Political Media Review

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.

The Sixties presented social movements with some of recent history’s most spectacular schisms, many of which continue to be debated. Assimilation versus revolutionary nationalism versus cultural nationalism; and Old Left aesthetics versus New Left rejection of convention were among them. But none so clearly defined the troubles of that period like the verbal and other skirmishes over militancy.