FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Published by the University of Arkansas Press to coincide with the 40^th anniversary of the Black Panther Party this month, Curtis J. Austin’s Up Against the Wall: Violence and Nonviolence in the Making of the Black Panther Party (Cloth, $34.95) provides one of the first overviews of this significant radical movement.

Austin, assistant professor of history and co-director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage at the University of Southern Mississippi, chronicles how violence brought about the founding of the Black Panther Party in 1966 by Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and Richard Aoki and dominated its policies, and how it brought about the party’s destruction as one member after another - Eldridge Cleaver, Fred Hampton, Alex Rackley - left the party, was killed or was imprisoned.  

Austin interviewed a number of party members who had heretofore remained silent. With the help of these stories, Austin is able to put the violent history of the party in perspective and show that the “survival” programs such as the Free Breakfast for Children program and Free Health Clinics helped members of the black communities they served to recognize their own bases of power and the ability to save themselves. Tim Tyson, author of Radio Free Dixie, says that the country is “desperately in need of good historical scholarship about the Black Panther Party, and this strong history is a good place to start. Austin’s focus on violence is a shrewd decision.” Elbert “Big Man” Howard, an original founding member of the Black Panther Party and the first editor of the Black Panther Party newspaper, contributes a foreword to the book. Austin attended the party’s recent reunion in Oakland for the book and participated in their program.

Out of the Shadows by David K. Wiggins

Out of the Shadows: A Biographical History of African American Athletes (Cloth $34.95), edited by David K. Wiggins, provides a comprehensive history of African Americans and
sports, from the 19^th century to today. Original essays provide 20 biographies of athletes from Jimmy Winkfield and Marshall Townsend to Jesse Owens, Althea Gibson and Bill Russell, to the Williams’ sisters and Tiger Woods. These insightful biographies furnish perspectives on the changing status of these athletes and how the changes mirrored the transformation of sport, American society, and civil rights legislation. The contributors to this collection are some of today’s best authors of sports history, including Gerald Early, Anthony O. Edmonds, Gerald R. Gems and Donald Spivey.

Randy Roberts, author of Papa Jack: Jack Johnson and the Era of White Hopes, says that “Wiggins has done a splendid job of rounding up first-rate historians. As probably the foremost authority on African American sports, Wiggins has provided the connective tendons to hold the body of essays together. ... Job well done.” An advance review by Library Journal describes these mini-biographies as “thoughtful studies.” David K. Wiggins is a professor and director of the School of Recreation, Health and Tourism at George Mason University.

These two new books from the University of Arkansas Press join a number of other outstanding recent books published by the press in this field that include Battling Siki, the first biography of the boxer; A Stranger and A Sojourner, the life of Peter Caulder, a free Black man in antebellum Arkansas; and I Dream a World, the first book on the operas of the noted African American composer William Grant Still.