"Will You Die With Me? My Life and The Black Panther Party"

“OF course, given our bizarrely romantic sense of the Panther years, we are accustomed to hearing Huey Newton’s crew described as heroic victims who were constantly harassed, imprisoned and killed by the racist power structure. “Will You Die With Me?” is a corrective to all that blather. It is chilling in its unpretentious portrayal of the author as no more than an ominous automaton who, once he swallowed the ideology as a teenager, was able to follow orders, no matter how cold and senseless they might have seemed. He yielded to the many purges without protest and was even able to silently accept the expulsion from the party of a woman he loved and had lived with for three years. Forbes was that most dangerous of people: the true believer who accepts the idea that his job is to do or die, not ever to ask why.”

The State Of . . . The Black Panther Party for Self Defense has usually held a romanticized view in my (rich) mind. According to Stanley Crouch, whose views and voice usually make me wince, this book “Will You Die With Me?” tells the underside of Newton and the gang. I take issue with Crouch’s review of the book because he lauds the negatives of the Panthers without giving any acknowledgement of all the positives brought to Black People during that time. Without them we would not have that photo of two African-American sprinters on the Olympic podium thrusting their fists in the air. Without them their would be no Tupac. I heard about the drugs and wife swapping years ago. But that didn’t take the shine totally away from the Black Panthers for me. Much like realizing that King slept around, it made them more human and tangible.