ABSTRACT
All we wanted was to find out what the Black Panthers said, did, and what happened to them. We didn't want to conduct surveys or interviews (at least not initially). All we wanted were the written records: i.e., the police, FBI, and Black Panther files, newspaper reports, pamphlets, and so forth. We knew the task would be difficult, and we knew much of the information we sought would not be readily available. But never, never did we expect that the journey would be so arduous, nor would we have guessed who and what would stand in the way of our pursuit of information. The naïveté of youth, a faith in the myth that those that seek shall find, or a penchant for sleuthing (like Poirot, Columbo, or Barbara Neely's Blanche)—all of these things clouded our understanding of what would transpire.
