The Portland Black Panthers: Empowering Albina and Remaking a City

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The Portland Black Panthers is a strongly recommended historical account of the relationship between race and place in Portland, Oregon. It argues that to understand the significance of the Black Panther party (BPP) in that city, the group must be located within “the larger localized black freedom struggle and the history of the physical and socially produced spatial urban environment of Portland's black community in Albina” (p. 10). Lucas N. N. Burke and Judson L. Jeffries not only demonstrate the relationships and significance of BPP activism and the larger issue of black struggle within the system of racial segregation and inequality in Portland but they also locate the connections of Portland BPP activism to national racial politics.

This reviewer appreciated the authors' focus on a number of issues. First, BPP members appear in the narrative as normal human beings genuinely concerned with the community challenges posed by structural racism. Second, learning about the everyday successes and failures of the medical and dental clinics that the Portland BPP developed and implemented was refreshing. Lastly, racial politics (and specifically the BPP) in the Northwest are understudied, and The Portland Black Panthers contributes to filling this gap in the literature. The book's strengths are its reliance on extensive interviews with the leaders and volunteers in the Portland BPP. Highlighting and giving priority to the people on the ground and how they understood and interpreted their world is critical. This text is also extensively based on archival material from newspapers, television, and radio; and police and Federal Bureau of Investigation documents—demonstrating the researchers' genuine effort to access and illustrate the everyday experiences, feelings, and motivations of BPP members and their supporters and detractors.