Showdown in Desire

by Arend, Orissa

• ISBN13: 9781557288967
• ISBN10: 1557288968
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of Arkansas Pr

Summary

Showdown in Desire portrays the Black Panther Party in New Orleans in 1970, a year that included a shootout with the police on Piety Street, the creation of survival programs, and the daylong standoff between the Panthers and the police in the Desire housing development. Through interviews with Malik Rahim, the Panther; Robert H. King, Panther and member of the Angola 3; Larry Preston Williams, the black policeman; Moon Landrieu, the mayor; Henry Faggen, the Desire resident; Robert Glass, the white lawyer; Jerome LeDoux, the black priest; William Barnwell, the white priest; and many others, Orissa Arend tells a nuanced story that unfolds amid guns, tear gas, desperate poverty, oppression, and inflammatory rhetoric to capture the palpable spirit of rebellion, resistance, and revolution of an incendiary summer in New Orleans.

Author Biography

"Orissa Arend has forced us to see these self-defense militants from every point of view imaginable. Moving, informative, and in places side-splittingly funny, Showdown in Desire restores to Technicolor memory a chapter of civil rights history too often neglected. The book deserves a wide audience." -Lawrence N. Powell, Tulane University "Orissa Arend has done her homework. She has managed to help disseminate and preserve the legacy of the Black Panther party, more specifically, the New Orleans chapter." -Robert H. King, a.k.a. Robert King Wilkerson, freed member of the Angola 3 and author of From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King "An admirably researched manuscript that illuminates an important yet overlooked chapter of African American history in New Orleans." -Lance Hill, author of The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement "[Arend's] interviews with both the leaders and rank-and-file members of the New Orleans BPP not only give a voice to former New Orleans Panthers, but to community activists as well. Yet it is Arend's extraordinary access to prominent officials and law enforcement authorities which differentiates her research." -From the Foreword by Curtis J. Austin

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. xi
Introduction	p. xvii
Preface	p. xxvii
Bullets and Breakfast on Piety Street
Desire and the Panthers	p. 3
The Panther, the "Mayor of Desire," and the Mayor's Special Assistant	p. 15
Remembering and Forgetting: What Really Happened	p. 23
The Nuts and Bolts of Infiltration	p. 29
Moving the System	p. 39
The "Kidnapping" of Ronald Ailsworth	p. 47
A Pig or Officer Friendly?	p. 51
Just before the Shootout	p. 55
The Shootout	p. 69
After the Shootout: New Orleanians Speak Out	p. 79
Desire Heats Up
The Rematch	p. 91
This Time We Ain't Movin'	p. 95
The Massacre That Almost Occurred	p. 101
The Day after the Standoff, Revelations in a Pig's Eye, Kinship, and Luck	p. 113
Double Dirty Tricks	p. 119
The Year After: Did the Panthers Make a Difference or Were the People "Tricked as Usual"?	p. 131
Panthers and Principles on Trial: "Somebody Has to Not Have Fear"	p. 137
"Better Off in the Penitentiary"	p. 147
Prisoners and Those who Love Them
The Escapees-Now Known as the Angola Three-and the Panthers: A Long-Term Relationship	p. 155
"The Mayor" Goes to Prison	p. 165
Geronimo ji Jaga	p. 169
Making Sense of It
Where Have All the Panthers Gone?	p. 175
Grits, Not Guns: The Panther Legacy	p. 183
And Then Came Katrina	p. 191
Epilogue	p. 203
Acknowledgments	p. 211
Cast of Characters	p. 213
October 1966 Black Panther Party Platform and Program	p. 217
Eight Points of Attention	p. 221
Three Main Rules of Discipline	p. 222
Chronology	p. 223
Abbreviations	p. 227
Notes	p. 229
Suggested Reading and Viewing	p. 243
Bibliography	p. 255
Index	p. 259
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