Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party
Project LEARN Category
E - Educate
A - Acknowledge
Intended Audience(s)
Theme/Focus
Activism
Racism
Lived Experiences
Book Details
Author: Alondra Nelson
Publication Year: 2013
Pages: 312 pages
Book Synopsis
Between its founding in 1966 and its formal end in 1980, the Black Panther Party blazed a distinctive trail in American political culture. The Black Panthers are most often remembered for their revolutionary rhetoric and militant action. Here Alondra Nelson deftly recovers an indispensable but lesser-known aspect of the organization's broader struggle for social justice: health care. The Black Panther Party's health activism--its network of free health clinics, its campaign to raise awareness about genetic disease, and its challenges to medical discrimination--was an expression of its founding political philosophy and also a recognition that poor blacks were both underserved by mainstream medicine and overexposed to its harms.