ABSTRACT
The Black Panther Party, despite its short life span, has much to tell us about the conditions for a revolutionary politics in the United States. Brought to prominence by direct confrontations with police in Oakland, California, but inspired from the outset by a larger vision, the BPP quickly built up a wide following. In so doing, however, it set off the loudest possible alarms in the nation's power centers. The result was an official repressive campaign of unprecedented ferocity, which destroyed the party within a few years and inflicted a long-term setback not just on its own constituency but on the whole of the U.S. Left.
