Up Against the Wall
Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party

Curtis J. Austin
With a Foreword by Elbert “Big Man” Howard

The story of the Black Panther Party’s Pyrrhic victory

Curtis J. Austin’s Up Against the Wall chronicles how violence brought about the founding of the Black Panther Party in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, dominated its policies, and brought about the party’s destruction as one member after another—Eldridge Cleaver, Fred Hampton, Alex Rackley—left the party, was killed, or was imprisoned. Austin shows how the party’s early emphasis in the 1960s on self-defense, though sorely needed in black communities at the time, left it open to mischaracterization, infiltration, and devastation by local, state, and federal police forces and government agencies. Austin carefully highlights the internal tension between advocates of a more radical position than the Panthers took, who insisted on military confrontation with the state and those, such as Newton and David Hilliard, who believed in making community organizing and alliance building their first priorities.

Austin interviewed a number of party members who had heretofore remained silent. With the help of these stories, Austin is able to put the violent history of the party in perspective and show that the “survival” programs such as the Free Breakfast for Children program and Free Health Clinics helped the black communities they served to recognize their own bases of power and ability to save themselves.

“We desperately need good historical scholarship about the Black Panther Party, and this strong history is a good place to start. Austin’s focus on violence is a shrewd decision.”

—Tim Tyson, author of Blood Done Sign My Name and Radio Free Dixie

“This book powerfully demonstrates the centrality of violence in the historical trajectory and our historical memory of the Party. . . . A serious, sober, and probing contribution to the ongoing project of historicizing and understanding the Party and its importance.”

—Waldo Martin, Civil Rights in the United States: An Encyclopedia and The Mind of Frederick Douglass

November 2006
6 x 9 488 pages, 20 photographs, 12 drawings, index
$34.95 cloth
1-55728-827-5 (978-1-55728-827-1)

Curtis J. Austin is an assistant professor of history and codirector of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Elbert “Big Man” Howard was an original founding member of the Black Panther Party and the editor of the Black Panther Party newspaper.