the history of the Black Panthers and their place in the larger Civil Rights Movement.… (more)

I have to preface this review with the fact that I knew NOTHING about the history of the Black Panther Party prior to reading this, and I knew very little regarding the political scene of the 1960s Civil Rights era and black party movements. That being said, I now have a huge list of topics I want to research further: this book introduced me to the main figures in the history of the Black Panther Party, including Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Geronimo Pratt, and others; 41 civil rights martyrs killed between 1955 to 1968; the enormous role of the CIA and its Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO,) including Richard Aoki, an FBI informant in the Black Panther's early days, as well as memos detailing goals to dismantle and discredit the Black Panther Party; the community programs facilitated by the Black Panthers, such as the Free Breakfast Programs and Survival Programs; similar and/or inspired resistance movements, like the Brown Berets, White Panthers, Young Lords, American Indian Movement, Dalit Panthers, etc; and the Mumford Act, meant to restrict Black Panther members from owning weapons. Again, as someone who knew very little about the topic before, I found the text to be a fascinating look at the history of this time period, and I'm excited to research these pieces of the history to learn more perspectives and details!

This graphic novel is also GORGEOUSLY illustrated by Marcus Kwame Anderson, with vibrant colors that add a punch to each page. His use of monochromatic scales on certain pages is beautifully done, and the drawings help the reader remember which important figure is which, as there are a ton of names involved in the history. The afterward is a powerful reminder that the history detailed in the book still echoes today; the murder of Fred Hampton echoes the murder of Breonna Taylor, and today's deaths of black citizens such as George Floyd echo those in the graphic novel. It is a history, as well as mirror to today's realities.… (more)