The Portland Black Panthers

"A substantial and important book that succeeds admirably in deepening our understanding not only of the ongoing struggles of Portland’s black community, but also the impact of the Black Panther Party on the city’s political and physical landscape. This work should gain a wide readership among those with an interest in the Black Panther Party, the modern African American freedom struggle, and the post-World War Two urban West and the contests over space and place that shaped it. . . . Required reading for anyone who has every called Portland home."

"The Portland Black Panthers chronicles the largely peaceful efforts of Portland's black community to be heard during a turbulent time in Oregon history."

"A substantial and important book that succeeds admirably in deepening our understanding not only of the ongoing struggles of Portland’s black community, but also the impact of the Black Panther Party on the city’s political and physical landscape. This work should gain a wide readership among those with an interest in the Black Panther Party, the modern African American freedom struggle, and the post-World War Two urban West and the contests over space and place that shaped it. Given the range and depth of insights it offers into the city’s racial past and thereby into the contemporary City of Roses, it should also be required reading for anyone who has ever called Portland home."

"The authors fill an important gap. . . . This is a significant contribution to our understanding of black history in the Northwest and just as important a contribution to the history of community organizing and urban development in one of the most important cities in the Pacific Northwest."

"An important study for students and researchers interested in the genesis of local black activism in US cities. Their detailed examination of the Portland’s police operations adds to the information being collected on police behavior by those in the Black Lives Matter movement currently."

"The book illuminates Portland’s troubled passage through the 1960s and 1970s, as experienced by community activists, and the photographs evocatively humanize urban planning decisions. It is a must-read for teachers in Oregon’s public schools and for any serious student of Pacific Northwest history, including undergraduates and graduates in ethnic studies, urban studies, criminal justice, and regional history."

"Like a Google Earth zoom-in, Lucas Burke and Judson Jeffries make us first see the wide historical context of the struggle to reshape social, political, cultural, racial, and even spatial relations in one American city and then experience the personal, breathing realities of that struggle. What gives the book its profound power and lasting relevance is its marvelous research, most especially its troves of interviews across a wide range of participants in the struggle. Readers will gain a valuable new understanding of what the Black Panther Party meant to a city far away from the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, and activists will get priceless lessons in the dos and don’ts of local organizing."

"The Portland Black Panthers is a significant, indeed important, book eminently deserving a place in modern civil rights bibliography. First, it adds a chapter to what we know of the national (urban) impact of the Panthers; second, it locates black militancy in white Arcadia, as it were, and exposes the ubiquity of race-driven policies miles away from the benighted South or the septic ghettos of the big industrial centers of the North; third, it describes the agency possessed by a Panther cadre adroit at confrontation and prudent in compromise (part of Albina survived); and finally, this book may make us reflect on the reasons for so many Ferguson alternatives to Albina."

"With meticulous research, Burke and Jeffries restore voice and agency to activists and community leaders whose importance has faded from the popular narrative of oh-so-cool Portland. They remind us that the city has shared the troubled history of other American communities and highlight the initiative of individuals who battled its ingrained and sometimes unconscious racial inequities. The decade from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s was one of fundamental transformation in Portland, and the Black Panthers and their allies are an essential part of that story."

"In this new work from one of the sharpest and most prolific scholars of 'the Long Civil Rights Movement' around, Judson L. Jeffries teams up with a young scholar in Lucas N. N. Burke and together they provide us with the kind of formidable assessment of the Black Panther Party that is seldom seen. The Portland Black Panthers fulfills two critical needs: it extends the reach of our knowledge of black communities in the U.S., taking us far west as Toni Morrison does with Home, to give us a wider lens for viewing the black experience. And, wonderfully, this also provides an additional piece that fills in almost mosaic-like the full picture of the extent and function of the Black Panther Party as a political movement."

"This book is a breath of fresh air in Oregon history and also a major contribution to black history and black radicalism, drawing our gaze away from charismatic national leaders to the unheralded foot soldiers who confronted great obstacles and formed creative alliances to serve Portland's most vulnerable residents."

"Lucas Burke and Judson Jeffries have crafted a captivating study of a local and largely unknown chapter of the Black Panther Party. By skillfully interpreting the inner workings of Portland’s branch, with a sympathetic yet questioning stance, they do the important work of moving us beyond the spectacular to show how the practices of the everyday matter."