Florida Book Awards, Silver Medal for General Nonfiction
In the tumultuous year after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, 29-year-old Pete O’Neal became inspired by reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X and founded the Kansas City branch of the Black Panther Party (BPP). The same year, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover declared the BPP was the “greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” Black Panther in Exile is the gripping story of O’Neal, one of the influential members of the movement, who now lives in Africa—unable to return to the United States but refusing to renounce his past.
Arrested in 1969 and convicted for transporting a shotgun across state lines, O’Neal was free on bail pending his appeal when Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the BPP, was assassinated by the police. O’Neal and his wife fled the United States for Algiers. Eventually they settled in Tanzania, where the O’Neals continue the social justice work of the Panthers through community and agricultural programs and host study-abroad programs for American students.
Paul Magnarella—a veteran of the United Nations Criminal Tribunals and O’Neal’s attorney during his appeals process from 1997 to 2001—describes his unsuccessful attempts to overturn what he argues was a wrongful conviction. He lucidly reviews the evidence of judicial errors, the prosecution’s use of a paid informant as a witness, perjury by both the prosecution’s key witness and a federal agent, as well as other constitutional violations. He demonstrates how O’Neal was denied justice during the height of the COINTELPRO assault on black activists in the United States.
This book tells the story of Pete O’Neal, one of the most influential members of the Black Panther Party, who now lives in exile in Tanzania—unable to return to the United States but refusing to renounce his past.
Arvustused
A well-written, carefully researched, and compelling story of two exceptional and evolving individuals who continue to live in the spirit of the original BBP [ Black Panther Party], this book . . . will be a valuable addition to collections on BPP history and African/African American studies.Choice
This book adds to the necessary revisions emerging about the Black Panther Party and the lives that it changed. It expands our knowledge about the infamous COINTELPRO era and about how, despite the programs terrible deeds, many of its victims have lived long and productive lives.Journal of Southern History
List of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I
1. Growing Up
2. Lifes Transitions to the Black Panther Party
3. Black Panther PartyCommunity Relations
4. Police and US Government Relations
5. Arrest, Trial, Escape
6. Fleeing to Sweden and Algeria
7. Leaving Algeria and Living in Tanzania
8. Settling in Imbaseni Village
PART II
9. From The Hague to Arusha to Kansas Federal Court
10. First Petition
11. Submission, Responses, and Final Orders
12. Evidence of Perjury and a New Petition
13. Justice Denied
PART III
14. The Shakur Proposal
15. Life Then and Now
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Paul J. Magnarella is professor emeritus of criminology, law, and society at the University of Florida. He has served as an expert on mission with the United Nations Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and as a legal researcher for the United Nations Tribunal for Rwanda. Magnarella is the author of many titles, including Human Rights in Our Time and Justice in Africa: Rwandas Genocide, Its Courts, and the UN Criminal Tribunal.
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