IALHI News

Black Panther Party

The Black Panther Party in Historical Perspective
Wheelock College
Boston, Massachusetts
June 11-13, 2003

Call for Papers

Thirty five years after its founding, the Black Panther Party continues to be ignored by the scholars most qualified to make sense of them -- namely, historians in the academy. This conference seeks to redress the imbalance in the historiography by bringing together historians to consider the impact of the Black Panther Party on American History. The conference organizers hope to move beyond the traditional focus on Oakland, California, and the celebrated trials of a few leaders, to look at the Panthers as a multi-dimensional national (and international) phenomenon, with roots and diverse experiences in many communities, in an effort to place them into the larger historical framework of the civil rights and black power movements, and the 1960's retreat from liberalism.

We seek papers and/or complete panels dealing with, but not limited to:

1. How historians have interpreted the Party
2. What the Black Panther Party looked liked in different locations and what problems it addressed in different parts of the country
3. How the Panthers evolved over time
4. The significance of the Party in the movements of the Sixties, black radicalism, Afro-America, and American history generally

We especially encourage graduate students and recent PhD’s to contribute.

One-page abstracts and cv by October 15, 2002, to:

Jama Lazerow,
Conference Coordinator, Department of Arts and Sciences,
Wheelock College,
200 The Riverway,
Boston, MA 02215-4176
(617) 879-2180;
jlazerow@wheelock.edu

or

Yohuru Williams,
Associate Coordinator,
Department of History,
Delaware State University;
(302) 857-6630;
ywilliam@dsc.edu

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