News and Events

To reserve the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Diversity Education, please fill out THIS FORM and email it to Ruth Slaughter at raslau0@uky.edu

 

From the Bullet to the Ballot:
The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago

 

Saturday, April 6th

6-9pm

MLK Center, Student Center

 

In this comprehensive history of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party (ILBPP), Chicago native Jakobi Williams demonstrates that the city's Black Power movement was both a response to and an extension of the city's civil rights movement. Williams focuses on the life and violent death of Fred Hampton, a charismatic leader who served as president of the NAACP Youth Council and became chairman of the revolutionary Chicago-based Black Panther Party. Framing the story of Hampton and the ILBPP as a social and political history and using, for the first time, sealed secret police files in Chicago and interviews conducted with the often reticent former members of the ILBPP, Williams explores how Hampton helped develop racial coalitions between the ILBPP and other local activists and organizations.

 

Williams also recounts the history of the original Rainbow Coalition, created in response to the Richard J. Daley Democratic machine, to show how the Panthers worked to create an antiracist, anti-class coalition to fight urban renewal, political corruption, and police brutality. The book demonstrates that the group led to Barack Obama's election as US President.

 

To download the poster for this event, please CLICK HERE.