Nine Lives of a Black Panther

May 12, 2014
Documentaries often portray the 1960s in America as a turbulent time marked by racial progress, but this was not obvious to a number of young blacks who, exposed to dire poverty and constant police harassment, grew to despise Martin Luther King’s advocacy of nonviolence. The result was the Black Power movement whose most pugnacious element was the Black Panthers. Their belligerence and revolutionary rhetoric goaded police and FBI to wildly paranoid measures that, aided by vicious internal conflicts, reduced the Panthers to a historical footnote by the 1970s. Pharr served in the Los Angeles branch during the late 1960s, participating in the notorious 1969 siege and shoot-out that marked the movement’s high point. After serving a jail term, Pharr pulled his life together and became a prosperous realtor. He does not regret his Panther service, concluding with several recent, well-publicized incidents as evidence that the black community still needs organized, armed self-defense. His appealing memoir makes few concessions to modern sensibilities (all police are “pigs”) or feminism (women’s physical attributes are carefully noted), but it’s a Technicolor portrait, warts and all, of a famous offshoot of the black struggle for equality.

June 1, 2014
A story from inside the Black Panther party and its fight for black equality in the civil rights era.An often uncomfortable but realistic picture of racial tension in the 1960s and '70s, first time author Pharr's memoir focuses on his experiences with the Black Panthers. The author was an active member of the party in Los Angeles, moving up the ranks until he found himself opposed to Huey P. Newton's style of leadership and quietly disengaged himself. While Pharr is most intent on giving an inside view of the militaristic side of the Black Panthers, including lots of detail about a shootout with police at headquarters, he also describes some of the community activism the Panthers engaged in. Free breakfast for children and conflict resolution without police involvement are highlights of that work for the community. More detail about these and other programs would have presented a rounder picture of Black Panther philosophy and provided the book with a wider audience. Due to the spotlight on self-defense, police brutality is central to the story. While ugly, its inclusion will help readers understand the Panthers' focus on defense and their own violent contributions to the ongoing conflict. Unfortunately, the dialogue is uneven throughout; while many conversations are laid back and full of slang, others are overly formal and even stilted. Liberal use of '70s slang is likely to make this an inaccessible read for younger generations. While probably realistic to the time it covers, this is a serious problem for a book attempting to educate those who didn't live through that period. "I believe the Black Panthers and other militant organizations," writes the author, "did more to ensure our human and civil rights than all the marching and praying of the last 100 years." That's debatable, to be sure, but Pharr's central story is gripping.A life and movement that deserve to be chronicled, but the book would have been improved by more judicious editing.

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June 1, 2014
Pharr was 19 years old and a member of the L.A. chapter of the Black Panther Party on December 8, 1969, when a SWAT team attacked its headquarters in the wee hours of the morning. Pharr was wounded in the five-hour siege involving thousands of rounds of ammunition, explosives, and tear gas. In this compelling memoir, he recalls the tensions between police, the Panthers, and the larger urban black community. Pharr recounts the legal battle that ended in acquittal of most charges, an acquittal secured by a young Johnnie Cochran, and how, in the midst of the police conflict, the party contended with interparty disputes. Pharr also details relationships with major Black Panther figures, including Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Geronimo Pratt, Elaine Brown, Bunchy Carter, and Masai Hewitt. Pharr's personal journey to the Panthers included a line of patriarchs from Louisiana who'd already instilled in him a resistance to racism. Pharr recounts how he survived the attack and the dissolution of the party but maintained his political stance and later went on to a successful career in real estate.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)