Revolution in Our Time by Kekla Magoon

The award-winning Revolution in Our Time offers a compelling but incomplete picture of the rise and fall of the Black Panther Party.

Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People by Kekla Magoon. Candlewick, 2021, 315 pages plus glossary, notes, bibliography, and index.

Reading Level: Teen, ages 12-15

Recommended for: ages 15-18

A Fraught History

“Early in the morning on May 2, 1967, a group of thirty Black people piled into cars in Oakland, California, and struck out on the highway, headed for the state capital in Sacramento.” Their intention was to protest the killing of Denzil Dowell, a young man shot and killed by police while robbing a liquor store. Denzil was unarmed, but the protest group, who called themselves the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, were armed to the teeth. Carrying shotguns and pistols, they assembled on the Capitol steps as their leader, Bobby Seale read a statement decrying racist policing and “calling on the American people in general and the Black people in particular to take careful note” of legislation that would be detrimental to their self-defense. The weapons meant that Martin Luther King’s era of passive resistance was over; the Black Panthers were not going to take it anymore.

They had plenty of provocation. Chapters 2 and 3 cover the sad history of American racism from 1619-1966, with the skeptical conclusion that progress made in the Civil Rights movement to that point was mostly cosmetic. The BPP (they soon dropped the “Self-Defense”) was, as the author puts it, “The aggressive alternative.” Led by Seale, Huey Newton, and Eldridge Cleaver, the movement quickly spread to America’s urban centers. Leather jackets, black berets, and semiautomatic weapons were emblematic of the group, as well as Marxist/Leninist ideology. The author reports this uncritically. Except for a mild rebuke of the male leadership’s sexism, her portrait of the BPP’s rise, political sway, and benevolent work is idealistic and glowing.

A Flawed History

In spite of their influence, the organization was shortlived. Internal conflicts led to a breakup in 1971. And after? Well, it’s complicated, and this account betrays a lack of balance. The author repeats the by-now-familiar claim that racism is “the great foundation and bedrock of the United States” and leaves out more unflattering details about the BPP, such as accusations of money laundering, violence, and murder. (Radical Son, by David Horowitz, offers a different view.) That’s not to say that the book isn’t worth reading for its point of view, or that there was no justification for the Black Panther Party. But it’s definitely not the whole story.

Awards: National Book Award finalist, Printz Honor Book, Coretta Scott King Honor Book

Overall Rating: 3.5 (out of 5)

• Worldview/moral value: 3
• Artistic/literary value: 4

Read more about our ratings here.                 

Also at Redeemed Reader:

Review: We loved Kekla Magoon’s novel, The Season of Styx Malone.

Resource: Before Black History Month is all the way over, here’s a link to our Black History Booklist.

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