decade, publishing a series of articles in the Journal of American Studies, the Pacific Historical Review, and the European Journal of American Studies. He has also written extensively on the relationship between politics and popular culture in the San Francisco Bay Area since the 1960s, including the books Silicon Valley Cinema and Dirty Harry’s America.
Street applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Black Revolutionaries: A History of the Black Panther Party, and reported the following:
Page 99 of Black Revolutionaries summarises chapter five, which evaluates the experience of rank-and-file members of the BPP across the nation. Acting as a bridge to the book’s next section, the page reveals the level of police and FBI disruption BPP activists in numerous chapters endured. It ends by arguing that understanding local activism helps us fully comprehend BPP praxis. Here, the book reminds readers that grassroots activism and BPP theory (as defined by leaders like Huey P. Newton) informed each other. This, the page – and the book as a whole – argues, helps us understand the BPP’s critique of American capitalism.Learn more about Black Revolutionaries at the University of Georgia Press website.
I think – I hope! – that readers of page 99 might be intrigued enough to read the rest of Black Revolutionaries. It focuses on one of the book’s key assertions, namely the importance of grassroots activism to the BPP, and hints at the book’s other overarching arguments. These revolve around the importance of Marxist thought and anti-capitalist action to the BPP and the baleful impact of the concerted FBI and police campaign to destroy the Party and its members. Within this, the test might lead browsers to conclude that the book overwhelmingly focuses on the rank-and-file. Sadly, I’m not a skilful enough historian to write that book! Instead, I tried to unite the grassroots experience with evaluation of the intellectual and activist experience of key figures in the BPP such as Newton, Kathleen Cleaver, Eldridge Cleaver, and Fred Hampton. Praxis, as I suggest above, is crucial here, since the book argues that BPP thought and activism informed each other in synergy. Through the book I attempt to address a key issue often overlooked by historians and observers of the organization, which is the BPP’s relationship with Marxism. The discussion that ends page 99 revolves around this issue, and perhaps contains enough provocations to entice browsers to turn the page and see where my argument goes next.
Consequently, if I had to offer a grade to the test, I’d suggest a ‘B.’ I’m hopeful that page 99 prompts browsers to request Black Revolutionaries from their local library, or maybe even dip into their pocket and buy a copy!
--Marshal Zeringue
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