We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party [Paperback]

Mumia Abu-Jamal (Author), Kathleen Cleaver (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2008

In his youth Mumia Abu-Jamal helped found the Philadelphia branch of the Black Panther Party, wrote for the national newspaper, and began his life-long work of exposing the violence of the state as it manifests in entrenched poverty, endemic racism, and unending police brutality and celebrating a people’s unending quest for freedom. In We Want Freedom, Mumia combines personal experience with extensive research to provide a compelling history of the Black Panther Party—what it was, where it came from, and what rose from its ashes. Mumia also pays special attention to the U.S. government’s disruption of the organization through COINTELPRO and similar operations.

While Abu-Jamal is a prolific writer and probably the world’s most famous political prisoner, this book is unlike any of Mumia’s previous works. In We Want Freedom, Abu-Jamal applies his sharp critical faculties to an examination of one of the U.S.’s most revolutionary and most misrepresented groups. A subject previously explored by various historians and forever ripe for "insider" accounts, the Black Panther Party has not yet been addressed by a writer with the well-earned international acclaim of Abu-Jamal, nor with his unique combination of a powerful, even poetic, voice and an unsparing critical gaze. Abu-Jamal is able to make his own Black Panther Party days come alive as well as help situate the organization within its historical context, a context that included both great revolutionary fervor and hope, and great repression. In this era, when the US PATRIOT Act dismantles some of the same rights and freedoms violated by the FBI in their attack on the Black Panther Party, the story of how the Party grew and matured while combating such invasions is a welcome and essential lesson.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this polemic-cum-history, Abu-Jamal, "the world’s most famous political prisoner," offers a celebratory look at the origins and accomplishments of the Black Panther Party, of which he was a member in the 1970s. The author, now on Pennsylvania’s Death Row for the murder of a policeman, mounts a wholly unreconstructed defense of the Oakland-based group as "a bona fide revolutionary organization of global import." He seeks to place the Panthers within the noble tradition of African-American armed resistance, invoking slave rebellions and the names of Nat Turner, John Brown and Frederick Douglass. The BPP was not criminal or sexist, he declares, but a positive force for change that fell victim to the "viciousness" and "lawlessness" of the FBI. In contrast to this often hectoring tone, a charming note of humor creeps in with Abu-Jamal’s interspersed recollections of life as a 16-year-old revolutionary.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Publisher

On April 24, 2004, activists from across the globe will gather in Philadelphia and San Francisco to honor the 50th birthday of Mumia Abu-Jamal--his 22nd spent on death row. The world's most renowned political prisoner, Mumia was only 15 when he helped found the first Philadelphia branch of the Black Panther Party. Now in his latest and most political book to date, We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party, this incisive social commentator reexamines his days in one of the most misunderstood revolutionary groups in U.S. history.

With a poetic voice and critical gaze, We Want Freedom combines memories of day-to-day life in the Party with rigorous analysis of the Black liberation struggle. Mumia challenges historians who claim that only the civil rights model was authentic, positioning the BPP as an ahistorical aberration. He brilliantly locates the Party in a centuries-long tradition of Black resistance, a legacy articulated in Kathleen Cleaver's sharp introduction as a "disfavored history." The roots of today's struggles are brought to the surface time and again as Mumia examines the long history of resistance to slavery, racial politics in Philadelphia, and the FBI's subversion of justice through COINTELPRO and earlier operations.

In an open, conversational style Mumia also remembers his personal experience as a Party member, placing the reader in the life of the average Black Panther. While many books on the BPP focus on the icons of the Party, We Want Freedom conveys the everyday grit, love, and dedication of the tens of thousands who called themselves Panthers.

An award-winning journalist, Mumia began his writing career as Lieutenant Minister of Information for the Philadelphia branch and for the Party's national newspaper. Speaking of Mumia, Alice Walker describes him as "a rare and courageous voice speaking from a place we fear to know." He is regularly heard on a network of over 150 radio stations and at Prisonradio.org. In 2003 Mumia was declared a Citizen of Paris, an award not accorded since the city bestowed it upon Pablo Picasso in 1971.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: South End Press (May 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0896087182
• ISBN-13: 978-0896087187
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #715,879 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mumia Abu-Jamal is author of many books, including Live From Death Row, Death Blossoms, All Things Censored, and We Want Freedom. He has been living on death row in a Pennsylvania prison since 1982.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE PANTHERS BY THE 'VOICE OF THE VOICELESS', March 12, 2007

By 

Alfred Johnson (boston, ma) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party (Paperback)

FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Readers this space may have noticed in my profile that I am a supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to the defense of and freedom for class war prisoners. The author of the book under review death row inmate, former Black Panther and a `voice for the voiceless' Mumia Abu Jamal is currently the most publicized case of that organization as he faces continued threats to his life by the American justice system. Here he has written a lively and informative account of his `original sin', joining the Black Panthers as a teenager, that has since then put him in the crosshairs of the government and its courts. While one can honestly disagree, as this writer does, about the politics of the Panthers (see all my reviews for other Panther-related reviews) and about Mumia's current political perspective this book demonstrates why there is an extremely good reason why he is called ` the voice of the voiceless'.

Apparently, when the government gets you in its sights you are their forever, especially if you are black. Mumia is not the only former Black Panther still in prison, only the most prominent (see Partisan Defense Committee website for others supported by that organization). Although his politics have changed their focus since his Panther youth one of the most inflammatory statements made by the prosecution in his Pennsylvania murder trial in 1982- supposedly to support a so-called `motive' for his crime was his youthful membership in the Panthers. Accordingly, that made him some kind of kill-crazy cop hater for life. No, this characterization will not do. Like many black youth at the time the Panthers brought Mumia to political life at a time when thoughtful black militants were looking for a way forward in the black liberation struggle. That the Panthers could not succeed for various reasons described in the book does not negate their political, not criminal influence. One has to look to the government's reaction to the Panthers if one wants to find serious life-threatening criminal activity

Along with several other books I have been reading lately this book has made me think back to the days when we of the white left were head over heels in love with the Black Panthers as the epitome of revolutionary manhood (and it was mainly men) and of revolutionary struggle. Well, as we are all painfully aware, those days are long gone although the goals fought for in those days are still desperately in need of completion. Thus, some thoughts about the ups and downs of the Black Panther experience, the most militant and subjectively revolutionary part of the black liberation movement of the 1960's, and its role in the history of black liberation is in order. Mumia provides much anecdotal information, particularly about the rank and file and the effect that the Panther experience had on turning around some very tough lifestyle situations.

As any photograph taken of the Panthers from the period would demonstrate the Panthers and particularly the central leadership, Huey Newton, Bobby Searle, Eldridge Cleaver among others were not adverse to little provocative demonstrations or shock-value publicity. The FBI, however, early on had other plans for them and they were not pretty. If J. Edgar Hoover saw the placid Martin Luther King-led branch of the civil rights movement as some kind of communist conspiracy then he turned apoplectic at the thought of armed black men asserting their right to bear arms. Since early slavery times that possibility had always been the fear of whites and the response was no different this time. Over a very short period the Hoover-orchestrated federal and state drive against the Panthers left most of the key leaders and cadre dead, in jail, on bail or in hiding, This was not the first time a perceived leftist threat had been deal with this in this way. One can think of the International Workers of the World (Wobblies) in the World War I period, the Communist and Anarchist `red scare' raids and deportations after that war and more recently the anticommunist witch hunts of the 1950's. With this difference, however, in the case of the Panthers there was a concerted effort to kill off every one they could get their hands on. Read here if you want to learn more about what that did to the organization, particularly as it, in self-defense, had to turn into a de facto legal defense organization. Read and re-read this book.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ready to lose sleep?, August 22, 2004

By 

K. Northern (Bronx,ny) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party (Paperback)

This book is excellent!!!! I couldn't put it down!!! Mr.Mumia Abu-Jamal did alot of research in putting this book together as you will see in his large endnotes section!!! Must read for any one interested in learning about the true history of the black panther party!!!!

1.0 out of 5 stars Mein Kampf for black panthers, August 11, 2011

By 

Gerard S. Murphy - See all my reviews
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This review is from: We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party (Paperback)

This is a truely horrible book by a truely horrible person. I had to buy this for an introduction to political science class. If you have to buy it, I recommend getting a used copy. You don't want any of your hard eraned money going to support this SOB and his supporter.