Episode 5 | Historian Jakobi Williams on The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago 

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined in the studio by Dr. Jakobi Williams, an associate professor at Indiana University Bloomington in the Department of History and Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies.

He is the author of From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago (University of North Carolina Press, 2013). Robin D.G. Kelley writes of the book, “Williams has produced the most comprehensive and thoughtful study of Fred Hampton and the Panthers in Chicago. He has given us a brilliant study of the anatomy of grassroots organizing across race … From the Bullet to the Ballot is more than a contribution to our local knowledge of the BPP; it will compel all Panther scholars to rethink or readjust the national narrative.”