The Portland Black Panthers: Empowering Albina and Remaking a City by Lucas N.N. Burke, Judson L. Jeffries

104 OHQ vol. 121, no. 1 and Clark returned to St. Louis in 1806. Many of the incidents that Morris selects plunge readers into crucial armed conflicts during the War of 1812, fights and scrapes between fur trappers and traders with Indian Tribes in the Rockies, and challenges inherent in establishing secure overland routes for westering emigrants. Morris focuses on the choices made by key individuals, adding detail to episodes covered in recently published works, including Morris’s own The Perilous West (2013) and Robert Utley’s A Life Wild and Perilous (1997). Morris carries his story rapidly from incident to incident, emphasizing the physical challenges that faced explorers, fur trappers, and military leaders. His historical overview also carries readers quickly from one place to another in the western region. Often, he renders descriptions with too few geographical references, especially when original place names are mixed in with modern names. Because the action takes place in widely distant locations, from Fort Amherstburg on the Detroit River in Upper Canada to Fort Astoria on the lower Columbia River in the jointly occupied Oregon Country and at locations in corners of the American West, the lack of any maps will put many readers at a disadvantage. William L. Lang Portland State University THE PORTLAND BLACK PANTHERS: EMPOWERING ALBINA AND REMAKING A CITY by Lucas N.N. Burke and Judson L. Jeffries University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 2016. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 320 pages. $34.95 paperback. Kent Ford — who founded Portland’s chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP) in the late 1960s — was asked nearly forty years later why he distributed “Free Lumumba” leaflets at a Memorial Coliseum event in 2004: “It’s the only thing I know how to do . . . . The struggle’s the only thing I ever did know” (p. 227). This book challenges the “historically negligent approach . . . that has long portrayed the Panthers as gun-brandishing anarchists and unapologetic race-mongers” (p. 8). National Public Radio regurgitated that stereotype in a July 2019 retrospective on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas: “In law school, he was a Black Panther type, a black power extremist of a certain sort. Now, he defines the right wing of the United States Supreme Court” (KUOW.org, July 14, 2016). Lucas Burke and Judson Jeffries suggest that we move beyond vague insinuations to examine particular BPP locals. This book situates Ford and the BPP in Portland, Oregon, as leaders in community-based planning. They argue Portland ’s BPP bridged racial divides while bringing marginalized Black residents into the planning process. Black men and women founded the local but drew support from mostly White activists at Reed College, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), Portland State College, and other schools, while providing critical services for impoverished Albina residents. Albina, after 1948, became a ghettoized zone for Black residents excluded from other areas. Tracing the “long civil rights movement in Portland” from statehood through 1948, this book explores the White construction of Albina as the city’s Black district after 1950 (p. 18). This is familiar ground, relating how the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (led by E.D. Canady and Beatrice Morrow Canady), the Afro-American League of Portland (led by McCants Stewart), the Shipyard Negro Organization for Victory (SNOV), and the Urban League (led by DeNorval Unthank) valiantly, yet vainly, battled exclusionary policies. Moderate Black leaders faced determined White segregationists who defined where African Americans might reside in Portland . The book highlights Canady’s Advocate as a leading voice in this struggle, but oddly not William McClendon’s People’s Observer — a close ally of SNOV during World War II — despite identifying McClendon’s Rhythm Room on Williams Avenue as a casualty of postwar redevelopment and highlighting his pathbreaking role as Reed College’s first Black Studies director. Ultimately, they argue, the Albina ghetto existed first in the minds of White Portlanders, only later as experienced reality. 105 Reviews Ford’s story centers the narrative, drawing on interviews with BPP members. It is a microstudy situated within a national framework. Ford was an Oakland transplant who assembled in Portland a cadre of BPP wannabes (Sandra Ford...

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