Jamal Joseph

Note: This review contains numerous spoilers and detailed information about the author's life and the history of the Black Panther Party. Anyone who is seriously thinking of reading this book may want to skim it, or skip it altogether.

This gripping and inspiring memoir begins in New York City in 1968. Eddie Joseph, a 15 year old boy being raised by his doting and deeply religious grandmother, excels in school, but his experiences as a young child make him aware of the racial turmoil that show more exists within and outside of his "up south" community in the Bronx. As a first grader, he innocently kisses a white girl on the way home from school, and her parents then forbid her to ever speak to him again. During a summer trip to visit his grandmother's relatives in rural Virginia, he bloodies the nose of a white bully, who turns out to be the son of a local Ku Klux Klan leader, and he is forced to take the first bus back to New York after several KKK members pay a less than cordial visit to his aunt's house that evening.

Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination in May of 1968 radicalized many young blacks in America, and young Eddie was no exception. The Black Power movement had been gaining in strength and importance since 1966, when Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) chairman Stokely Carmichael first used the term to describe an alternative movement to Dr. King's Civil Rights movement, one which emphasized black solidarity in order to achieve political equality and socioeconomic independence. After seeing the Black Panthers on television, he is attracted by the young men wearing berets and leather jackets and toting guns, as they defiantly protest California legislators and policemen who wish to take away their constitutional right to bear arms. Eddie then decides to join the organization, along with his closest friends.

Eddie adopts the name Jamal, and becomes a devoted and respected young leader within the New York City chapter of the Black Panther Party. His youthful exuberance and radicalism is both encouraged and tempered by several older Panther leaders, most notably Afeni Shakur, one of the most influential women in the organization, whose own fame would be superseded by that of her son Tupac. The Panthers serve a vital purpose within black communities in the city, providing free breakfast and after-school programs for school children, distributing food to needy families, organizing tenants in substandard and unsafe housing to stand up for their right to live decently, combating the influx of illegal drugs in the community, and aiding individuals in need of medical care or legal aid, while distributing literature and eliciting donations to support their activities. Although many Americans viewed the Black Panther Party as a dangerous and subversive organization, liberal whites and Jews including Jane Fonda, Norman Mailer and Leonard Bernstein recognize their good work, and hold fund raising parties in their name.

The Panthers' more radical activities, particularly in Oakland and Chicago, come to the attention of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who proclaims that "{t}he Black Panther Party without question is the greatest threat to the internal security of the country." Local police, aided and encouraged by FBI agents, begin to crack down on Panther chapters throughout the country, raiding local Panther offices and engaging in shootouts with them, which include the notorious assassination of Chicago Panther leader Fred Hampton, who is shot to death at night, unarmed, as he sleeps alongside his pregnant girlfriend.

In April of 1969, Jamal and 20 other Panther leaders, known subsequently as the Panther 21, are arrested and charged with conspiracy to bomb several public building and to commit murder. The case draws local and national attention, as most blacks and liberal whites believe the charges are without merit. Jamal is eventually freed after several months of imprisonment along with several others, and the remaining incarcerated members of the Panther 21 are acquitted of all charges by a grand jury, which needed only 45 minutes of deliberation to find them free of guilt.

Jamal resumes his activities in the Party, but finds that the organization, both locally and nationally, has been fractured, due to the FBI's successful efforts to infiltrate it. This sowed widespread distrust and dissension within the Party, particularly between its West Coast and East Coast sections, and culminated in a split between Eldridge Cleaver, who favored revolution and violence, and Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, David Hilliard and others, who preferred to focus on community development and education. As a result, the local chapters' positive influences on the community wane in the early and mid 1970s, and the influx of illegal drugs, along with the migration of middle class blacks from inner city communities, increased unemployment, and cutbacks in city programs due to the worsening recession, decimate the inner city neighborhoods of New York City and most American cities.

He is arrested again, as he and other Panthers attempt to break up a local drug den by armed force, and he receives a 12 year sentence. He serves the majority of his prison time at Leavenworth, the largest maximum security federal prison in the United States, alongside the most dangerous of criminals, many of whom will never leave the prison alive. He begins to study and read intensely, writes several plays for fellow inmates, and obtains a bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas, graduating summa cum laude. Upon his release in 1987 he moves back to New York, where he reunites with his wife and children. He is hired by Touro College as a professor and counselor, writes several screenplays, which win several awards and earn him a fellowship in playwriting, and is subsequently hired to teach screenwriting at Columbia University, where he continues to work as a professor in the School of Arts.

Panther Baby is a fascinating account of a remarkable life, which kept my rapt attention from the first page to the last. Joseph is a gifted writer, and this book provided me with a succinct yet excellent insider's analysis of the Black Panther Party, the life of a former Panther, and the measure of this inspiring man. This is one of the best memoirs I've ever read, and I can't recommend it highly enough show less

It's been Black Panther literature in recent years to draw me out of my malaise of disenchantment to rekindle the idealism I used to possess over social issues. I suspect this largely has to do with my near complete ignorance of the Black Panther movement: having grown up in a predominantly white, middle to upper-middle class suburban neighborhood, for most of my life what little I knew about the organization had to do with the violently militant side and not the grassroots efforts at the show more community level. I don't know whether more efforts are being made lately in K-12 education about the movement, but I sincerely hope this gets into teenagers' hands as it holds excellent crossover appeal that will absolutely appeal to a young person's activist concern for social change.

Jamal Joseph's memoir is a straightforward, heartfelt account of his transformative years as a teenager getting involved in the NY Panther chapter and how the revolutionary motives influenced his life, good and ill, long after the party dissolved. Though I found a few inconsistencies in terms of the relation of events and some figures who just seemed to disappear (Noonie, primarily--the last we hear of her occurs just after he's released from his initial imprisonment), I appreciated his candor in revealing the less altruistic motivations along with his noble fights, and for all the good that he's done, he is surely proud of his work but not boastful. To say he is a do-gooder is a gross understatement. I never got the feeling that he was ever stopping to self-congratulate and say, "Hey, look at me and how good I am" as I've seen so many others do. Clearly, the fire lit in him during the 60s never went out (even though sometimes it dimmed), and his concern is to constantly move forward and to exact as much change as possible, which overwhelmed me. His ideals influenced an incredible strength in mature and compassionate conflict resolution effectively used on the streets as well as in prison and enabled him to think creatively in how to direct the energy of his community. His accomplishments humble me and challenge me to examine my own life to see how I can make my world a better place. Highly recommended. show less

Jamal Joseph was in his teens when he joined the Black Panthers. At 16 he went to jail as one of the "Panther 21" (in 1969 21 members of the Black Panther Party were rounded up and imprisoned). Jamal is a gifted story teller and honest about his teenage views of the Panthers and life in jail. He admits to dreaming of Panthers dressed in ninja-like pajamas breaking into jail and busting him out. What I liked best about this books was that, although the FBI saw Jamal as a threat to national show more security and sent him to Leavenworth, I never pictured him as a criminal. He used his time in jail to earn 2 degrees, to lobby for equal rights among prisoners, to write and direct plays (with other inmates as his actors). None of this sounds to me like the actions of a hardened criminal. The world in which he lived – Harlem in the 1960s could have made him hard. The treatment he received by the police and in jail could have made him hard. I never saw him as hard, I just saw a kid then a man trying to do the best for himself and his community.

May 2012 show less

Eddie Joseph was raised by his Grandma to be a good, church-going boy, and an excellent student. She, like everyone who knew him, was surprised when at age 15, he was invited to join the Black Panthers. In Panther Baby, Jamal (known to his Grandma as Eddie) Joseph relates the story of joining the Panthers in 1968, and his life through the Party's rise and fall. The youngest of the original Panther 21, he had served time in prison by the time he was 16. We are there with him every step of the show more way--when he is initiated and inducted; when he serves breakfast to the hungry children of Harlem; when he learns how to be a prisoner at Rikers Island (because of his connections to the Panthers, there's always someone to give him tips); when he is released to become a spokesman for the Party, and then a leader of the Harlem branch by the time he's 18. And then we watch, as the party slowly disintegrates due to faction in-fighting and lack of funds to continue community programs. Wanted by the police, Jamal goes into hiding for several years, and emerges yet another person.

Truly, this is one of the best biographies I've read. The story of Jamal's childhood is woven smoothly and is always interesting--and exciting. I'm not much of a non-fiction fan, but this one really held my attention. It's not often we are allowed an inside look at what life was like as a Black Panther. Panther Baby does that, and does it well. Recommended for both adults and teens! show less