Description
On this comprehensive history of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party (ILBPP), Chicago native Jakobi Williams demonstrates that the city’s Black Power movement used to be both a response to and an extension of the city’s civil rights movement. Williams makes a speciality of the life and violent death of Fred Hampton, a charismatic leader who served as president of the NAACP Youth Council and continued to pursue a civil rights agenda when he become chairman of the revolutionary Chicago-based Black Panther Party. Framing the tale of Hampton and the ILBPP as a social and political history and the use of, for the primary time, sealed secret police files in Chicago and interviews conducted with frequently reticent former members of the ILBPP, Williams explores how Hampton helped develop racial coalitions between the ILBPP and other local activists and organizations.
Williams also recounts the history of the original Rainbow Coalition, created in line with Richard J. Daley’s Democratic machine, to turn how the Panthers worked to create an antiracist, anticlass coalition to fight urban renewal, political corruption, and police brutality.