The man who addressed us in these pages may be, depending on one’s perspective, a criminal or a hero. Newton recalls a wide range of emotions, from anger to pride to a passionate love for a people and an ideal. While arguing the importance of dying for the cause of liberation-the revolutionary suicide alluded to in its title-Newton’s memoir raises an inescapable parallel question: In a social situation whose logic evidently presses toward physical and spiritual death, what are the possibilities for life and survival? Openly denouncing white America as the enemy, and averring that “to die for the revolution is heavier than Mount Tai,” Revolutionary Suicide calls upon all African Americans to unite in resistance to a faceless, bigotry-ridden system. Yet it is in its observations of social inequality, its indictments of white authority, and its recommendations for radical reform that Revolutionary Suicide leaves its most lasting impressions. It also narrates his sudden ascendancy to notoriety as a social and political leader of the Far Left-a status both enhanced and endangered when Newton is placed on trial for the murder of a police officer.Īpart from its significance as a political document, Revolutionary Suicide is the affecting story of an American life, evoking the exuberance of childhood, the pain of adolescence, and the alienation of a dispossessed adulthood. Beginning with his birth as a minister’s son in Louisiana, the book follows him through his disheartening years in the Oakland public schools and his brave, independent struggle to raise himself out of illiteracy. Both autobiography and radical diatribe, Revolutionary Suicide tells of Newton’s life up to the age of thirty. Seven years after co-founding the Panthers, Newton told his own story in the fascinating, turbulent memoir, Revolutionary Suicide. To the black people in the communities they served, the Panthers were a more positive force-the purveyors of free breakfasts for schoolchildren, furnishers of protection for would-be victims of police brutality, and a source of hope and heightened consciousness for all. To the white establishment, the Black Panthers were an armed menace to the established social order. Of all the dynamic forces of the decade, few were more controversial and polarizing than Newton’s Black Panthers. Newton, a clever and charismatic figure whose revolutionary career and legacy continue to stir strong interest today, not only among historians but for anyone seeking to understand the conflicts and paradoxes of race relations in 1960s America. And, in Oakland, California, a self-educated, twenty-four-year-old black man, in partnership with his friend Bobby Seale, forms the radical Black Panther Party. Ronald Reagan is elected governor of California. The number of American soldiers in Vietnam crests 380,000. The Beatles go on their last concert tour. READERS GUIDE Questions and Topics for Discussion
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |