Jamal Joseph
In the 1960s he exhorted students at Columbia University to burn their college to the ground. Today heâ€™s chair of their School of the Arts film division. Jamal Josephâ€™s personal odysseyâ€”from the streets of Harlem to Rikerâ€™s Island and Leavenworth to the halls of Columbiaâ€”is as gripping as it is inspiring.Eddie Joseph was a high school honor student, slated to graduate early and begin college. But this was the late 1960s in Bronxâ€™s black ghetto, and fifteen-year-old Eddie was introduced to the tenets of the Black Panther Party, which was just gaining a national foothold. By sixteen, his devotion to the cause landed him in prison on the infamous Rikers Islandâ€”charged with conspiracy as one of the Panther 21 in one of the most emblematic criminal cases of the sixties. When exonerated, Eddieâ€”now called Jamalâ€”became the youngest spokesperson and leader of the Panthersâ€™ New York chapter.He joined the â€œrevolutionary underground,â€ later landing back in prison. Sentenced to more than twelve years in Leavenworth, he earned three degrees there and found a new calling. He is now chair of Columbia Universityâ€™s School of the Arts film divisionâ€”the very school he exhorted students to burn down during one of his most famous speeches as a Panther.In raw, powerful prose, Jamal Joseph helps us understand what it meant to be a soldier inside the militant Black Panther movement. He recounts a harrowing, sometimes deadly imprisonment as he charts his path to manhood in a book filled with equal parts rage, despair, and hope.
Nonfiction,Autobiography,Memoir,Biography,History,Cultural,African American,Biography,Autobiography,Adult,Race,Cultural,Biography Memoir
Panther Baby: A Life of Rebellion and Reinvention